IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Migrant Surge Brings Killers and Criminal Gangs And the Dems’ “sanctuary city” policies make the danger worse. by Betsy McCaughey

Posted By on March 5th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/migrant-surge-brings-killers-and-criminal-gangs/

Former New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly, the department’s longest-serving commissioner, cautioned on Sunday that New York City’s quality of life “has really deteriorated.” Migrant crime is a major reason.

Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang and El Salvador’s feared MS-13 — what former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker calls “prison-spawned gangs” — are threatening to take over American cities. They bring “mindless knuckle-dragging violence,” warns Swecker. They’re the “most dangerous gangs on the planet.”

Swecker speculates that countries are emptying their prisons deliberately. Gang leaders setting up crime rings in the U.S. “come out of the muck and the slime of the South American prisons.”

While law enforcement officials here are warning us about the collapse of public safety, left-wing pols deny there’s a problem. Ana Maria Archila, co-director of New York’s Working Families Party, calls the “chaos and insecurity” people are feeling a “false sense.” She blames it on racism and xenophobia, not reality. Open your eyes, Ms. Archila.

Public safety is visibly spiraling downward: migrants beating cops in Times Square; migrants running prostitution rings; migrants on mopeds robbing pedestrians; migrants shoplifting and stripping retail stores; and now a migrant who recently left New York has been arrested for killing a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley. Not everyone violating the border is a hardened criminal, but President Joe Biden’s open borders are allowing the worst to get in.

When Mayor Eric Adams was asked on Feb. 20 about stabbing incidents and violence against cops at the Randall’s Island shelter, Adams said that “even the most peaceful person — being confined to an area with 3,000 people … there comes a time where it just irritates you.”

“Irritates”? Adams is downplaying a serious threat.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

NY Times Poll Shock: 73 Percent Say Biden ‘Too Old’ for Presidency

Posted By on March 5th, 2024

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-old-ny-times/2024/03/03/id/1155760/

A shocking new Siena College poll released by The New York Times revealed an overwhelming majority — 73% — of Americans say Biden is “too old to be an effective president” and that included even 61% of his 2020 voters.

The Times’ glaring headline warned the polling results were a “grave threat” for his reelection. Former President Donald Trump trolled the Times and Biden for the results in his Saturday night campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia.

“I’m running for president and leading big in all the polls,” Trump told his rally, which aired live and in its entirety on Newsmax. “I mean, when The New York Times has this front page story tomorrow — you’ll see, it just came out — Trump is killing this guy.

“They’re not happy. I guess, maybe they are happy. I mean, frankly, they did the best they’ve ever done four years of Trump. They were doing much better than they do right now.”

But Biden is not doing better even with his voters, the Times noted Sunday morning as Trump predicted.

“The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him,” according to the Times analysis. “A striking 61% said they thought he was ‘just too old’ to be an effective president.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are DEI And ESG Finally Going MIA?

Posted By on March 5th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/05/are-dei-and-esg-finally-going-mia/

The efforts by government, captured institutions and radical activists to manipulate and menace can feel like an endless loop. But is it possible we’ve turned a corner, or at least nearing one that we can take? Recent events suggest so.

The flagship institution of higher education in the red state of Florida is shutting down its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office. The University of Florida is ridding itself of the malign chief diversity officer position, sacking the program’s useless staff, and is also “halting any contracts involving the subject,” the Associated Press reports. 

What a welcome development, thanks to a bill passed and signed last year that forbids schools from using state and federal funds to support discriminatory initiatives.

Writing earlier this year for I&I, Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller identified “DEI theology” as a movement that has warped universities’ moral compasses.

“These often improbably huge campus bureaucracies are the engine of sheltering and groupthink. DEI offers ‘protection’ in the form of tribalization – the perfect growth medium for prejudice and alienation – and a hair trigger for any perceived slight, insult, or anything deemed exclusionary.” 

In one of many egregious instances of DEI indoctrination, every student-athlete at North Carolina’s Davidson College was required to watch “I’m Not Racist, Am I?” which, yes, Glenn Reynolds, does sound “like a hostile educational environment on account of race.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Oil Funds Genocide by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on March 5th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20458/iran-oil-funds-genocide

History is filled with the terrible retribution inflicted on America’s foes when those enemies underestimate the United States.

Consider Imperial Japan, which totally underestimated the United States. Hitler thought we could manufacture cars but never have the ability to produce tanks, an air force, a two-ocean navy and the willpower to fight and win. The Soviets told the West: “We will bury you.” And Osama Bin Laden’s ashes will never be found.

So when US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warns Iran that their role in supporting the terrorist murder of some 1,400 Israelis by Hamas has the potential to result in immensely serious “consequences,” he is attempting to ensure that Tehran does not make the fatal mistake of underestimating the United States.

Looking on the surface, it might be easy to do so. Japan saw that the U.S. Congress debated and delayed for months before finally instituting a military draft in 1940. Hitler saw the American-based Nazi Bund convene a rally at Madison Square Garden. We currently have a president whose ability and political will have openly been questioned. The House of Representatives is in disarray. We are facing a multi-trillion dollar debt. Surely we must be distracted and incapable of action.

All the more reason that Graham’s warning, which included “tak[ing] down an oil refinery” for every hostage killed. “The only way you’re gonna keep this war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable,” Graham recently stated.

On October 22, Graham said: “We’re here today to tell Iran: We’re watching you. If this war grows, it’s coming to your backyard.” And to make a point, he made that statement from Tel Aviv, as part of a delegation of ten U.S. Senators. “There won’t be two fronts, there’ll be three,” he added, allowing the recipient of that message to ponder what and where that third military front would be.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bankrupt Iran: Close Their Oil Cash Cow by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20457/bankrupt-iran-close-their-oil-cash-cow

This article was first published by Gatestone on October 23, 2023.

History is filled with the terrible retribution inflicted on America’s foes when those enemies underestimate the United States.

Consider Imperial Japan, which totally underestimated the United States. Hitler thought we could manufacture cars but never have the ability to produce tanks, an air force, a two-ocean navy and the willpower to fight and win. The Soviets told the West: “We will bury you.” And Osama Bin Laden’s ashes will never be found.

So when US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warns Iran that their role in supporting the terrorist murder of some 1,400 Israelis by Hamas has the potential to result in immensely serious “consequences,” he is attempting to ensure that Tehran does not make the fatal mistake of underestimating the United States.

Looking on the surface, it might be easy to do so. Japan saw that the U.S. Congress debated and delayed for months before finally instituting a military draft in 1940. Hitler saw the American-based Nazi Bund convene a rally at Madison Square Garden. We currently have a president whose ability and political will have openly been questioned. The House of Representatives is in disarray. We are facing a multi-trillion dollar debt. Surely we must be distracted and incapable of action.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s up to us By Richard Jack Rail

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/up_to_us.html

The time’s fast coming when America will rip itself apart if reasonable people don’t stand up to injustice and stupidity masquerading as social justice

Some years ago, Ann Coulter commented about the TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: “The scripts involve the sort of real-life crimes that are a lot more common since our country has become ‘diverse,’ such as child rape and incest. But the child-rapists are never diverse, as they are in real life. No, the perps are always blond, blue-eyed American men. In fact, the modern American white male is the least rapey, most gentle, protective, chivalrous creature God has ever created.”

This has been obvious to anyone interested in the truth for, oh, six decades or thereabouts. People who can think follow facts to logical, reasonable conclusions. They don’t force-fit reality to a template based on doubtful assumptions that produce silly rules and policy, such as the presumption of police racism that led to the prohibition on profiling. We all profile as a matter of course. To profile is to think, to narrow a search universe. When you look for a lost sock, you ignore panties and pencils.

The Left, sticking to social justice templates and assumptions, refuses to acknowledge reality that doesn’t fit. So it’s up to conservatives to re-establish law and order by using common sense and following facts to reasonable, lawful conclusions. The time’s fast coming when America will rip itself apart if reasonable people don’t stand up to injustice and stupidity masquerading as social justice.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The truth about the Houthis They are not anti-Imperialist rebels – they are a vicious and reactionary Islamist cult. James Heartfield

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/02/the-truth-about-the-houthis/

Over the past few months, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been attacking container ships and energy tankers in the Red Sea. The Houthis say that these attacks are retaliation for Israel’s incursion into Gaza. This has delighted anti-Israel activists in the West, who have taken to the streets with a new chant: ‘Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around.’

It’s clear that those Western leftists currently cheering on the Houthis know very little about this regressive movement.

Officially known as Ansar Allah (‘Supporters of God’), the Houthis have been in open rebellion against the Yemeni government since 2004. They now govern much of the populous west and north of Yemen. Since 2014, they have controlled the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognised Yemeni government to relocate to Aden, a port city on the southern coast. Today, the Houthis are the dominant force in a divided country.

To help us understand the rise of the Houthis, it is helpful to turn to Tribes and Politics in Yemen, a 2017 book by Austrian anthropologist Marieke Brandt. A product of extensive anthropological fieldwork in the Houthi stronghold of north-west Yemen, it shows that the Houthis’ rise owes more to the collapse of Arab nationalism in Yemen than any positive, internal dynamic in the movement itself. They have merely exploited the decay of the once powerful nationalist forces that drove the formation of the republic of North Yemen in 1962, before dominating Yemen proper after unification with Communist South Yemen in 1990.

The Houthis, like at least a third of Yemenis today, are Zaydi, which is a branch of Shia Islam. Like other Shia Muslims, the Zaydis believe that the position of state ruler, or Imamate, is hereditary. They trace their lineage back to Al-Qasim al-Rassi, who was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammed’s son-in-law, Ali ibn Abu Talib.

In the ninth century, Zaydi imam Yahya ibn al-Husayn, backed by members of the Sadah (Yemeni nobles), established control over northern Yemen. The Zaydi dynasty proceeded to rule over the north right up until 1962, when nationalists overthrew the Imamate and the Sadah. From this point, many Zaydi factions in northern Yemen felt marginalised.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Truth About Illegal-Alien Criminality Do illegal aliens actually commit fewer crimes than do legal American citizens? by John Perazzo

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-truth-about-illegal-alien-criminality/

This past December, U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) personnel encountered 301,983 aliens who had crossed America’s unprotected southern border unlawfully. That astonishing, unprecedented figure pushed the total number of illegals who had entered U.S. territory during 2023 to roughly 2.54 million. If we include also the estimated 840,000 so-called “got-aways” known to have slipped into the American interior, the total jumps to about 3.4 million. That is more than the populations of all the cities in America except New York and Los Angeles, and more than the populations of 22 separate U.S. states – all in just a single year.

These figures stand in stark contrast to those of 2020, the final year of the Trump administration, when the corresponding numbers were 516,908 illegal-alien encounters with border authorities, plus another 119,000 “got-aways,” for a combined total of just under 636,000 unlawful intruders – scarcely 18.7 percent of the 2023 total.

Democrat defenders of open-borders immigration policies and their allies in the media have long claimed that illegal aliens make wonderful neighbors who, per capita, commit significantly fewer crimes against persons and property than do native-born American citizens. President Biden’s campaign co-chair Rep. Veronica Escobar, for example, repeated this mantra as recently as Friday on CNN Newsroom, in reaction to the high-profile murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly by a Venezuelan national living illegally in the United States.

But common sense alone should tell us that people who blithely ignore American immigration laws are likely to disrespect federal, state and local laws as well. Indeed, as Ronald Mortensen  pointed out in The Hill, “virtually all adult, illegal aliens commit felonies” such as forgery, fraud, identity theft, and perjury, “to procure the documents they need to get jobs, to drive and to obtain other benefits that are restricted to U.S. citizens.” These documents include Social Security cards, drivers’ licenses, green cards, birth certificates, and I-9 forms, among others.

The crimes of illegal aliens also include a multitude of violent, bloody, highly destructive offenses. And this is by no means a new phenomenon. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that looked at the criminal histories of 55,322 aliens who had “entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.” Those 55,322 illegals had been arrested 459,614 times — an average of 8.3 arrests apiece — and had committed almost 700,000 separate criminal offenses, or roughly 12.7 offenses each. Approximately 12 percent of their arrests were for violent crimes such as homicide, robbery, assault, and sex-related offenses; 15 percent were for property offenses like burglary, larceny, theft, and vandalism; 24 percent were for drug crimes; and the rest were for a wide array of transgressions like DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons violations, immigration crimes, and obstruction of justice.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

American Paralysis and Decline When the road to salvation becomes too painful even to contemplate. by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/american-paralysis-and-decline/

“We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”

So shrugged the ancient historian Livy (59 B.C.- A.D. 17) of the long decline of Roman national character that, in his age, finally ended the Roman Republic.

Like a patient whose medicine proves worse than the disease, Livy lamented that the Romans knew that they had become corrupt and lawless.

But the very contemplation of the hard medicine needed for restoration—and the furious reaction that would meet the remedy—made it impossible to save the patient.

America is nearing such an impasse.

We know that no state can long exist after opening its borders to over 7 million illegal aliens, requiring neither background checks nor legality.

The recent murder of a Georgia female jogger by an illegal alien and the savage beating of New York policemen by similar others hardly merit media attention.

Everyone knows that neither new appropriations nor new laws are needed to secure the border as it was in 2020.

Instead, we could just stop suicidal catch-and-release, deport lawbreakers, privilege the legal over the illegal immigrant, demand would-be refugees apply for asylum first in their native countries, finish the border wall, and pressure Mexico to stop undermining the territorial integrity of its northern neighbor.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Gearing Up for ‘Biden’ Versus Trump: Not If, But When and How to Replace Biden If Trump can praise those he defeats, call for unity, and campaign in 50 states in non-Republican strongholds, then he can win. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 4th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/04/gearing-up-for-biden-versus-trump-not-if-but-when-and-how-to-replace-biden/

President Joe Biden is declining at a geometric, not an arithmetic, rate. His cognitive challenges are multifaceted.

His gait is shaky. His daily use of stairs now risks the chance of a tenure-ending fall. Even when he sticks to the teleprompter, he so slurs his speech, mispronounces words, and glides his syntax that at times he becomes as incomprehensible at the podium as he is unsteady in his step.

He now speaks a strange language foreign and untranslatable to most Americans. White House transcribers leave hiatuses in their written texts of his remarks to reflect that they either have no idea what he said, do not wish to publicize their guesses at what he said, or do not wish the public to know what he was trying to say.

Despite the circling-the-wagons media and the passive-aggressive sycophants like the opportunistic Gov. Gavin Newsom in waiting, the left understands that Biden will be lucky to get to the August convention. This spring and early summer, he will not campaign as a normal presidential candidate, and this time around, there is no pretense of the COVID epidemic to excuse his absence.

The people have already polled numerous times that their president is unfit to serve now and, in the future, should not run. So the 2020 Faustian bargain is in shambles. Remember its quid pro quos: all the major Democratic presidential candidates of 2020 nearly simultaneously pulled out the primaries to coronate Biden—but only on the condition that Biden would play to the hilt his “ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton” schtick that would offer a veneer to the otherwise unpopular hard left agenda of the new Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/the Obamas/Squad Democratic Party.

The people voted for a “return to normalcy,” all while the left destroyed the southern border, unleashed a critical legal theory/George-Soros crime wave, dismantled hard-won deterrence abroad, and printed money to spur hyperinflation.