HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Our Disunity Is a National Security Threat The military now reflects the selfishness and fragmentation of our culture. Welcome to the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial decline. By Christopher Roach

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/02/our-disunity-is-a-national-security-threat/

In the lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action practices, a group of senior retired military officers filed an amicus brief, which argued that maintaining affirmative action was a “national security imperative.” Those signing off include four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, six former superintendents of the service academies, and 17 retired four-star generals, including Wesley Clark and William McRaven. 

Recruiting an adequate number of troops and increasing their quality also seems pretty important. But we know that recent efforts at recruiting have been a disaster, amplified by the mass expulsion of troops who refused the COVID vaccine. 

While things carried on for a while out of habit, eventually the patriotic, mostly white, rural Americans who formed the backbone of the military started doing an about face. Polls show that fewer veterans now want their kids to follow in their footsteps. Conservative Republicans, once the most stalwart supporters of the military, have lately become more critical and less trusting. 

Woke Military Has Difficulty Recruiting

The reason for these trends is obvious: the military leadership has lost its way and its moral compass. 

As the ruling class ethos has shifted leftward, military leaders have become imitators and flatterers of the powerful. That is, top military leaders have decided to move away from the military’s traditional nonpartisanship and color-blindness and instead identify with the managerial class leftism and identity politics of Washington, D.C. This is why they have gay pride events and talk about “white rage.” They confused this ideology with the values of the country as a whole.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Democrat War on Fossil Fuels By William Manning

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/the_democrat_war_on_fossil_fuels.html

On October 19, in the heat of an election campaign, President Biden told the American people, “We need to increase oil production.”  He went on to say, “My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production.”  It was a disingenuous statement from a man whose sense of reality, fact, and fiction have become an undecipherable narrative.  Biden failed to mention the executive order he issued which stipulates, “the Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.”  This pause is ongoing.  Biden uses the same executive order as an instruction to the secretaries of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security, “to organize and deploy the full capacity of its agencies to combat the climate crisis.”

Millions of Americans are employed by businesses supporting the fossil-fuel industry.  Others choose to invest in fossil-fuel businesses.  All Americans rely on fossil fuels to power their businesses, transportation systems, and utilities.  Democrats will destroy these people’s jobs, capital, and imperil the U.S. economy.  The Biden administration decreed that, “we must combat the climate crisis with bold, progressive action that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.”  By executive order Biden has weaponized the federal bureaucracy to destroy the fossil-fuel industry. 

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) makes the business of refining oil difficult.  The law provides broad powers to the EPA.  It “directs the EPA Administrator to revise regulations to ensure that domestic transportation fuel sold or introduced into commerce, on an annual average basis, contains a specified volume of renewable fuel.”  The George W. Bush Administration and a bipartisan majority in Congress enacted the EISA providing authority to the EPA to dictate terms for the blending of renewable fuels in refineries.

In 2021, 13.9 billion gallons of ethanol were blended into gasoline.  Unfortunately for refiners, they were mandated by the EPA to blend 20.17 billion gallons.  Since there was a shortfall in EPA mandated ethanol consumption in 2021, refiners had to purchase Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) credits to make up the difference.  Each gallon of ethanol produced as a biofuel for blending  comes with a D6 RIN.  Each refiner/blender has a quota imposed by the EPA based on its annual mandate and the production capacity of the refinery.  If the refinery blends more than its quota, the surplus RINS may be sold as credits on the market.  If the refinery blends less than its quota, it must purchase RINS to make up the difference.  If no RIN credits are available on the market, they may be bought from ethanol producers.  In 2021 refiners had to purchase RIN credits for 6.27 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels they did not consume.  RIN credit costs vary as they are part of a RIN market that fluctuates.  In 2021 D6 RIN costs ranged between $.20/gallon and $1.20/gallon. A conservative estimate of RIN credit costs to refiners in 2021 is $6 billion.  This cost is passed on to consumers in the price of gasoline.  If the cost can’t be passed to the consumer, it comes out of the refiner’s margin.  

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Now the Disgraced COVID ‘Experts’ Want ‘Amnesty’? By Tanya Berlaga

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/now_the_disgraced_covid_experts_want_amnesty.html

In her recent article in The Atlantic, a Brown University professor, Emily Oster, is calling for “pandemic amnesty.”  She is telling me to “forgive and forget” everyone who was yelling obscenities at me for not wearing a mask in a public park or calling me a mass murderer for posting a picture with a friend visiting.  I must forget all this, the author insists, because all those people had nothing but my well-being in mind!

The author admits that many (if not most!) measures imposed on us by “the experts” were harmful and destructive.  But “dwelling on those mistakes” is “counter-productive.”  After all, people who made these mistakes had only good intentions.

“As we now know,” the author concedes, cloth masks are practically useless.  People who got vaccinated spread COVID as easily as those who did not.  Keeping children locked up at homes had disastrous consequences on their development.  And some of the COVID “mitigation” measures — like beach closures in California — were outright dumb.  But let’s not “dwell” on them — because those were “complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty.”

“We didn’t know!”  the author laments.

After three years of living through the pandemic, the author all but admits that “the experts” were just as clueless about how to approach it as your next-door neighbor.  “The experts” did not know even the most obvious things.

They didn’t know that wearing a dirty piece of cloth over your face would not amount to anything other than a sinus infection.  Seemed like even a third-grader could’ve figured that one out — and many did.

They didn’t know that walking on the beach was the safest activity one could do during a pandemic.  Sunshine and fresh air are the best disinfectants known to men, and a beach in early spring is the best place for “social distancing.”  You don’t need a crystal ball to understand that surfing in the ocean is not “a super-spreader event.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Biden’s Flim-Flam Windfall Profits Tax

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/article/bidens-flim-flam-windfall-profits-tax

“Dumb and Dumber” is a 1994 comedy; today it could describe a tragedy … Joe Biden’s energy policy. His latest gambit is to call for a windfall profits tax on oil companies, accusing them of “war profiteering.” He says the large earnings being raked in by oil giants like Exxon and Chevron “are not because of doing something new or innovative.” Instead, Biden said, “Their profits are a windfall of war…”

To be clear, Mr. Biden has no idea whether oil producers are doing anything innovative. While he has met with the leaders of numerous industries and Big Labor groups, he has childishly refused to meet with oil industry executives. I’m pretty sure he has never visited a drilling site or offshore production platform, where advanced American technology — the best in the world — is on display. 

If he talked with industry executives, they might point out that energy is cyclical; the price of oil rises with demand, unless supply goes up more. They might remind him that Exxon lost $22 billion in 2020 because prices fell during the pandemic; naturally Exxon didn’t receive a government handout to compensate them for that gigantic loss. Why should the firm be penalized when prices go back up?

The president is flailing, desperate to haul out something — anything — to show voters he’s acting to lower gasoline prices. But this is utter flim-flam. Only Congress can impose a windfall profits tax on energy companies, a proposal that would land well with liberal Democrats but is likely to find zero support among Republicans. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Could Our Politics Be Even More Childish?

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/03/could-our-politics-be-even-more-childish/

Turn on the television, listen to the radio, or take a stroll through the internet. Democrats and their media confederates are busy dishing out the nonsense in helpings large enough to choke a giant. Either they are intentionally trying to deceive, or they are extraordinarily puerile. Or both.

There are no other possibilities.

To listen to the Democrats as they go begging for votes, to consume the tripe that their helpers in the press are putting out, one would think the Republicans are fascist white supremacists who will kill democracy while setting up themselves in a permanent position of unchallengeable power.

Says Keisha Lance Bottoms, a presidential senior adviser and former Atlanta mayor: “This MAGA Republican agenda is an effort to disrupt our democracy. So, whether it be through November and beyond November, I think it will always be important to call out any effort there is to destroy – essentially, destroy the United States of America.”

The president himself said over the summer that “those of you who love this country, Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we must be stronger, more determined and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America.”

Last week, Joe Biden’s former boss urged voters “to elect good people up and down the ballot,” because “across the country, some of the folks who tried to undermine our democracy are running for offices that will oversee the next election. And if they win, there’s no telling what might happen.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Decisive Win for Netanyahu in Israel The right surges in the Jewish state, leaving behind political paralysis and a rump left.

Posted By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-decisive-win-for-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-election-prime-minister-11667427456?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

“The vote means Mr. Netanyahu will have a mandate he lacked in the final years of his previous turn as Prime Minister. That should make Israel more confident in meeting regional threats, as it remains America’s most valuable ally in the region.”

Benjamin Netanyahu has been around long enough to have done something to rankle almost every Israeli. But as his victory in Tuesday’s election shows, Israelis still trust him for the job of Prime Minister he has held twice before. In a rough neighborhood, with enemies that seek Israel’s destruction, that’s no small vote of confidence.

With nearly 90% of ballots counted, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party is set to win 32 seats, up from 30 in 2021, with a path to a coalition government as large as 65. Barring a late swing, this would be a larger majority for the right in the Knesset than anyone saw coming, ending the political paralysis that has plagued the country since 2019.

This reflects important realities in Israeli politics. Mr. Netanyahu is still considered the Israeli leader best able to deal with great powers. With Russian troops in Syria, the poisoned chalice of Chinese economic engagement and an America that is hot and cold, Israel needs a strategic vision. Mr. Netanyahu has one, as he laid out recently in these pages, whereby economic and military strength lead to diplomatic success, not the other way around. The Abraham Accords with the Gulf Arabs are a vindication of that vision.

Mr. Netanyahu also benefits from keeping his eye on the threat from Iran amid the distractions, and from his record of free-market reform. As finance minister from 2003-05, Mr. Netanyahu led Israel’s transformation from a socialist economy to the “start-up nation” it is today.

Meanwhile, the Israeli left has collapsed. Its two parties, including the Labor Party that dominated for decades, received less than 7% of the vote—combined. Far-left Meretz is now likely to win no seats. The left lost credibility after the Palestinians refused to accept a state when it was offered and pocketed Gaza only to use the territory for attacks on Israeli civilians.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Election Thoughts (or Hopes?) Sydney Williams

Posted By on November 2nd, 2022

Otto von Bismarck reputedly said: “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” Never having gone hunting or been in combat, I assume that the “Iron Chancellor” was correct about those events. However, having watched elections for seventy years, I know he is right about politicians who give speeches that exaggerate past accomplishments, denigrate opponents, and fabricate plans for the future. But, as the author-poet Benét is quoted in the rubric above, doing so is “an American custom, like eating corn on the cob.” The difference today, though, is that elections don’t end on election day: witness Hillary Clinton in 2016, Stacy Abrams in 2018, and Donald Trump in 2020. 

While there are issues that concern us all, we have politicians today, as one pundit put it, who have even bigger issues – ones of excessive egos and acute sensitivity to criticism. Nevertheless, issues are plentiful: abortion and a woman’s right to choose; inflation, which is hitting the pocket books of everyone; the economy – while third quarter preliminary GDP (+2.6%) was a welcome relief after two quarters of negative growth, rapid inflation and escalating interest rates portend stagflation; a surfeit of jobs and a decline in labor participation rates suggest a dearth of willing workers; education, where the drop in test scores accelerated during Covid, but the decline began earlier; immigration, where a needed increase in legal immigration is being held hostage to a flood of illegal immigrants; crime, which has increased across the country, but disproportionately in inner cities; discrimination against Asians and Jews, reminiscent of the anti-Semitism of the 1920s, scare mongering over climate change by radicals with little understanding of history and climatology; and the teaching of a false narrative regarding the founding of the United States, along with the cancellation of ideas that do not conform to progressive ideology.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Martha Gellhorn Loved Hemingway and Israel (MAY 1921)by Rachel Shteir

Posted By on November 2nd, 2022

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/considering-martha-gellhorn

In 1959, Martha Gellhorn wrote that her first marriage, to Ernest Hemingway, which lasted from 1940 until 1945, was “a distant dream, not very true, and curiously embarrassing.” More than 60 years later, you would think that she deserves more than to be cast as Hemingway’s third wife. But that is exactly what the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary Hemingway does.

Born in St. Louis in 1908, Martha bore witness to most of the wars of the 20th century, with her insights captured in 21 books. She believed that writing was in the service of fighting injustice, and her work demonstrated bracing honesty, unfathomable courage, and a strict code of right and wrong. Yet her old-fashioned virtues make her difficult to approach. Add this to her fierce, late-in-life defense of Israel and the fact that she killed herself in 1998 rather than lose her eyesight, and she becomes, as my students would say, less relatable. Never mind that she continued to travel and file stories into her 80s, defying the common wisdom that war correspondent is a job reserved for young people. Or that her lean, arresting style can make you weep. Too often written off as adjunct to Hemingway, she once said that she wanted her journalism to “eliminate the sound of me screaming.”

Meanwhile, Burns and Novick’s Hemingway is the queer victim of toxic masculinity (he liked to dress as a woman in bed with his fourth wife). B & N are too smart to paint Gellhorn as the “bitch” that some of Papa’s friends viewed her as, but they do introduce her as a writer who “had a crush” on him; Meryl Streep reads her letters in mid-Atlantic tones. Their Gellhorn, while sympathetic, shows too little of the brave, charming, bullying, vain, daring, mythmaking female writer and too much of a #MeToo heroine chafing at her husband’s tyranny.

Unlike Hemingway, Gellhorn loved her mother, Edna, a beautiful suffragist who married George Gellhorn, a gynecologist. Both were half Jewish. Martha, their third child, grew up assimilated. In her largely excellent biography, Carolyn Moorhead only reports one incident of antisemitism in Gellhorn’s childhood, when her friend, Johnny Stix, was not invited to a dance because she was Jewish and Gellhorn also refused to go in solidarity.

If the Gellhorns—especially the impressive George—worshipped anything in the Jewish tradition, it was education. After Gellhorn came home from school with female genitalia missing from the drawings in her biology textbook, her parents started their own progressive school. Gellhorn attended, and there she began to cultivate friendships with men and women she admired. It was this need that may have resulted in her marriage to Hemingway, which the documentary series does not explore. She needed heroes to model herself after, and she understood early on that there would be a cost. As she later wrote, she needed “my desperate faith in the human spirit … revived and rewarded.” She did not find that at Bryn Mawr, where she went in 1926 and where she read Knut Hamsun and edited the college newspaper.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UN Sides with China Despite Its Own Report Condemning Xinjiang Abuses by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on November 2nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18969/china-uyghurs-un

The recent United Nations Human Rights Council vote — rejecting the West’s proposal to debate China’s possible “crimes against humanity” in its treatment of its Muslim minority in Xinjiang — covered up Beijing’s gruesome treatment of its Uyghur Population. This vote, saving face for the Chinese Communist Party at its recently concluded 20th National Congress, shields the Chinese regime’s true nature and indicates its increasing influence in international affairs.

Most significant for the United States were the abstentions cast by several of the largest Latin American members of the UNHRC, which were part of a pattern reflecting the waning of US diplomatic clout in the Western Hemisphere. The tally also underscores China’s rising influence in the region, which campaigned hard opposing the resolution. Only Honduras and Paraguay voted with the West.

In response to increased international criticism, Chen Quanguo, the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Xinjiang, claimed that the re-education centers had closed because the students had graduated. Although satellite imagery indicates that Chen was technically correct in saying that some “re-education centers” have been closed, subsequent reporting by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute determined that the overall number of detention facilities and prisons has markedly increased and that the security gulag system in Xinjiang has not been phased out.

The [Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights] report painted a darker picture of what actually goes on inside Xinjiang’s VETCs. Interviews of dozens of former VETC inmates reveal that the camps are lined with external and internal fencing, and armed guards stationed on watchtowers with orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to escape. Former prisoners relate that there are no home visits, and prisoners receive no knowledge of the length of their enforced detention.

The CCP abolished the right to family privacy, by forcibly quartering ethnic Han Communist agents inside the homes of Xinjiang’s Muslim citizens. The regime calls this invasive policy “Becoming Family.” These “visitors,” often quartered in Muslim homes for a month at a time, report on family religious practices or signs of political dissidence.

China’s Communist regime still insists that its overall policy in Xinjiang is designed to improve security, lift indigenous peoples out of poverty and improve their quality of life by encouraging lifestyle changes such as family planning practices, learning new skills, and moving into urban environments.

President Xi justifies CCP policies in Xinjiang by the necessity to combat the “Three Evils” of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. Subduing Xinjiang also facilitates Communist China’s broad economic plans to increase its influence in Central Asia while using the region as a thoroughfare to implement Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative projects in Africa, the Near East and Europe.

The recent United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) vote — rejecting the West’s proposal to debate China’s possible “crimes against humanity” in its treatment of its Muslim minority in Xinjiang — covered up Beijing’s gruesome treatment of its Uyghur Population. This vote, saving face for the Chinese Communist Party at its recently concluded 20th National Congress, shields the Chinese regime’s true nature and indicates its increasing influence in international affairs.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

MARTHA GELLHORN ON THE ARABS OF PALESTINE OCTOBER 1961

Posted By on November 2nd, 2022

MARTHA GELLHORN, novelist, journalist, and former war correspondent, has recently returned from a journey to the Middle East, where she went to see the “Palestinian Refugee Problem” in terms of real life, real people. Here she reports how the Arab refugees and the Arab Israelis live, and what they say about themselves, their past and their future.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1961/10/the-arabs-of-palestine/304203/

The Palestinian refugees are unfortunate victims of a brief moment in history. It is forgotten that Jews are also victims in the same manner, of the same moment. The Arab-Israel war and its continuous aftermath produced a two-way flight of peoples. Nearly half a million Jews, leaving behind everything they owned, escaped from the Arab countries where they lived to start life again as refugees in Israel. Within one generation, if civilization lasts, Palestinian refugees will merge into the Arab nations, because the young will insist on real lives instead of endless waiting. If we can keep the peace, however troubled, the children of Palestinian refugees will make themselves at home among their own kind, in their ancestral lands. For the Jews there is no other ancestral land than Israel.