The Garland, Blinken, and Morell Morass  It is possible that both Garland and Blinken will have to answer for their alleged malfeasance. Both might easily be impeached and forced from office. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/22/the-garland-blinken-and-morell-morass/

Doubtless your mother used to tell you to count your blessings. It was good advice. Your situation may be bad. In the case of the United States, things indisputably are bad, and worsening. You know that. But look on the bright side. Merrick Garland, the first American Gothic attorney general of the United States, is a partisan horror show, withholding real protection from Supreme Court justices who are threatened by violent criminals even as he stigmatizes as “domestic terrorists” parents who criticize their local school boards and orders the FBI to conduct dawn raids on critics of the regime. He is a horrible man and a dangerous partisan hack, the very instantiation of the two-tier application of the law that has made such a mockery of justice during Biden’s tenure. 

But look on the bright side. Garland will soon be gone. And remember, he almost made it to the Supreme Court. Obama nominated him in the waning days of his administration. But Donald Trump had other ideas and—let’s give credit where credit is due—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made sure that Garland’s nomination got lost when Republicans held the majority. I am no fan of McConnell’s, but I try to remember to say a little prayer for him whenever I list my intentions. By scotching Garland’s ascension to the Court, McConnell did the country a huge favor. 

I say Garland will “soon” be gone. Most of my readers will assume I mean on or about January 20, 2025, when the next Republican president assumes office. 

It might take that long. But recent developments have me wondering whether he might make his congé even earlier.

A few days ago, it was reported that an unnamed, senior IRS special agent was seeking whistle-blower status in connection with the ongoing investigation of First Son Hunter Biden, who has serious tax problems. 

According to a letter from the agent’s lawyer to several House and Senate committees, the agent laid out multiple examples of “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject [i.e., Hunter Biden] were not politically connected.” The agent’s allegations also “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” and “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” against Hunter Biden.

Earth Day has become kind of a joke By Silvio Canto, Jr.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/earth_day_has_become_kind_of_a_joke.html

Fifty-three years ago, The Beatles broke up, and they started Earth Day conveniently on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday.  After all, what a better way to celebrate your hatred of capitalism than to schedule your big festival on commie #1’s birthday?  Anyway, I am not sure how Lenin would feel about all of the predictions about the Earth that were posted since then.  Let’s take a look:

Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”

—Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

—George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”

—Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

—New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

—Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

Getting Off the Roller Coaster to Bondage By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/getting_off_the_roller_coaster_to_bondage.html

Life right now feels like that moment when your roller coaster car begins slowing down near a terrifying peak, and your line of sight finally captures the precipitous plunge lying ahead.  Americans know that what happens next won’t be enjoyable except in that perverse way when abject terror floods the body with adrenaline.  Majorities or near-majorities expect imminent economic disaster, global war against nuclear-armed foes, and civil war here at home.  If that’s “progress,” then it’s long past time to turn the country around.  Yet that’s the thing with roller coaster rides: even if we hit the brakes now before cresting the summit, our downward acceleration is guaranteed — in one direction or another.

It’s not as if the ruling class’s “cult of expertise” provides any comfort.  We have a president who long ago lost his marbles, a vice president who succeeded in the political profession by excelling in the oldest one, a secretary of defense committed to promoting men in dresses, a health bureaucracy pumping citizens full of experimental drugs, a Treasury Department endlessly printing money, a Commerce Department prioritizing inflation-inducing “green” windmills over real economic growth, a homeland security chief dedicated to keeping the nation insecure, and a national police force that treats half the country as “domestic enemies.”  It’s almost as if whoever installed these yahoos into the highest positions of authority wanted obvious “fall guys” for when everything, well, falls down.

The Gateway Pundit recently ran an article reminding readers of an ominous analysis from a private intelligence outfit predicting a seventy-percent decline in America’s population by 2025.  That Deagel Corporation forecast released less than a decade ago shocked a lot of people at the time, but in an age when Farmer Gates and Doom Fauci continue to promise incoming pandemics worse than COVID, the World Economic Forum’s human sacrifice cult insists on widespread energy poverty and famine, and U.S.-NATO plays Russian roulette for fun and profit, apocalyptic population drops no longer seem so unimaginable from the top of this globalist roller coaster.  (Morbid side question: If Deagel’s devastating prophecy proves right, will climate cultists still insist that only global government and micromanaged markets can save the world from destruction?  Arg, of course they will; even after killing off 95% of the planet, A.I. clones of Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and Barack Obama will still be blaming the remaining 5% for “hate” crimes, global warming, and “white supremacy.”  Hustlers can’t ever give up the con.)

Communism Is Liberty’s Mortal Enemy By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/communism_is_libertys_mortal_enemy.html

In a December 26, 1955 article in Time magazine, George Meany of the AFL-CIO warned Americans that

[t]oo many in the free world fail to see the real nature of Communism as the mortal foe of everything that we hold dear, of every moral and spiritual value. Too many are still prisoners of the illusion that Communism is, historically speaking, a progressive system  [or] … extreme liberalism temporarily making bad mistakes. Actually, Communism … is an anti-social system in which there are embedded some of the worst features of savagery, slavery, feudalism and life-sapping exploitation manifested in the industrial revolution of early-day capitalism.

Meany forcefully asserted that

[t]oo many in the free world seem to have lost their capacity for moral indignation against the most brutal inhumanities when they are perpetrated by Communists. It is painful, but we must face the cruel facts of life. It is disturbing to me that many people in our country who call themselves liberals … never find the time to utter a word of condemnation against the Communist imperialist destruction of the national independence and democratic rights of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Asia.

It was unfathomable to Meany that liberals could not perceive that “communism is the deadliest enemy of liberalism.”

With great prescience, Meany recognized that “[t]he conflict between Communism and freedom is the problem of our time.  It overshadows all other problems.  This conflict mirrors our age, its toils, its tensions, its troubles and its tasks.  On the outcome of this conflict depends the future of all mankind. I pray that … we of the free world can muster the moral courage and total strength to preserve peace and promote the freedom of the men and women of every continent, color and creed.”

In January of 1956, Meany took aim at the American business community when he explained that “[s]omehow or other, many in our American business community are not sufficiently alert to the danger of world Communism[.]”  Meany urged American business “not to let the prospect of monetary profits blur your vision.  Know your enemy.  Don’t help him.”

American Crisis How we lost our faith in the future and how to get it back: Walter Russell Mead

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-crisis-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia

EXCERPT:

We are also an American society. That is, we share characteristics with other countries in the Americas like Mexico and Brazil that set the countries of our hemisphere apart from countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Like many other American countries, the United States has more ethnic, cultural, social, and religious diversity than most European countries. The turbulent history of the hemisphere has left its mark on many American societies, where levels of crime, inequality, and violence are extraordinarily high by world standards. At the same time, our cultural roots are more Anglo and Protestant than most of our fellow American states, giving us much in common with countries like Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and of course Canada. As is the case throughout the Western Hemisphere, our intellectual classes and social elites have historically looked to Europe for aesthetic and intellectual values, while much of our population has had little knowledge of or interest in European history and culture. Serial waves of immigration, the latest and largest of which is taking place now, have reshaped American politics and culture, while leaving many of the essential elements of the national character largely unchanged.

Most of the time, however, our national conversation fails to do justice to the rich complexity of our national life. There are some outstanding exceptions both on the left and the right of American political discourse, but the quality of too much of our national conversation, mediated as it often is by cable news and social media, is too superficial, too one-sided, and too polarized to address the real issues in American life. That would be dangerous enough in ordinary times, but we live in demanding times. The disruptive economic and social consequences of the information revolution combine with the decadence and decay of the midcentury American model of regulated industrial democracy to plunge American society into a maelstrom of interconnected economic, social, racial, political, cultural, and ideological crises.

Between the domestic upheavals in American society, the international turmoil at a time of renewed great power competition, and global threats ranging from nuclear war to climate change, many Americans feel angry, frustrated, and afraid. To make matters worse, America’s leadership class has lost its way, and too many of the politicians, intellectuals, artists, educators, and religious leaders who ought to be pointing the way forward are locked into stale ideologies and failed institutional models, lacking the vision required to move up to the next stage of American life.

Vivek Ramaswamy Files Lawsuit Against World Economic Forum By Lorenz Duchamps

https://www.theepochtimes.com/vivek-ramaswamy-files-lawsuit-against-world-economic-forum_5209770.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is suing the World Economic Forum (WEF) for affiliating him as one of its “Young Global Leaders,” despite rejecting the request and repeatedly asking to be removed from its list of members.

“I fundamentally disagree with the WEF agenda,” Ramaswamy said in a post on Twitter Tuesday. “I’ve been one of the biggest crusaders in our country against it. They named me a ‘young global leader’ when I explicitly said no. Now it’s time to hold them accountable for it.”

Ramaswamy argued that the organization of global elites also listed other young and successful business leaders on the forum without their consent.

In a poll initiated by the 37-year-old businessman-turned-politician, he asked his 456,000 followers to vote on whether they think he should sue the WEF, with over 29,000 Twitter users responding to it. The result showed a whopping 90 percent in favor of filing a lawsuit against the organization, which is headquartered in Geneva.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ramaswamy formally announced that he’s filing a lawsuit against the WEF, saying it’s time to hold the organization accountable “for creating the false illusion of affiliation” in order to undermine its adversaries.

“Our Founding Fathers fought the American Revolution to declare independence from the Old World monarchy,” Ramaswamy said. “That old monster now rears its head again in the form of WEF’s agendas including ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and the ‘Great Reset.’ That’s why I’ve been one of the most vocal crusaders in America against WEF.”

According to the New York Post, citing the lawsuit, Ramaswamy filed it in a court in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Wednesday and is seeking only nominal damages of $2,500.

The lawsuit, per the Post, reads: “The WEF seemingly exploited this false and manufactured affiliation with Mr. Ramaswamy to undermine his credibility as a critic of the World Economic Forum and its objectives.”

“This is an organization that does a lot of wrongs and I’ve opposed it publicly and believe it should be held accountable,” Ramaswamy told the paper. “The WEF has a radical worldview that rejects the principles America was founded on. I’m not interested in being a ‘global citizen.’ I’m an American.”

Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who founded and leads biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, appeared on the WEF’s 2021 list of Young Global Leaders (YGL) before his name was pulled from the website, an archived version shows.

The Spike A growing number of scientists are sounding the alarm about the risks of both COVID and its cures: Clayton Fox

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/the-spike

Those raising evidence-based concerns about the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines are often labeled purveyors of misinformation, and derided as anti-scientific conspiracy theorists and paranoid kooks. Or worse. Bill Kristol tweeted in late 2021 that, “there is blood on the hands in 2021 of the unvaccinated and especially their enablers and encouragers who know better.” However, there are a number of prominent scientists, doctors, and independent researchers who are wary of both COVID infection and the vaccines.

Many of these figures are worried about one particular piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: the spike protein, which allows the virus to enter your cells, and which was chosen to be the featured element used in the Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, and AstraZeneca vaccines. The available evidence shows that COVID, especially in light of new forms of treatment, is not as acutely deadly as once feared, and while mortality attributable to the COVID vaccines has not been definitively characterized, it is likely relatively rare. But some scientists are concerned by the potential effects of repeated exposure to the spike protein, and therefore the advisability of further boosters that contain it, given that we are going to be frequently reexposed to the circulating virus. Those voicing these concerns, however, have been subjected to censorship, ostracization, and damaging attacks on their reputations.

Take, for example, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein. On his DarkHorse podcast on June 21, 2021, Weinstein sat down with mRNA pioneer Dr. Robert Malone (COVID-vaccinated) and Silicon Valley inventor turned COVID investigator Steve Kirsch (COVID-vaccinated) to discuss the potential dangers of the vaccines rapidly being distributed around the country and across the world. The focus? The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is produced when the mRNA from the vaccines enters your cells.

The Toxicity of DEI: A Tale From Newton, Massachusetts Charles Love

https://www.newsweek.com/toxicity-dei-tale-newton-massachusetts-opinion-1795907

A white grievance backlash has arrived in Massachusetts, to hear the liberal media tell it. Well-funded and well-connected GOP power players masquerading as aggrieved parents have been “harassing educators for policies they deem unfair to white students and antithetical to their values,” per a Boston Globe columnist. It’s “white backlash politics” that’s “clearly coordinated, with right-wing money” and engaged in a campaign of “whipping suburban parents into a frenzy” to win elections for the Republicans.

Sounds sinister! But if you talk to the parents at the center of the ongoing fight over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public schools in Newton, Massachusetts, you’ll find something very different. You won’t find MAGA Republicans opposing DEI in the schools, but rather liberal Democrats who have noticed a shift in their children’s school system priorities. And their complaints have nothing to do with being white.

One parent had a child excluded from an affinity group (a race-based social group), while other parents were dismayed to find an accelerated math program that was in place for years had been scrapped due to equity concerns. Still others were troubled to learn that their children’s English and History instruction was filled with language dividing everyone into categories of oppressor or oppressed.

When these parents questioned the school about these issues, they were told that their complaints targeted aspects of their children’s education that were consistent the values of Newton Public Schools (NPS). That was true: In 2022, NPS shared these values in their Statement of Values and Commitment to Racial Equity. With imperatives like “Take immediate and sustained action to dismantle racism in our schools and communities” and “It is essential to give voice to those who have traditionally been underrepresented and historically marginalized,” the Statement of Values consists of typical progressive antiracism language, which leaves you with no doubt that blacks and other minorities are marginalized and have no agency, and adheres to the highly subjective findings of unconscious bias.

Saudi policy toward Israel and Iran – the US factor

https://bit.ly/43HJQR1

Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations*Riyadh does not allow the resumption of the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties to befog the reality of the tenuous and shifty Middle East regimes, policies and agreements, and the inherently subversive, terroristic, anti-Sunni and imperialistic track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs.

*Saudi Arabia is cognizant of the 1,400-year-old fanatic, religious vision of the Ayatollahs, including their most critical strategic goal – since their February 1979 violent ascension to power – of exporting the Shiite Revolution and toppling all “apostate” Sunni Arab regimes, especially the House of Saud. They are aware that neither diplomatic, nor financial, short term benefits transcend the deeply-rooted, long term Ayatollahs’ anti-Sunni vision.

*Irrespective of its recent agreement with Iran – and the accompanying moderate diplomatic rhetoric – Saudi Arabia does not subscribe to the “New Middle East” and “end of interstate wars” Pollyannaish state of mind. The Saudis adhere to the 1,400-year-old reality of the unpredictably intolerant and violent inter-Arab/Muslim reality (as well as the Russia-Ukraine reality).

*This is not the first resumption of Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties, which were previously severed in 1988 and 2016 and followed by the Ayatollahs-induced domestic and regional violence.

*The China-brokered March 2023 resumption of diplomatic ties is a derivative of Saudi Arabia’s national security interests, and its growing frustration with the US’ eroded posture as a reliable diplomatic and military protector against lethal threats.    

*The resumption of Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations constitute a major geo-strategic gain for China and a major setback for the US in a region which, until recently, was perceived as a US domain.

*The US posture of deterrence has been severely undermined by the 2015 nuclear accord (the JCPOA), the 2021 withdrawal/flight from Afghanistan, the systematic courting of three real, clear and lethal threats to the Saudi regime –  Iran’s Ayatollahs, the “Muslim Brotherhood” and Yemen’s Houthi terrorists –- while exerting diplomatic and military pressure on the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.

*US policy has driven Saudi Arabia (as well as the UAE and Egypt) closer to China and Russia, commercially and militarily, including the potential Chinese construction of civilian nuclear power plants and a hard rock uranium mill in Saudi Arabia, which would advance Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030.”

Tears of heartbreak and joy By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/tears-of-heartbreak-and-joy/

Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, begins on Monday evening. When it ends on Tuesday night, cheer will replace mourning as the nation embarks on a 24-hour celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day.

The pairing of the two dates was purposeful. The idea behind the juxtaposition of grief and gratitude in such proximity was that Israelis owe the birth and continued existence of the Jewish state to the men and women killed while living in and defending it.

Though this week marks the country’s diamond anniversary—at the young but ripening age of 75—internecine political battles are threatening to take center stage at the somber ceremonies and at the happy ones to follow. Thankfully, there are many Israelis who intend to treat Yom Hazikaron with the respect it deserves and then go on to enjoy Yom Ha’atzmaut festivities.

These citizens understand that Memorial Day isn’t merely for the loved ones of the fallen, who don’t need annual reminders of a loss always lingering. It is held, rather, to highlight the collective nature of a sacrifice made by individuals, each a world onto him/herself, with a name, a face and a grieving family left behind.

The same applies to Independence Day. Its message to all Israelis is that the wonderment around them is both a personal and a shared accomplishment, regardless of the issues that divide them.

It’s a tall order for people about whom it is aptly quipped: “Two Jews, three opinions.” But more than a handful manages to set aside the latter when called upon to do so, which helps to explain why Israel repeatedly ranks high on the happiness scale.