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The West needs leadership: Biden has failed the test by Liz Peek

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3664064-the-west-needs-leadership-biden-has-failed-the-test/

Global economies are in free fall even as inflation runs unchecked. The Western world looks to the president of the United States for leadership; they look in vain.

President Biden has not undertaken the two things that might help the economy here at home and others around the world regain their footing: stop the gusher of cash coming from the federal government and help U.S. oil and gas industries ramp up production to bring down energy prices.

By determining to cut our deficits and drive energy production higher, Biden could immediately signal that he is serious about helping the Federal Reserve fight inflation and willing to buck climate-obsessed progressives in his party in the face of a global emergency.

Currently, he is signaling the exact opposite. While Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has (finally) undertaken stiff measures to rein in money supply growth, the White House nullifies his efforts by continuing to pump money into the economy as fast as possible.

The latest spending spree from Biden is his plan to cancel student debt, a regressive program estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to cost $400 billion. Given that the CBO neglected to cost out parts of the program that could add to the tally, the Committee for a Responsible Government Budget puts the expense at closer to $600 billion.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Has Opened Door to Russian Nuke Strikes by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18942/biden-russia-nuclear-strikes

Russia’s nuclear doctrine is called “escalate to deescalate” or, more appropriately, “escalate to win,” which means threatening or using nukes early in a conventional conflict.

Even if Putin is now bluffing — most analysts think he is — he is getting what he wants with threats. Biden, for instance, has been cautious and even timid in providing military assistance to a beleaguered Ukraine. Putin has obviously noticed, which is the reason he has been making more such threats.

Why, then, doesn’t the United States have what it needs at this crucial moment: nuclear-tipped cruise missiles like Putin’s? The arms-control community, arguing that such low-yield weapons would make nuclear war more likely, persuaded American presidents not to build them. President Trump authorized their development, but Biden cancelled the program.

Unfortunately, arms-control advocates got it backwards. As evident from today’s developments, America lacking low-yield nuclear warheads on cruise missiles is making nuclear war more likely, not less.

“The United States will need to reduce its nuclear arsenal to encourage Russia to do the same,” wrote Tom Collina and Angela Kellett on the 21st of this month on the Defense One site.

Entice Russia into disarmament? Been there. Tried that. Failed miserably.

Is it possible to work with Putin at this time?

Even if we can put aside the morality of talking to a genocidal mass murderer — we cannot — it is reckless to believe Putin might actually honor arms-control agreements when he has continually violated them with impunity.

Moreover, it is bad enough to argue for disarmament in peacetime, but it is the height of folly to do so during war — and when China and North Korea are making first-strike nuclear threats of their own.

America’s arms-control advocates have always been naïve. Now, they are delusional.

“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on the 25th of this month, referring to threats to use nuclear weapons. “The United States will respond decisively.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

REPUBLICAN HUNG CAO FOR CONGRESS VIRGINIA DISTRICT 10

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.hungcaoforcongress.com/

Hung Cao is a retired Navy Captain who served in Special Operations for twenty-five years. He and his wife April are the parents of five beautiful children whom they homeschool. After their thirteenth move across the United States and around the world in the  service of our nation, Hung and April made their home  in Purcellville, Virginia where they have been active in their community and their church, Cornerstone Chapel for the last five years.

Hung is a refugee from Vietnam and immigrant to the United States. Hung’s family escaped in 1975 shortly before the fall of Saigon. After a brief stay in the United States, his family relocated to West Africa where he was educated in French schools before returning to Annandale, Virginia in 1982. Hung is a proud member of the inaugural graduating class at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Moved by the opportunities afforded to his family, Hung vowed to serve his newly adopted country and was accepted to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Upon graduation, he served as a Deep Sea Diver and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Officer. As a Navy Diver, he salvaged several plane wreckages including the recovery of John F. Kennedy Jr, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette. Hung deployed in combat to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia serving alongside Special Forces and SEAL Teams.

Hung’s non-combat assignments included balancing the Navy’s $140 Billion budget at the Pentagon, writing Department of Defense policy, working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego California, establishing a Sheriff’s bomb squad in Monterey, California, and participating in humanitarian and disaster relief in Pakistan. In his private time, Hung has served multiple non-profit organizations and gone on mission trips around the world. He and his family established a 501(c)3 which builds beeping Easter Eggs for children with visual impairments.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

British Cardiologist Who Initially Promoted COVID Vaccines, Releases Peer Reviewed Papers Calling For Suspension of mRNA Shots By Debra Heine

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/27/british-cardiologist-who-initially-promoted-covid-vaccines-releases-peer-reviewed-papers-calling-for-suspension-of-mrna-shots/

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, an eminent British cardiologist who helped promote the mRNA vaccines when they were first rolled out, is now calling for the suspension of the injections until all the raw data from clinical trials are released for independent scrutiny, and all adverse side effects are fully investigated, the World Council For Health reported.

In a two-part peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance on Monday, Malhotra presented real world data revealing that in the non-elderly population, the risk of suffering a serious adverse event from the jabs are greater than the any benefits. [See part one here, part two here.].

Malhotra is a Consultant Cardiologist, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and President of the Public Health Collaboration, and an honorary council member to the Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic at Stanford University school of medicine California.  He is an internationally renowned expert in the prevention, diagnosis and management of heart disease.

His re-analysis of Pfizer and Moderna randomized controlled trial data also found that the risk of suffering serious adverse effects of mRNA vaccines for individuals is significantly higher than the risk of being hospitalized with Covid-19.

The study found that the international roll-out of mRNA vaccination program overstated benefits of vaccination especially in low-risk populations, and the under-reported adverse events.

Commenting on the report, Malhotra said, “There has been a rise in out of hospital cardiac arrests and heart attacks linked to Pfizer’s Covid-19 mRNA vaccine with plausible biological mechanisms of harm.” He added, “pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Poll: Majority of Americans Disapprove of Affirmative Action in College Admissions By Caroline Downey

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-majority-of-americans-disapprove-of-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/

With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral arguments in a pair of landmark affirmative-action cases this fall, a majority of Americans say they disapprove of racial preferences and still favor a meritocratic system in college admissions.

An 85 Fund poll conducted by CRC Research found that 59 percent of respondents disapprove of colleges and universities considering a prospective student’s race or ethnicity when making admissions decisions. Only 29 percent approve, and 12 percent are unsure. Respondents were selected randomly from opt-in panel participants for the September 14–18 polling.

Most Americans, 58 percent, still want colleges and universities to judge applications based on credentials, test scores, and other qualifications rather than racial identification, even if it means that fewer minority students are represented in the student body.

One of the affirmative-action cases on the Supreme Court docket, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, involves a complaint against Harvard for its alleged discrimination against Asian candidates, who typically submit statistically very high test scores and academic records. The plaintiffs have asked the justices to ban the consideration of race in college admissions, arguing that it disadvantages Asian applicants and violates federal law. Recently confirmed justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the case due to her past role on the school’s board of overseers.

Asked to speak to the Harvard situation specifically, 72 percent of conservatives, 58 percent of moderates, and 47 percent of liberals oppose the school’s consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions, the poll shows. Harvard acknowledged in its brief that if it “abandoned consideration of race as one among many factors, representation of African-American and Hispanic students would significantly decline.” It also said that the “lower courts found Harvard uses race . . . only ‘as a plus factor in the context of individualized consideration of each and every applicant,’” seemingly conceding that race can elevate an application of certain individuals but not others.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Importing Even More Crime By Peter Kirsanow

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/importing-even-more-crime/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second

The record increase in illegal-alien encounters at the southern border due to Biden administration misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance portends significant and persistent increases in crime.

In fiscal year 2020, the Border Patrol recorded 458,088 encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border. That figure has spiked to approximately 2 million in fiscal year 2021.

In 2020, 2,438 of the illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border already had criminal records at the time of entry. In 2021, 10,763 illegal immigrants encountered had criminal records.

It’s troubling enough that lax border policy permits thousands of convicts (and scores of suspected terrorists) to enter the country illegally. The evidence shows, however, that tens of thousands more illegal immigrants will commit crimes while in the United States (not counting the hundreds of thousands of  crimes related to facilitating illegal immigration such as crimes related  to identity theft, obtaining false driver’s licenses, improperly accessing public benefits, using fraudulent green cards, etc.).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Could Be Catastrophic Soon By Matt Margolis

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/09/27/bidens-depletion-of-the-strategic-petroleum-reserve-could-be-catastrophic-soon-n1632699

Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan may have tanked his approval ratings, but record inflation and soaring gas prices kept them underwater.

As fuel prices reached historic highs, Biden stubbornly refused to do anything that would increase domestic supply, opting instead to buy fuel from overseas before eventually raiding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It was a foolish thing to do, and while gas prices have gone down, the impact of raiding the reserves is debatable. But one thing is for sure: Biden depleted the reserves, which are now at a 37-year low, to boost his poll numbers.

Now that Hurricane Ian is headed for Florida, the folly of Biden’s tactic is on full display.

That’s not to say he shouldn’t have seen this coming. Jeffrey Lord predicted this exact scenario back in July.

“The Biden administration, for political purposes with an eye on the November election, is using the SPR to lower the price of gas. And just where is the SPR getting its crude in the first place? That would be the Gulf of Mexico — which is exactly where so many hurricanes wind up in the United States,” Lord wrote at The American Spectator. “All of which means Biden is lowering U.S. reserves — and taking the chance that no hurricane will hit the gulf in this coming hurricane season that will halt the ability of the U.S. to refill the reserves it has used for the purely political purpose of lowering the price of gas at the pump.”

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FBI Seized $86 Million In Raid On Innocent Americans’ Safe Boxes After Duping Judge For Warrant By: Evita Duffy

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/27/fbi-seized-86-million-in-raid-on-innocent-americans-safe-boxes-after-duping-judge-for-warrant/

‘The government’s theory is that having cash makes you a presumptive criminal, and I think every American should be worried about that.’

There is no denying anymore that our federal agencies have weaponized their power against the political adversaries of the left. But if you think the feds’ abandonment of all standards only affects outspoken critics of the regime, think again. More allegations of FBI corruption and hubris are coming to light after a lawsuit last week revealed FBI agents misled a judge so they could illegally seize and withhold property from innocent American citizens.

Agents took more than $86 million in cash, jewelry, and gold from 1,400 safe deposit boxes during the raid of a Beverly Hills vault company in March 2021. Lawyers representing a group of deposit box owners claim their items were illegally taken and not returned to them more than a year after the raid of the Beverly Hills, California, branch of U.S. Private Vaults.

Seizing Innocent Americans’ Assets

This past March, a year after the raid, the owners of U.S. Private Vaults pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money. However, the hundreds of citizens whose assets were seized by the FBI are not suspected of any crimes, according to court documents.

Deposit box holders whose property was taken sued the bureau for violating their rights. Robert Frommer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, the libertarian, nonprofit law firm that filed the suit, said in the court papers: “We brought suit on behalf of seven clients, but we were representing a class of at least 400 people. What we’ve been trying to show for the past several months is that the government’s actions violated the search-and-seizure protections of the US Constitution in the Fourth Amendment.” 

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Did the FBI Finally Go Too Far? By Jack Cashill

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/did_the_fbi_finally_go_too_far.html

On reading about the Saturday arrest of pro-life activist Mark Houck, I thought the author at this alternative site had to be exaggerating. It struck me as beyond belief that two dozen or so armed FBI agents would swarm the house of a Catholic father of seven, rifles drawn, and arrest him in front of his weeping children for anything short of murder.

I have had to recalibrate my belief system. The “crime” fell quite a bit short of murder. On October 13, 2021, Houck brought his 12-year-old son with him for his weekly sidewalk counseling outside of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Philadelphia. A volunteer escort at the abortion clinic reportedly called Houck’s son a “fag” among other insults and threatened him. Houck pushed the man away from his son, and the man fell. Houck, the founder of an organization that promotes Christian virtue among men, was not charged with a crime.

However petty the incident, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, had Houck seized at gunpoint nearly a year later and bragged about the arrest. Said PR hack Jennifer Crandall in a press release, Houck “assaulted a man because he was a volunteer reproductive health care clinic escort.”

Before proceeding, this sentence needs parsing. The most problematic word is “because.” Houck has had hundreds of opportunities to assault escorts if their offense in his eyes was to be an escort. Although the press release claims two incidents on that same day with the man, Houck had no prior or subsequent altercations.

Then there is the Orwellian phrase “reproductive health care clinic escort.” Ms. Crandall is somehow fusing the “reproductive rights” euphemism favored by abortion activists with the function of the escort, whose mission, of course, is to assure that no reproduction takes place on his watch.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Islamic Republic: Shaken to Its Core by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on September 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-islamic-republic-shaken-to-its-core/

On September 13, in Tehran, Iran, the Morality Police took Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, into custody for incorrectly tying her hijab. Eyewitnesses said they saw her being beaten with a baton as she was shoved into a van. Three days later, she was dead. The police announced that she had died of a heart attack; her family was quick to say that Amini was in perfect health. At once protests prompted by her death began in Tehran and in the Kurdish cities, led by women who pulled off, and then ripped up or burned, their hated hijabs, and symbolically cut off their hair. And the protests that began with fury over the Morality Police have spread, and new grievances have been added.

Those protests quickly spread to more than two dozen other cities, including Mashhad and Isfahan, in twenty provinces across the country. The police have tried to quell them, deploying at first tear gas and water cannon, and then birdshot and metal pellets, but for several days now they have been using live fire. Nearly 80 people, among the protesters, have now been killed by the police. And there are reports that dozens of police, too, have been killed or wounded. The protesters have become increasingly violent, burning cars, busses, and fire engines, and destroying billboards showing the Supreme Leader. They have set fire to a base of the feared Basij militia on Ferdowsi Street in downtown Tehran. A police commander has been killed by the protesters, and dozens of other police wounded by them.

The government has ended Internet service in parts in Tehran, and ended access to WhatsApp and Telegram. Despite this, the protesters still manage somehow to meet up and come out in force, and in ever larger numbers, across the country.