Iran’s Mullahs Use Ramadan to Crush Dissent Tyrants in a panic.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-mullahs-use-ramadan-to-crush-dissent/

With international condemnation at their brutal crackdown on protesters during the nationwide uprising that has now continued for seven months, it might have been imagined that Iran’s mullahs would have learned some lessons in moderation. The killing last September, of the young Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, by the morality police, for not wearing her hijab properly, was an outrage that has led to a denunciation by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. The shoot-to-kill strategy that has killed more than 750 protesters, and the arrest of over 30,000, has triggered an unprecedented outcry from the civilized world. But, deaf to all demonstrations, the theocratic regime has continued on its repressive path.

Now, during the Nowruz (Persian New Year) holidays and the holy month of Ramadan, the police are demanding even greater powers to crush dissent. Hassan Karami, the commander of the regime’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) Special Units, has called for the number of security police to be doubled to confront the ongoing nationwide insurrection. Karami was sanctioned by the EU in April 2021 for his role in the savage response to mass protests that took place in November 2019, when more than 1,500, mostly young protesters, were killed. He has coordinated the use of lethal force for crowd control and the suppression of protests during the current uprising. His LEF Special Units have also been responsible for serious human rights abuse against prisoners detained during the disturbances. Karamihas boasted that confronting the protests would be part of the agenda of his LEF Special Units during the Nowruz holidays and Ramadan. He described the uprising as “extreme sedition” and told the state-run Mehr news agency that his units were covering the unrest and possible movement of enemies in at least 400 cities and regions and that this required a doubling of police numbers.

The Eyes of Totalitarianism It’s not your grandfather’s Democrat Party. by John Perazzo

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-eyes-of-totalitarianism/

The iconic broadcaster, author, and legal scholar Mark Levin recently observed: “As a nation we’ve now turned the corner. We’ve turned the corner into a hard tyranny…. I just want the audience to know that we are staring into the face of tyranny, that the Democrat Party is a totalitarian party.”

And indeed, it is. To recognize this, we need only to listen when Democrats tell us – repeatedly – of their burning desire to “transform” the U.S. into a radicalized cesspool by such means as:

ending the filibuster rule so they can forcibly ram their radical legislation through the Senate;
governing via presidential executive orders rather than navigating the normal legislative process;
promoting immigration and border policies designed to import massive blocs of foreigners who will eventually become reliable Democrat voters for generations to come;
turning the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into new U.S. states, thereby allowing Democrats to permanently pack the Senate with four additional members of their party;
expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with newly appointed leftist ideologues;
openly defying that same Supreme Court whenever its rulings conflict with Democrat Party preferences;
forcibly censoring the free expression of any ideas that conflict with Democrat values; and
pursuing the impeachment and imprisonment of their political foes on the flimsiest pretexts imaginable.

Below is an abundant collection of remarkable quotes by which immensely powerful Democrats in recent times have openly and proudly promoted the objectives enumerated above, like the domineering totalitarian thugs that they are.

The Tennessee Bullhorn Isn’t Democracy Biden and Schumer now say it’s heroic to disrupt a legislative proceeding.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-justin-jones-justin-pearson-bullhorn-biden-white-house-chuck-schumer-gun-control-b9a4d4f5?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Democrats are free to argue that the Tennessee House went too far this month when it expelled Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for disrupting the chamber’s business. Yet it’s astounding to see prominent Democrats now justifying and outright endorsing the pair’s tactic of derailing legislative proceedings with a bullhorn to demand gun control.

Next week President Biden will roll out the White House red carpet for Messrs. Jones and Pearson, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who participated in the disruption to a lesser extent, and who was narrowly spared expulsion.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed at a Wednesday briefing that the three state lawmakers were punished “for peacefully protesting in support of stronger gun-safety laws.” She added that Mr. Biden phoned them and “thanked them for their leadership,” as well as for defending “democratic values.”

The response from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is even more unbelievable. Last week Mr. Schumer and four other Democratic Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to investigate whether the Tennessee House violated the U.S. Constitution or federal law. These Democrats also go far beyond protesting the expulsions. They argue that the ruckus caused by Messrs. Jones and Pearson was following in the tradition of the civil-rights movement.

Why “Net Zero” Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy By Jonathan Lesser

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/04/17/why_net_zero_is_not_a_rational_us_energy_policy_893528.html

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda. In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to “save” the climate. Although a recent Washington Post article suggests that wealth be viewed in terms of “joy, beauty, friendship, community, [and] closeness to flourishing nature,” impoverished individuals who cook with animal dung – such as 80% of the population in the African nation of Burkina-Fasso – aren’t likely to find much joy and beauty in economic misery. Granted, having to cook with animal dung ensures “closeness to nature,” although probably not the one the article’s author envisions.

Rather than approaching energy policy clearly, the U.S. (and most of the western world) is pursuing so-called “net zero” energy policies aiming to fully electrify western economies, while relying almost entirely on wind and solar power. The additional required electricity – after all, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun sets nightly – would supposedly be supplied by energy storage batteries or hydrogen-powered generators. Two factors drive these policies. 

First, there is climate hysteria, which promotes claims that have either proven to be false (the “end of snow” in Great Britain, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park) or posit extreme scenarios (complete agricultural collapse, massive sea level increases, more frequent hurricanes). The actual evidence is to the contrary, including increased agricultural yields, minimal sea level rise, and no increases in observed hurricane frequency. 

Sorry, Bernie, Minimum-Wage Hike Would Still Hurt Poor Workers Most

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/20/sorry-bernie-minimum-wage-hike-would-still-hurt-poor-workers-most/

Vermont’s self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is a nonstop cheerleader for a minimum-wage hike. Recently, in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, he once again called for a huge increase in the minimum wage. Sounds generous, until you realize it would in fact hurt most the working poor, those who supposedly would reap the greatest benefits of a boosted minimum wage.

“Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour,” Sanders wrote. “It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.”

The idea that there are “too many” people “trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour” isn’t exactly true, at least not for the vast majority of workers.

Among the 76.1 million hourly wage workers, the average earner took home $33.18 an hour in March, or roughly $1,141.39 a week. That’s $59,352 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own data (for 2021, the latest full year for data) show that just 1.4% of all hourly workers made at or below the current minimum wage.

There’s a reason for this. Businesses pay people what they’re worth to them. If they can’t afford to pay you the going rate, they don’t hire you and you can try elsewhere. But, as the data show, businesses for the most part pay their workers well.

OK, but, as Sanders would have it, why not just have the government force businesses to pay the higher minimum wage for those at the bottom? Such as $17 an hour, his current proposal?

With ever-greater advances in labor-saving technology, machinery and, most notably, artificial intelligence, America will soon see large numbers of formerly employed people become unemployed.

Nashville Controversy Reveals Liberals’ Anti-Democracy Double Standard-Jonathan Tobin

https://www.newsweek.com/nashville-controversy-reveals-liberals-anti-democracy-double-standard-opinion-1795087

In the last two years, the defense of democracy has been central to the Democratic Party’s attempt to portray itself as the last line of defense against Republicans’ alleged authoritarianism. But as recent events in Nashville showed, Democrats’ alleged fealty to democracy and abhorrence for agitators and mobs seeking to disrupt the legislative branch of government is more a matter of situational ethics than actual principle. As the career of a new Democratic idol, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, demonstrates, they’re only against anti-democratic rioters when they’re seeking to silence Republicans.

Jones became a national celebrity when, along with two other Democrats—Reps. Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson—he disrupted a March 30 session of the Tennessee legislature to demand that it consider anti-gun rights laws that he supported. Acting in conjunction with a mob of demonstrators that had flooded the state capitol in Nashville, the trio, armed with bullhorns, seized the podium and shut down the assembly, ranting about Republicans being complicit in mass shootings. The demonstrators were kept outside the chamber but harassed both legislators and cops who were present. Eventually, order was restored and days later the legislature voted to expel Jones and Pearson. Johnson escaped the same fate by only a narrow margin.

At that point, the national media and leading Democrats like former president Barack Obama treated the state legislators’ expulsion as the only salient part of the story, ignoring the events of March 30. In that way, they turned Jones into a martyr and used the episode as more proof of the GOP’s supposed authoritarianism.

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this narrative is staggering.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY ON CNN YESTERDAY VIDEO

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/04/19/ramaswamy_diversity_is_meaningless_unless_something_else_binds_us_together.html

Ramaswamy: Diversity Is Meaningless Unless Something Greater Binds Us Together

MY SAY: VIVEK RAMASWAMY

Yesterday I attended a private luncheon and book launching for Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican entrepreneur and businessman, and author of several excellent books on culture, business and politicswho recently announced his candidacy for the White House.

Until yesterday, although I have been seriously impressed by his brilliance and articulate vision for a conservative agenda to restore American values, education, infrastructure, energy independence, and security, I was skeptical about his election chances.

No more. He is an excellent speaker who fields questions deftly with an exciting and infectious vision of our nation’s possibilities and exceptionalism.

I am reminded of an early 2014 meeting when the Tea Party repeated its early endorsement of Donald Trump to a decidedly skeptical reception.

Who knows about 2024? As August debates get closer, Vivek Ramaswamy certainly elevates the language and ideas, and whatever happens he deserves a great future in American politics. rsk

The lies about hydroxychloroquine were the worst of the COVID era By John Klar

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

There has been little accountability for the lies of the COVID pandemic. 

Clearly the disease originated at the Wuhan Virology Lab.  The mRNA vaccines were not nearly as effective as touted (if they worked at all), and possibly unsafe. 

Another glaring dishonesty, exposed by doctors like Meryl Nass, relates to the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID.

Whether or not hydroxychloroquine is effective against COVID, government authorities thwarted doctors from honestly attempting to find out, and interfered with doctor-patient relationships to do so.  Agencies conspired to undermine and discredit doctors like Dr. Meryl Nass, discouraging alternative therapies possessing strong safety records while hard-selling experimental and relatively untested mRNA vaccines.

In the case of Dr. Nass, a nationwide pattern of censorship against physicians who supported hydroxychloroquine was reflected when the State of Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine suspended her medical license and referred her for a psychiatric evaluation.  The Board slandered the good doctor by claiming her provision of care constituted “an immediate jeopardy to the health and physical safety of the public” and even suggested she might be using drugs:

The information received by the Board demonstrates that Dr. Nass is or may be unable to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to her patients by reason of mental illness, alcohol intemperance, excessive use of drugs, narcotics, or as a result of a mental or physical condition interfering with the competent practice of medicine.

Dr. Nass was not doing anything extreme in her patient care: she was targeted because she spoke up forcefully against the mRNA vaccine narrative.  She got in the way of efforts by politicians and pharmaceutical companies to ensure maximum jab compliance. 

The immediate insistence by authorities that Covid skipped species in an open air market flew in the face of common sense—that it may have come from a lab studying that very virus with gain-of-function methodology, using bats carrying that virus, in the city where that virus then broke out.  Similarly, the rush to dismiss hydroxychloroquine as a potentially effective therapy could not have been known without study (much like early dismissals of natural immunity).  Banning its use made no sense.

As a person who had taken hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for many years for Lyme Disease, the slandering of the drug (and doctors who prescribed it) was rather stunning to me.  I knew the risks of the drug were minor.  Yet Dr. Anthony Fauci and others very aggressively opposed trying to save lives with this drug before mRNA vaccines were available, using illogical and extremist justifications.

Dr. Nass stood up boldly and early.  At her website and in her newsletters, she has competently established that:

– studies purporting to discredit HCQ employed excessive doses and were designed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

– the government limited HCQ use by reducing supplies to pharmacies.

– the government used the reduced supplies to suggest doctors who prescribed HCQ for Covid patients were depriving patients from using HCQ for traditional purposes.

– government propaganda fabricated and elevated dangers of the drug, and the FDA and CDC limited its use using false claims.

– trials were unreasonably limited to already-sickened patients.

Mayorkas Refuses to Explain Why Child Exploitation Has Exploded Under His Watch; Denies DHS Lost Track of 85,000 Migrant Children By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/18/mayorkas-refuses-to-explain-why-child-exploitation-has-exploded-under-his-watch-denies-dhs-lost-track-of-85000-migrant-children/

During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refused to explain why an exponential surge in child smuggling and exploitation has happened under his watch and denied that the Department had lost track of 85,000 of these children.

Since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2021, 345,807 unaccompanied minors  have been allowed to enter the United States through the southwest land border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show.

As American Greatness has previously reported, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) habitually releases migrant children to unvetted “sponsors” who force them to take on grueling jobs, or be sexually exploited. In some cases, dozens of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) have been sent to the same residence of an unvetted sponsor.

Thousands of these minors “have ended up in punishing jobs across the country—working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories—all in violation of child labor laws,” the New York Times reported in February.

In Florida, the State Grand Jury recently released a report accusing the Biden administration of facilitating “forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children” through its criminally negligent immigration policies.

“Criminal history, lack of citizen status and even total refusal to submit to a background check does not disqualify sponsors from receiving a UAC,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody pointed out in a statement following the release of the Grand Jury’s findings. “One sponsor was given custody despite having been to Florida prison before for battery on a child,” Moody added.

Monthly calls to Health and Human Services (HHS) to report trafficking, neglect or abuse of minors placed with sponsors have exploded since the spring of 2021.