NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

One more insult to add on to the Jan. 6 junk pile By David Zukerman

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/one_more_insult_to_add_on_to_the_jan_6_junk_pile.html

Pelosi’s rogue Jan. 6 panel has added to its previous illegitimate actions, violating the terms of the House resolution establishing the committee, by issuing a subpoena to former president Trump.  If this wayward action by this rabid, partisan committee is upheld by the courts, we shall have an unconstitutional amendment to the Constitution providing for parliamentary government, with the president answerable to Congress.  Erased by congressional fiat, supported by the Judiciary, will be the important concept of separation of powers established by the Founding Fathers.

Clearly, the courts must act with prudential speed to put a halt to Pelosi’s assault on the Constitution — if the Judiciary is to honor its oath to support, uphold, and defend the Constitution of the United States.  And the Republican members of House and Senate must rise in solidarity to declare their opposition to the rogue nature of Pelosi’s puppet panel, comprising its violation of the terms of House Res. 503, the committee’s organizing resolution, as well as the blatant disregard of the principle of separation of powers, a key building block of the Constitution.

Systemic hatred of Donald J. Trump is no excuse for tearing down the Constitution and erecting a Potemkin governmental compact in its place, a compact that varies with the whims and prejudices of the leaders of the Democrat party.

That our Constitution is under assault by Stalinists has been made evident by the recent disclosure that the FBI was prepared to pay Christopher Steele one million dollars for his dossier smearing Donald Trump.  Had the FBI a legitimate purpose in getting hold of Steele’s obvious forgery, the July raid on Mar-a-Lago suggests that the purpose could have been achieved by a subpoena for Steele and an FBI raiding party at his residence.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Deflects to Saudi Arabia By Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/biden_deflects_to_saudi_arabia.html

Deflection. That’s when someone tries to turn aside responsibility and shift it to someone/something else. Today’s example is the rampage by the White House and Democrats against Saudi Arabia, accusing it of cutting oil production because it is in bed with Russia against American interests in Ukraine.

CNN correspondent Manu Raju tweeted on Wednesday [Rep.] “Ro Khanna and [Sen.] Dan Blumenthal are calling for bill in lame-duck halting arm sales for a year. Calls for NOPEC legislation. And Durbin this AM: ‘I don’t see any reason to arm them now if they believe their future is linked to Vladimir Putin in any way.’”

National Security spokesman John Kirby tried deflection as he announced the White House’s displeasure: “The Saudi Foreign Ministry can try to spin or deflect…  (but) The Saudis conveyed to us… their intention to reduce oil production, which they knew would increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions… They could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting… we are reevaluating our relationship with Saudi Arabia… continue to look for signs about where they stand in combatting Russian aggression.”

The reason the White House wanted the cuts to wait until the next OPEC meeting may have something to do with America’s mid-term election. Why the Saudis would care about that is unclear. The fact is that countries make economic and security decisions based on their own interests and their peoples’ interests.

America’s European allies certainly do — just last week, Reuters reported that the EU remains the  biggest market for Russian oil, according to the IAEA. India and China are increasing their purchases from Russia, according to the CEO of Gazprom Neft. And, while demanding that Saudi Arabia produce more, the Biden administration is considering reinstating a ban on exports of crude oil as gasoline prices rise in the U.S. Reducing oil exports to our allies would only make others look elsewhere, including to Russia, as winter approaches and their stocks remain low.

The actual cause of the Saudi decision to cut production in the face of Biden administration begging for an increase is Biden administration policy.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Education Exodus Advances Why the no-accountability, government-run schools are being ditched. by Larry Sand

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-education-exodus-advances/

In August, it was reported that over the past two school years, children whose public schools were shuttered during the Covid panic were much less likely to return when they reopened. According to the American Enterprise Institute, k-12 enrollment in the 2020-2021 school year had declined by 2.7%, or about 1.2 million students nationwide.

Updated enrollment numbers and chronic absenteeism

But a new survey has revealed that between spring 2021 and spring 2022, there was a 9% drop in families saying their children were enrolled in a government-run school – a plunge of about 4 million students. At the same time, the number of children in charters, private schools, and homeschools shot up. While the dropout numbers aren’t actual data, there is no doubt that a massive education exodus is underway.

Another sign of turbulence is the number of children who are still enrolled in district schools but are “chronically absent,” meaning that they miss more than 10% of school days for any reason. Per the U.S. Department of Education, at least 10.1 million students were chronically absent during the first full year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data, collected for the 2020-21 school year, is a substantial increase from the approximately 8 million students chronically absent in the prior years. Excessive absences have serious consequences – kids’ learning suffers, and they are more likely to get suspended in middle school, and are at greater risk of dropping out of high school.

The future does not promise a reversal. In fact, chronic absence continued to surge during the 2021-2022 school year. Although no national data have been released yet, several diverse states – Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and California – claim that high absentee rates doubled in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Money flows in; no accountability required

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Crisis On The Southern Border: Only The Tip of Biden’s Immigration Iceberg Catastrophe on the horizon. by Michael Cutler

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/crisis-on-the-southern-border-only-the-tip-of-bidens-immigration-iceberg/

It is commonsense that after a major flood disaster recovery begins with cleaning up the mess.  Because of the policies of the Biden administration America has been flooded with unprecedented numbers of illegal aliens- yet no attention is being given to the need or the means to clean up the mess created by this human tsunami that undermines national security, public safety and public health.

The crisis on the southern border has grown so huge that it can no longer be ignored by the mainstream media.  Records continue to be set and then broken as ever more aliens from countries around the world head for that dangerous border encouraged by the policies of the Biden Administration as carried out by the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

However, Biden’s destruction of immigration law enforcement is hardly limited to the dangerous Mexican border, however neither the media nor politicians will even mention these other elements of the immigration system that are part and parcel of Biden’s “immigration iceberg.” by the media or by our political leaders from either party perhaps because they are among the Profiteers of Biden Administration’s Open Borders Policy or reaccepting massive campaign contribution (bribes?) from those profiteers.

So, while the media and the politicians, including most Republicans, remain focused on the 2,000 mile disastrous U.S./Mexican border, they blithely ignore 98% of America’s borders as well as the need for meaningful interior enforcement of our immigration laws.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Effective Ways to Support the Iranian Protests by Hamid Bahrami

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18985/support-iran-protests

T]he Biden administration, even during the Iranian regime’s current brutal crackdown on its own citizens, and the US Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, are still seeking to revive the lethal “nuclear deal” — allowing the regime to enrich uranium to acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them — and reassuring the mullahs that the US has no “policy of regime change.”

While the West is unwilling to hold Iran’s regime to account, the IRGC, officially designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State, does its best to reinstate repression, sparking grave concerns about further bloodshed in Iran and abroad. If that is how Iran treats its own citizens, why would anyone expect it to treat others any better?

Sadly, the US and its allies are still using every diplomatic and political resource to revive the lethal nuclear deal, which would permit the Iranian regime to enrich uranium for an arsenal of nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver it in just a few years — all to safeguard the West’s economic interests and energy supply, which the US already has in abundance.

President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team’s failure in Afghanistan, and their preliminary message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that a “minor incursion” would be acceptable, undermined any credible deterrence to Putin to discourage him from invading Ukraine. Now, the policies of the Biden administration seem to be repeating similar disasters in Iran and Taiwan.

To support the Iranian people, the White House should announce that the Iran nuclear deal will not be revived and end the negotiations – which are not even being conducted by the US, but by Russia – which has most gallantly offered to hold Iran’s “excess” enriched uranium, presumably for future use.

Biden also should replace Malley with someone who understands the Iranian regime’s malevolence not only to its own people, but to other countries as well, both in the Middle East and throughout Latin America.

Canada needs to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, as the US did in 2019…

[T]he new government of [British] Prime Minister Liz Truss would do well to support the peaceful protests in Iran and impose punitive measures on the Iranian regime’s military and security forces.

Historically, political confusion has led to inadequate responses to international crises, and with disastrous consequences. Today, the West’s ties to Iran are overshadowed by the widespread anti-regime protests across the country. Now, as it looks as if the dust does not intend to settle, and it seems clear that the conflict inside Iran will only deepen.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No Compromise with the Woke Revolution John Fonte

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://americanmind.org/features/florida-versus-davos/no-compromise-with-the-woke-revolution/

Conservatives must stop consenting to play the domesticated opposition.

The woke revolutionary assault on national heroes is occurring throughout the West. In Britain, even statues honoring Winston Churchill have come under attack. From France to Sweden, the woke Left seeks to denigrate national histories. Everywhere the goal is the same: to undermine national democratic traditions.

In America, the woke revolution advances.

Last year six former Secretaries of Education, including Republican Secretaries appointed by Bush 41 and Bush 43—Lamar Alexander, Rod Paige, and Margaret Spellings—endorsed a massive new Civic Education project. This project, “Educating for American Democracy,” provides guidance for legislation currently before Congress.

Educating for American Democracy seeks to “harmonize” a national consensus on civic education. The leaders recruited a few conservatives to provide cover for a “trans-partisan” project. But the executive committee is sacked 8-2 to the left, dominated by progressive academics from Harvard and Tufts and left-wing activists that promote so-called “Action Civics.” Of the 300 educators who participated, perhaps 10 are non-liberals.

Let us start with a rather basic question: what does this national “consensus” tell us American students should learn about George Washington? Well, the project laments that “students can make it into their teens without knowing that Washington was not only a foundational leader, but also enslaved people.”

Let that sink in. George Washington and other founders are defamed by establishment educators as “enslavers.” This is, of course, a blatant lie. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were not, by definition, “enslavers”—they did not seize individuals who were free and put them in bondage. The three Virginians were slave owners who sought, in Lincoln’s words, the “ultimate extinction” of that institution. Washington freed his slaves and provided for their education and economic well-being in his will.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Flunks Another Inflation Exam

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/14/biden-flunks-another-inflation-exam/

You know things are bad when even the mainstream press is admitting that the latest inflation numbers “soared far above expectations last month” and that this is “wiping out pay gains.” But, according to President Joe Biden, Thursday’s report on inflation “shows some progress in the fight against higher prices.”

What progress? Inflation was up 8.2% in September, compared with the year before. And that’s on top of last September’s 6.2% increase.

Here’s another way to look at it.

In the 21 months since Biden took office, the Consumer Price Index has shot up 13.5%. That compares with 4% in the first 21 months of the Trump administration. (See the chart below.)

I&I Chart

The so-called “core inflation” number – which subtracts more volatile food and energy categories – shot up 6.6% on an annual basis this September, the biggest such jump in four decades.

As the Associated Press put it, the core inflation number was “far above expectations” and “a sign that the Fed’s five rate hikes this year have so far done little to cool inflation pressures.”

In other words, we are in for a world of hurt as prices keep climbing while the Fed’s continued rate hikes slash home prices, shrink retirement accounts, and kill jobs.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Why, Despite Good Intentions, Ken Burns’s “The U.S. and the Holocaust” Fails by Ruth R. Wisse

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/web-view?a=L87CGh&c=QMaqcm&k=942020e623bd2316de76f6b2fd4b4879&m=01GF716273DCESEWG4ZBFHVVZ2&r=QMPDcGb

Focusing on America’s failures to save more Jews in the Holocaust unintentionally strengthens the forces that would threaten Jews today. Here’s how.

Among those excited by the announcement that America’s leading documentary filmmaker had produced a three-part series on the Holocaust were sectors of the Jewish community that have long insisted on the need for all Americans to learn about this subject. Who better suited for this task than Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, known for their well-crafted, carefully researched historical projects? Not only could they be expected to produce a reliable—if not definitive—treatment of the extermination of the Jews of Europe, The U.S. and the Holocaust would also bring the subject home, answering a question that lay at the heart of the matter: why should Americans, specifically, care about this genocide?

Aired on PBS in early September, the series’ episodes were duly admired by critics for their content, their staging, and their message. Of central significance, it was said, Burns, Novick, and Botstein had effectively dramatized America’s shameful failure to help save the European Jews from the fate awaiting them.

In this connection, Exhibit A was the futile attempt made by Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam, who could easily have been accommodated in the United States, to secure a visa. One was introduced to the various internal American forces, some actively pro-Nazi but many simply opposed to foreign intervention, that had delayed an active American response to Hitler’s mission, as well as to the domestic conditions, political and economic, that worked against admitting Jewish refugees to the country. Altogether, this showcasing of Anne’s iconic status as the most famous chronicler and moving exemplar of the millions of Jews hunted, betrayed, and systematically killed made it seem that America itself, by refusing a visa, had been party to her and their fate.

The Public Broadcasting Service’s regular appeal for support to “Viewers Like You” speaks not just to those who contribute financially but to a much larger audience that is assumed to share its views and values. Burns, Novick, and Botstein, who are not historians or political thinkers but filmmakers who satisfy that audience, have mirrored their eagerness to do good and to atone for past iniquities.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Alejandro Mayorkas has no shame  Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 14th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/alejandro-mayorkas-shame-biden-whips-border/

Who is the worst cabinet secretary in Joe Biden’s administration?

I know that the competition is stiff. Ponder, if your stomach can take it, secretary of state Antony Blinken, the stuffed shirt to end all stuffed shirts. Or secretary of defense Lloyd “Stand Down” Austin, the man who, with General Mark “White Rage” Milley, has transformed the US military into a racially obsessed reform school for budding transsexuals. Halloween is coming — and the Biden administration could field the entire team.

But for this quarter’s top prize must surely go to Alejandro Mayorkas, the man in charge of the Orwellian-named Department of Homeland Security.

A superb example of closing the barn doors after the horses had bolted, this superfluous and meddlesome agency was created after Osama bin Laden’s boys took out the World Trade Towers and incinerated part of the Pentagon. Too late! But that’s what bloated bureaucracies do. Something bad happens because you were’t paying attention, so spend a gazillion dollars to create more layers of bureaucracy that don’t do anything constructive but do inconvenience people every time they travel by plane and so remind them that the government is Doing Something to Stop Terrorism. Do you think that fielding a battalion of TSA agents to palpate Aunt Susan and irradiate every traveler in case he is carrying a bottle of water or wearing a belt with a metal buckle cuts down on hijackings or other acts of terror? Of course not. But it does suck up a lot of money, which after all is one of the main ends of government, and it also creates another layer of state coercion, which often seems to be the other main end.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The War for Internet Freedom Has Just Begun By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on October 13th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/the_war_for_internet_freedom_has_just_begun.html

I have heard it said many times over the years that President Bill Clinton and his inner circle were apprehensive about the rise of the internet right from its infancy.  While university clubs and lonely tech pioneers were generating public excitement by connecting people all over the planet, Clinton and his crew feared the internet for what it signified: an end to the government’s monopoly over information.

If just any old citizen could broadcast news to the world over cyberspace, none of the government’s traditional methods for regulating knowledge would continue to work.  Having a White House press corps, after all, has always had little to do with keeping government power in check and an awful lot to do with keeping potentially damaging information in house, supervised, and under control.  What better way to monitor and shape the news of tomorrow than to stuff all the White House correspondents into one small space for direct and easy manipulation?  Should CBS or NBC or The New York Times stumble upon a story too embarrassing for those in power, there is always some bargain to be made or some threat to be leveled that can keep that information bottled up.

The “free press,” in other words, has always been filled with information “gatekeepers” no less corruptible than any other humans and just as capable of intentionally keeping the public in the dark as they are of letting in some occasional light.  For what it’s worth, Clinton’s worries were warranted, and a complete unknown named Matt Drudge nearly took down his presidency with a story about a stained blue dress that several prestige news outlets had refused to cover.  The somewhat secret war over information would never be the same.

While we watch government-induced censorship increasingly squeeze the free flow of information today, it is easy to throw up our hands in despair and presume that the light of freedom will inexorably dim.  I encourage you instead to see government-engineered threats to free speech as further evidence that both totalitarianism and freedom are on the march.  Powerful institutions do not work this hard to silence voices unless they are deeply afraid.  The push for control is inextricably linked to the perception of fear.  The harder that authorities push to control what we say, the more clearly they reveal their own fear.  This is a sign of weakness.