HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Why Is a Giant Chinese Spy Balloon Hovering Over Montana? By Paula Bolyard

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/paula-bolyard/2023/02/02/breaking-pentagon-admits-theres-a-chinese-spy-balloon-hovering-over-the-united-states-n1667467

The Pentagon admitted on Thursday that the U.S. military has been monitoring what’s being described as a Chinese “surveillance balloon” hovering in the skies over the United States for days.

“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told NBC News. “We continue to track and monitor it closely.” Officials have confirmed that the balloon belongs to China.

“Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information,” Ryder said.

“The official said there was a window while the balloon was over Montana Wednesday when they could have taken it down. NORAD sent aircraft — including F-22 Raptors from Nellis Air Force Base and airborne early warning aircraft known as AWACs — but the official would not say whether one of the options was to shoot the balloon out of the sky with a U.S. aircraft,” NBC reported. “The U.S. military flights prompted a ground stop at the airport in Billings, with air traffic controllers citing a ‘special military mission.’”

According to the Montana Free Press, “The Air Force at Malmstrom [Air Force Base] maintains 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos across its 13,800-square-mile complex in central Montana.”

Biden refused to answer questions shouted at him by reporters Thursday afternoon.

Officials say the balloon flew over the Aleutian Islands and through Canada before settling over the Billings, Mont., area. The balloon is still hovering somewhere over the United States, according to a senior defense official who declined to say where it is now.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Biden Admin Allows Chine to Fly Spy Balloon Over Montana Two Air Force F-22 fighters scrambled before the administration decided not to shoot it down. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-admin-allows-chine-to-fly-spy-balloon-over-montana/

China knows what it’s doing. It pushes harder and harder because it knows that western nations are weak and will back down.

And we never disappoint.

The U.S. tracked what officials described as a Chinese reconnaissance balloon over the continental states this week, in what would be an aggressive act of intelligence gathering over sensitive American national security sites.

The balloon sighting came days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to make a planned trip to Beijing, according to U.S. officials, throwing into question efforts to repair relations between the two powers who are at odds over a host of global and regional issues.

There’s nothing accidental about the timing.

Two Air Force F-22 fighters scrambled from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to Montana, where the balloon was observed, before the administration decided not to shoot it down.

Shooting it down would be aggressive. It would mean committing and taking a stand. So that’s a no-go.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

An Inconvenient Truth for Environmentalists Destroying the ocean to save the planet? by Gabriella Hoffman

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-inconvenient-truth-for-environmentalists/

Democracy, for once, isn’t dying in darkness.

The Washington Post, an outlet all-in for net-zero energy, conceded recent whale deaths off the Atlantic Coast spell doom for the Biden administration’s offshore wind prospects.

“The humpback was one of nine large whales to get stranded over six weeks on or near beaches in the Northeast, not far from where developers of hundreds of offshore wind turbines are engaged in a flurry of preconstruction activity,” the publication noted.

The article added, “It’s the latest in a string of threats to a fledgling offshore wind industry that climate advocates say is central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Surging costs from inflation and labor shortages have developers saying their projects may not be profitable. A raft of lawsuits and pending federal restrictions to protect sensitive wildlife could further add to costs.”

The Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, two influential radical preservationist organizations, haven’t questioned its potential harmful effects on whales. Instead, they are quick to assign blame to vessel strikes and fishermen. But one unlikely skeptic is Center for Biological Diversity—a group that actively targets and works to displace conservationists like lobstermen, hunters, and anglers.

“I’m skeptical that either side is correct,” Brett Hartl, the government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Fox News. “I saw environmental groups saying wind definitely isn’t the cause of this and then others are saying wind is definitely the cause of this. These things take a lot of time – they’re going to do autopsies and necropsies to figure it out.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Molotov Cocktail Hurled at New Jersey Synagogue Welcome to the alarming surge of Jew-hatred in the United States. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/molotov-cocktail-hurled-at-new-jersey-synagogue/

In the early morning of January 29th, a man wearing a ski mask ignited a Molotov cocktail and hurled it at the front door of Temple Ner Tamid, a synagogue located in the town of Bloomfield New Jersey. The attacker was dressed in black with a shirt that appeared to have a skull and crossbones design on it as recorded on the synagogue’s surveillance video, according to a report in The Jewish Voice. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and the Molotov cocktail failed to penetrate the shatter-proof barriers the synagogue had installed over the glass of its doors and windows. 

Nicholas Malindretos, a 26-year-old man from a nearby town, was subsequently arrested and federally charged for allegedly committing the attempted arson. Little is known about the suspect except that he is reported to have made a very small contribution to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential primary campaign.
 
This incident is yet another in a long line of anti-Semitic attacks against Jews and Jewish places of worship, which have been rising alarmingly in the United States as well as in other parts of the world. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “Antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in the United States in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to ADL.” The ADL added that this was “the highest number of incidents on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979 – an average of more than seven incidents per day and a 34 percent increase year over year.” 
 
Rabbi Marc Katz, the current rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid, responded to the attack on his synagogue by noting that people “are feeling rightfully worried about the state of anti-Semitism because of how prevalent it has been lately.” 
 
However, regardless of being fully aware of the prevalence of anti-Semitism today, it is no less shocking when an anti-Semitic hate crime hits so close to home, as Rabbi Katz observed. “I don’t think anybody ever expects their congregation is going to be attacked,” Rabbi Katz said. 

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Choose life for you and your children Diane Bederman

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://dianebederman.com/and-god-saidchoose-life-for-you-and-your-children/

Something has gone very wrong. We have stopped choosing life; for ourselves and our children – including the unborn. We are intentionally killing the weak. We are sacrificing our children like Moloch. Why? How did we get here? When will it stop?

Who are the people who promote this culture?

La Maison Simons, commonly known as Simons, is a fashion retailer in Canada, headquartered in Quebec City, Quebec. It is a family business currently operated by Richard and Peter Simons. The business was established in 1840 by the son of a Scottish immigrant to Quebec as a dry goods store. In the 1960s, the focus of the business changed to a department store, incorporating youth-oriented brands.

It is so youth oriented that the powers that be at that company sat around the table one day and asked “What can we do to get our product noticed?” Hey, why not promote medically assisted aid in death to the sick and elderly! What a great idea! So they did. Every time you purchase something from Simons you can look at it and be proud they promote the killing of people.

And those publicists/marketers at Balenciaga. They sat around their table and asked themselves, how can we promote our product? Hey, let’s reach out to pedophiles and sado-masochists with an ad that shows children the beauty of bondage. What a great idea!

And BMO uses Drag Queens for promoting their wares. Why? Oh it’s about inclusivity.

And then we have VISA. It’s so important that a Drag Queen tells us to use our debit card. Why? Why are Drag Queens and their culture being normalized in commercials that children see?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Stench of Fascism Is suffocating our democracy. by David Horowitz

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-stench-of-fascism/

The stench of fascism and betrayal is suffocating our democracy, but nobody wants to talk about it. We sanitize our language so that classified documents strewn over unsecured garages and centers of Chinese influence are talked about as though it’s a matter of carelessness and not design. The indisputable brute fact is this: our commander-in-chief and his family have made themselves wealthy by taking bribes from foreign powers, chief among them our mortal enemy Communist China. Nobody seems to be asking, but how exactly were the inexplicable decisions to turn Afghanistan over to China and the Taliban made, and what American interest was served by this?

In classic fascist fashion, the Biden administration has suborned the intelligence community and the Department of Justice to censor and harass its political opponents. These include school parents and Capitol trespassers whom it libels and imprisons as “domestic terrorists” and (unarmed) “insurrectionists.” In typical fascist moves, it has suborned corporate America into spying on its political opponents with the goal of cancelling them and silencing their opinions. Just this week AT&T shut down the fastest growing and fourth largest cable news network, Newsmax TV, depriving 13 million viewers of access to its reporting. This attack on the First Amendment came on the heels of Twitter’s exposure of the way the FBI had put its platform on the federal payroll and dictated its censorship of tweets that could have changed the results of the last presidential election. The same fascistic arrangement was made with other tech social media giants like Facebook.

The Democrats have targeted their chief political opponent Donald Trump, who received 74 million votes in the last election, with the longest, most determined, and most vicious campaign of character assassination in modern history, and possibly ever. They have warned other potential presidential contenders like Governor Ron DeSantis that they will get the same treatment. They have smeared Republicans as racists, white supremacists and white nationalists, and has done this in the service of rigged elections in its drive to establish a one-party state.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdoğan’s Turkey: NATO’s Trojan Horse Moment by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19367/erdogan-turkey-nato-trojan-horse

In its Freedom in the World 2022 report, Freedom House, a U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., put Turkey in its “not free” category of countries, along with Afghanistan, Angola, Belarus, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and several other third world rogue regimes. Could one, by the criteria of democracy, imagine any of those countries as a NATO member state? But Turkey is.

Erdoğan needs NATO… He is tying NATO’s planned Nordic expansion, to include Sweden and Finland, to his election campaign.

“If you can come up with a security problem, then people rally behind the strong leader.” — Özer Sencar, chairman of the Turkish polling company, Metropoll.

Any unwisely public Turkish-Western confrontation in the few months before Turkey’s elections will add to votes for Erdoğan. Most Turks still believe what they were taught at primary school: A Turk’s only friend is another Turk. They are still living in a xenophobic unreal world where every other nation is an enemy of their land and is plotting against Turkey. That childish feeling, in a matter of collective psychology, coerces them to unite behind the leader. Trouble with the West, and Erdoğan wins again.

NATO is essentially a security alliance. Its preamble, however, states that the organization is founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. The grossly autocratic one-man show in Turkey, a NATO member, features none of that. According to the 2021 Democracy Index prepared by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Turkey ranks 103rd among 167 countries. The index evaluation was based on five criteria: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Everything that needs electricity is made with oil By Ronald Stein

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/01/everything-that-needs-electricity-is-made-with-oil/

The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years.

Renewables may be able to generate intermittent electricity form breezes and sunshine, but they cannot replace what is manufactured from fossil fuels, that are demanded by lifestyles and economies around the world.

Efforts to cease the use of crude oil will be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change, and lead the world to an era of guaranteed extreme shortages like we had in the decarbonized world in the 1800’s without fossil fuel products. This pursuit of renewables without fossil fuels can only lead us back to shorter life spans, diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths resulting from the elimination of the products from fossil fuels that are now benefiting society.

If the zero-emission cult succeeds in ridding the world of fossil fuels, wind turbines and solar panels may be able to generate intermittent electricity, but they cannot manufacture anything. Electricity from breezes and sunshine may be renewable, but it’s not reliable. Again, short memories about the zero-emission society that we already had in the 1800’s.

Everything that needs electricity is made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. Let’s take a look at a few infrastructures, and products, that did not exist before the 1800’s, that now need electricity to operate:

Transportation

Hospitals

Medical equipment

Appliances

Electronics

Telecommunications

Communications systems

Space programs

Heating and ventilating

Military

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Time For The Rest Of The Red States To Follow The DeSantis/Rufo Lead Francis Menton

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-2-1-time-for-the-rest-of-the-red-states-to-follow-the-desantisrufo-lead

It was only six days ago, on January 26, when I wrote a post containing a list of proposals for Christopher Rufo and the other new trustees of New College of Florida to take back control of the institution from the insane left. In an uncanny development, as if they having been reading the Manhattan Contrarian blog, Rufo and his fellow trustees, along with Governor Ron DeSantis, have already implemented the first proposal, and are well along on implementing the second.

How about all you other red states? Why can’t you do the same things?

My first proposal was: “Replace the President.” It took them all of five days. From ABC7 Sarasota, yesterday (January 31) evening: “New College President Okker terminated by Board of Trustees.” The newly designated President, according to ABC7, is a guy named Richard Corcoran, a Republican who served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2018. Good start!

My second proposal was: “Fire the entire ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ staff.” The new trustees aren’t wasting a lot of time on that one either. Again from ABC7 Sarasota: “The board offered to hold off on abolishing the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, instead opting to terminate four positions within the office.” OK they didn’t fire them all at once, and they are “holding off” on abolishing the office altogether. But they should not wait long to finish the job.

Actually, it may not matter so much what these trustees do on this issue, because Governor DeSantis is separately taking on the job himself. From The Independent Florida, January 31:

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he will completely defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Florida universities during a press conference Tuesday morning. DeSantis addressed what he called “DEI bureaucracies,” or departments within universities that promote diversity, equality and inclusion, which he said impose a liberal agenda on university students and faculty. “These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources and end up contributing to higher costs,” he said.

DeSantis’s defunding initiative requires approval by the legislature, which will begin its session in March. But with large Republican majorities in both houses (28-12 in the Senate and 84-35 in the House), I would expect the proposal to pass easily.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

House GOP investigating John Kerry’s secret China negotiations Comer’s letter to Kerry is but one of many such document requests House Republicans have sent in recent weeks.By Ben Whedon

Posted By on February 3rd, 2023

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/house-gop-investigating-john-kerrys-secret-china-negotiations

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are investigating private discussions that White House climate czar John Kerry held with Chinese Communist Party officials.

In a Thursday letter, committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., informed Kerry of the investigation and renewed requests for documents and materials connected to his activities as the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), according to Fox News. Comer made similar requests while Republicans were the minority in the lower chamber, but Kerry ignored them.

While in his current post, Kerry has held a number of private discussions with Beijing officials about the administration’s ambitious climate agenda. The details of those conversations and the origins of the administration’s seemingly lenient stances on Beijing-related environmental issues are of interest to Comer.

“The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities,” the Kentucky lawmaker wrote. “As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars.”