The Democrats’ Insurrection Circus Ignores the Real Insurrection The one they supported. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/democrats-insurrection-circus-ignores-real-robert-spencer/

As the Democrats’ prime-time Jan. 6 circus began, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explained “the real purpose” of their televised hearings: “convincing Americans that conservatives are to blame for the events of that day,” leading to “a repudiation of conservatism and all those who hold conservative values. Democrats want to use the violence of Jan. 6 to stigmatize conservative voices and delegitimize conservative ideals. They’ve even talked—condescendingly, of course—about treating conservatives as ‘cult’ members who need to be deprogrammed.” In service of this goal, they’re not just running a prime-time show trial, but persecuting ordinary Americans who protested that day, and ignoring, of course, the real insurrection – the one they supported.

Last Tuesday, BlazeTV host Steve Deace tweeted a harrowing message from a “January Sixther” that demonstrates how far what is happening regarding Jan. 6 really is from actual justice, and shows that it is all a dirty political game in which Democrats are victimizing decent people in order to prop up their ridiculous and baseless “insurrection” narrative.

“I am a husband and father who has zero criminal history,” this man wrote to Deace, “and I am looking at years in prison AFTER I took a plea. You may ask why would people take a plea if they are innocent? Innocent has nothing to do with this as my lawyer has told over and over again. This is payback. There are only a handful of representatives in DC that care about us. The vast majority couldn’t care less.”

The man explains: “I wasn’t violent, I didn’t break anything, I didn’t steal anything and that doesn’t matter. I lost my 6 figure income, friends, and my family is a wreck. I had the FBI in my home, I was brought before a judge in shackles. And I am a lucky one. I got to remain free till sentencing. So this is the country that I now live in. Where the powerful few can attack an elected president attempting to removing him for 4 years and where elections no longer matter.”

Democrats Face Disaster From Their Racialist Identity Politics Another portent of doom for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/democrats-face-disaster-their-racialist-identity-bruce-thornton/

Last week Mayra Flores, a naturalized citizen born in Mexico, won outright a special election in Texas’ 34th Congressional District in the Rio Grande Valley, a Democrat redoubt since 1870. A Republican conservative and mother of four, Flores ran on “God, family, and country,” and self-identifies as pro-life and a supporter of tougher border controls. Flores is heading to Washington to be the first House Representative born in Mexico.

This victory is yet another portent of doom for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. They already are facing headwinds like soaring murder rates, record inflation, and astronomic gas prices––all the consequences of progressive policies like bail and sentencing “reform” and lax leftwing DAs, more fiat money pumped into the economy, and the disastrous war on fossil fuels that has significantly reduced domestic production even as global supplies have been squeezed by sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile the anti-American “woke” are intensifying their culture war on several fronts, from unrestricted abortion and transgender curricula in public schools, to pronoun etiquette and “cancel culture” and other violations of the Second Amendment.

Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden’s average disapproval rate is 54.7%,  while the Republicans have been leading the Congressional generic ballot by 3 points since the first of the year. Remember, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had positive approval ratings and still lost the House of Representatives in midterm elections.

Given these obstacles, the Democrats can’t afford to lose any support from Latinos, who now comprise 18.7% of the U.S. population. Yet Dems for decades have ignored the diversity of everyday Latinos on a number of issues––such as the economy, patriotism, faith, border security, crime, and social issues such as transgenderism and same-sex marriage––and have alienated them and driven many to the GOP.

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN? DIANE BEDERMAN

https://dianebederman.com/when-will-we-ever-learn-when-will-we-ever-learn/

When will we ever learn?

The number of Jewish families and young Jews who hide their Jewish symbols speaks to the massive failure of the plethora of Jewish organizations to fight Jew hatred and anti-Zionism. We have witnessed religious Jews attacked walking down the road. Students attacked on campus.

When do we say Dayenu? Enough! Jew hatred is not rational. It is embedded in the DNA, the blood, the tissue, the very fibre of their being in billions of people.

In the 3000 year history of Jew hatred, many of us thought the Holocaust would be the end of the hate.No. 

Today, 2022, Jews are the No. 1 target in America for hate crimes in proportion to the population.

Incidents targeting the Jewish community in the State of New York have increased 24 percent since last year. New York State, home of millions of Jews who thought they would be safe.  

Reported by CBC, the most antisemitic media outlet in Canada: record levels of antisemitism were recorded in Canada last year, with sharp increases in Quebec and British Columbia. The annual audit by Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith found there were 2,799 anti-Jewish hate crimes, including beatings, vandalism of synagogues and swastikas in schools.

They Questioned Gender-Affirming Care. Then Their Kids Were Kicked Out of School. Paul and Beka Sinclair didn’t like that their kids’ pricey private school was teaching first graders about ‘deconstructing the gender binary.’ Leighton Woodhouse

https://www.commonsense.news/p/they-questioned-gender-affirming?utm_source=email.

On May 25, Paul and Rebeka Sinclair pulled their minivan over to the side of the road, just north of Lake Tahoe, and logged onto a Zoom with Katherine Dinh, the head of the Marin Country Day School.

“Today was the last day of school for your children, Charlotte and Carter,” Dinh informed the couple. The Sinclairs—she’s 37; he’s 51—had been driving home from a vacation to celebrate their anniversary. Dinh appeared to be reading a script. Two MCDS board members joined her on the call but stayed quiet. “Please do not contact any other school employees, particularly Charlotte and Carter’s teachers, as your reaching out to them will cause them further stress,” Dinh continued. “The two of you are not to be on campus again.”

It was the closing act of a year-long drama between the Sinclairs and MCDS, which charges $40,000 per student per year and had been teaching first and second graders about “deconstructing the gender binary”—the idea that there’s no such thing as girls or boys, just a spectrum of relative girlness and boyness. 

The Sinclairs weren’t the only parents who had protested the new gender-identity curriculum—most families in their daughter’s class were upset and had been talking about it among themselves. But the Sinclairs had been unwilling to stay quiet. As a result, administrators had suggested that they were homophobic and accused them of tarnishing MCDS’s reputation. (An MCDS attorney had accused the Sinclairs of “defamation” for accusing MCDS of “predatory ‘grooming’ of children.” The Sinclairs never made that accusation.) Friends had stopped replying to their texts. Teachers said they felt unsafe around them. When word got out about why Charlotte, 8, and Carter, 5, had been kicked out, the Sinclairs had to decide whether they could stay in the Bay Area. 

“I had no problem being a pariah in Marin,” Beka said. “We were worried about raising our kids long term in an area that was embracing these destructive ideologies.”

“From Where Will Reason Come” Sydney Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

In an op-ed in a recent The Wall Street Journal, Ted Van Dyk, author of Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside, wrote: “The country is desperate for pragmatic problem solving and at least an attempt by leaders to collaborate across partisan and ideological lines.” It is true. People are impossibly divided, and the effect is being felt among families and friends. It is unhealthy, individually and collectively for the nation. One consequence was the choices voters had in 2020 – On the right the polarizing figure of Donald Trump, who despite his accomplishments as President, has an insatiable ego and is overly sensitive to criticism, which make him unpalatable to many conservatives. On the left, Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a 77-year-old career politician with no notable achievements, but with noticeable cognitive challenges. Was that the best a nation of 330 million people could do? Questions need to be answered: Why has reason failed? Where does fault lie? Why are we in this place? What can be done?

The fault, in my opinion, lies principally with politicians who thrive on a strategy employed by Julius Caesar, divide et impera, divide and rule, and by a media that has given up on reporting in favor of advocacy. It is easier for politicians to address the needs and wants of specific constituents than to discuss complex issues that affect us all. Such activity has led to divisive “identity politics” and away from the understanding that we are all, regardless of race, class or ethnicity, citizens of this republic and that we all have a stake in its continuance. The United States is unique among nations in that our ancestors came from every corner of the world. It is unique in its government forged out of a belief in individual freedom, a government – with its separation of powers, rule of law, and protection of private property – whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution. We have differences, as expected and as we should, but, as citizens of the United States, we have in common (or we should have) a reverence for this imperfect but rare nation.

Perhaps it is the cynicism that comes with age, but I believe most politicians would prefer not to solve many of the problems we face – illegal immigration, gun legislation, climate change, healthcare and abortion. One might add education and election integrity. These are perennial issues, which when left undecided serve both sides, in that they inflame noisy partisans, the driving force behind both political parties, and who further divide us.

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack is exhibit A. This is not a committee trying to understand what happened – Exactly what role did Mr. Trump play? Why did not advanced warnings of trouble prompt enhanced security? If this was an insurrection, why were there no firearms found on the rioters? Why did the committee not investigate the claim of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capital?” Why was an unarmed woman shot and killed as she entered a Capital window? What might be done to prevent a future occurrence? Will the committee investigate the rioting during the summer of 2020, which killed 35, injured 1,500 police officers and caused $1.3 billion in property damage? From the start, the committee was established to be a partisan hit job on Mr. Trump and his supporters, not a bi-partisan voyage of discovery. Ironically, the Committee’s shaming of Mr. Trump may well backfire on Democrats who seemed to have forgotten that a viable Mr. Trump is Republican’s biggest liability and Democrat’s greatest asset.

As Michael Barone pointed out in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, it was not too long ago that “Americans expressed great trust in their institutions and great belief and confidence in their leaders.” Mr. Barone suggests Watergate was “a historical watershed” that ended that trust. But no matter its origin and whether deserved or not, disillusionment in government has harmed the United States. I recall being in the Senate dining room for lunch in the early 1970s and seeing Democrats and Republicans dining together. It’s my understanding that rarely happens today. Political partisanship has destroyed friendships and disrupted families. Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis argued in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal that the problem is less about polarization around “fixed ideological poles” and more about hostility toward individuals. Regardless, questions remain. Why have we reached this impasse and what, if anything, can be done to end it? It seems to me that our best hope lies in education, a return to reason, traditional values and a revival of patriotism.

Amidst this anger, we appear to have forgotten that free-market capitalism, within a democratic context, has made Americans wealthier beyond the wildest imaginations of those who lived a hundred and two hundred years ago. Few young people in the U.S. appreciate the lifestyles they live compared to that of their forebearers. They have little appreciation for the political and economic systems that make their lives comfortable. Do they ever think of the magic of capitalism, that a loaf of bread can be brought to a supermarket shelf for only three dollars? It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the farmer, miller, baker, trucker and merchant to work together.

Reason has been lost as time-tested traditions and customs have collapsed. The concept of national service disappeared with the abandonment of the military draft. The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin in 1938 as a peace song) are no longer public-school rituals. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, only 22% of children today are living with two parents, both in their first marriage. Fifty-four percent are living with a single parent. Church attendance (including that at mosques and synagogues), which was 73% in 1937 when Gallup first measured it and 70% in 2000, fell to 47% in 2021.

Too many public schools are more focused on woke issues, like gender identification and “saving the planet,” than on the basics of reading and math, or simply teaching students to think independently. Apart from Luxembourg, the United States spends more money per student than any other country, yet we rank 13 out of 79 countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), behind countries like Estonia and Poland. In a financial literacy test, the U.S. ranked nine of eighteen. Teachers should be embarrassed; parents should be upset, and we should all be concerned.

In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which was based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) asks, rhetorically: If we do not use our brain to reason, “why did God plague us with the capacity to think?” “What other merit have we?” We need politicians and members of the media, to treat people as adults, to approach problems, not as ideological opportunities to push preferred agendas, but as issues that need resolution. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant wrote: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Politicians (and media types) appeal to emotion, especially personal vilification. Their focus should be on imparting wisdom, allowing reason to blossom. Instead, they bully opponents and the electorate into submission with emotion-ridden ideological tirades, and the press laps it up.

The CDC Just Pushed Fake News on Covid Child Mortality Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-cdc-just-pushed-fake-news-on-covid-child-mortality/

Only because “an internet rando is more knowledgeable and paying closer attention than our top scientists and doctors” do we know that the CDC just publicized false information about the deadliness of Covid-19 to small children. This misinformation, presented at a conference among top experts, went viral and was promoted, notes Substack columnist Matt Shapiro, by dozens of well-known physicians and other media commentators and specialists, including CNN mainstay Dr. Leana Wen and a former surgeon general of the United States. Wen’s promotion of the false claim is still up on Twitter as of 6:45 p.m. on June 22.

The CDC displayed a slide at a conference that falsely claimed Covid-19 was the fourth or fifth leading cause of death for all pediatric age groups. A writer who is publicly known only by the name Kelley immediately saw that the claim was “completely and utterly false.” Among several errors, which are so blatant as to seem like intentional massaging of the numbers, Kelley discovered that all data from a 26-month period were being crammed into one year, and that deaths were attributed to Covid, regardless of whether the death was caused by Covid, if the disease was mentioned on the death certificate. The CDC slide, which cited a pre-publication British study that is now being re-examined, also bumped up the numbers by altering the definition of pediatric (ordinarily understood to mean under 18) to include 18- and 19-year-olds.

The danger to children from Covid is very, very low. For instance, babies and toddlers are 25 times likelier to die of an accident than of Covid. And all-cause pediatric mortality in the pandemic era for young children (up to 12) is 30 percent lower than it was a generation ago, in 1999. All-cause mortality for children over 12 has spiked in the pandemic era because of accidents, drug abuse, and other factors unrelated to disease. Covid barely registers as a cause of death for teens or small children.

Tom Fitton: Our Military Is Being Undermined From Within By Woke, Racist, Marxist Democrats

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/06/21/tom_fitton_our_military_is_being_undermined_from_within_by_woke_racist_marxist_democrats.html

“Judicial Watch” founder Tom Fitton talks about the anti-racism training the officer corps of the U.S. military is being taught on FNC’s Tucker Carlson:

TOM FITTON: We had to sue to get the documents, and they’re mandating or pushing critical race theory training on the cadets [at West Point]. This is where our next officer corps is trained and they’re being told “whiteness” is something that is what the critical race theorists say, full of characteristics that are negative.

They suggest that blacks are still the equivalent of slaves today, and they’re pushing queer theory, which is a cousin of the Marxist critical race theory.

And so, you know, our military is being undermined from within. You know, this is the type of Marxist revolutionary language that our military was designed, during the Cold War to try to protect this nation from. And now they’re on the inside.

And, you know, this is the Biden Defense Department. Because you remember, Trump tried to slow this down and it’s now the animating force for the Biden administration, and our military’s being abused.

So, you know, you’re pointing out senators are controlling our guns, right? While ignoring the abuse of our cadets at West Point with racist theories. When you have a white cadet come in and told they’re bad people because of the color of their skin, or blacks are told they are being oppressed because of the color of their skin, that’s racism and frankly, it’s banned under the law.

There’s got to be a rescue operation for our military from this woke madness.

Arabs to Biden: Shut Down Iran’s ‘Expansionist Project’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18628/arabs-biden-iran

Ahead of Biden’s visit, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, in a clear message to the US administration and other Western powers, affirmed that any nuclear agreement or future negotiations with Iran must address the Iranians’ “destabilizing behavior in the region, their support for terrorist militias, and their missile program.”

“Western countries prefer to talk about upcoming measures, preparing us for their failure to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the truth is that we are in a race against time, and it is still possible to force Iran to abandon its secret plans to acquire nuclear weapons. The problem is that the entire international community does not seem serious and resolute in dealing with this issue and deterring Iran.” — Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, founder and chairman of the Gulf Research Center, alanba.com.kw, June 14, 2022.

Iran thinks with the “mentality of an empire” and that is why it is continuing its efforts to extend its control to several Arab countries. — Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, alanba.com.kw, June 14, 2022

Washington’s Arab allies have repeatedly warned that the US against complacency with the Iranian threat, “specifically after the instructions of the administration of former President Barack Obama to build a partnership with the Tehran regime under the roof of the nuclear agreement that contributed to Iran’s pervasiveness, and gave it free rein, allowing it to increase its hostile activities against the countries of the region without being held accountable for the consequences of its reckless policies.” — Khaled Al-Yemany, former foreign minister of Yemen, independentarabia.com, January 26, 2022.

[T]he Arab countries have always preferred dialogue with Iran, but this was seen by the mullahs as a sign of weakness. — Khaled Al-Yemany, independentarabia.com, January 26, 2022.

Tehran is using negotiation diplomacy to achieve more military gains and develop its arsenal in the nuclear and missile fields and missile technology,” he said. “The reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirm that Iran is far from the commitments it made in the nuclear agreement, and it is progressing to build a nuclear bomb. A nuclear Iran, its expansionist project that destabilizes regional and international security and stability will be more ferocious and its ambitions will transcend all borders, and it must be deterred before it is too late.” — Khaled Al-Yemany, independentarabia.com, January 26, 2022.

[T]he Arab and Western media have remained silent about the Iranian people’s protests against the corruption of the regime, which spent its wealth to destroy four Arab countries (Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq). — Abdul Jalil Al-Saeid, Syrian author, al-ain.com, June 7, 2022.

The Arabs are saying that they expect the Biden administration to reverse its stance on the mullahs and act in accordance with reality: that Tehran poses a catastrophic threat to America’s allies – all of its allies, Arab and Israeli alike – in the Middle East.

As US President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia and Israel in mid-July, Arabs are sending him a number of messages regarding the need to deal with the threat that Iran’s mullahs pose to their security and stability.

The Arabs, especially those living in the Gulf states, continue to express deep concern over the Iranian regime’s ongoing efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.

President Biden’s Nobel Peace Prize? by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18630/biden-nobel-peace-prize

As President Joe Biden reportedly prepares to go the Middle East next month, a positive development for him to build on and turn around his poll numbers, and possibly win a Nobel Peace Prize for totally eliminating the threat of Iran going nuclear, is the signing on May 31, 2022, of a groundbreaking trade agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel.

[T]here can be no downplaying the importance and scope of this deal or the potential for greater peace in the region without a nuclear Iran destabilizing the area….

The UAE-Israel Business Council expects up to 1,000 Israeli companies may begin operating in Dubai by the end of the year. This is also a major development.

CEPA is a win-win-win accomplishment. The agreement opens a window of opportunity not just for the US, but also for Israeli companies to do business in the UAE, and more importantly, it will serve as a gateway to other parts of the Middle East and Asia.

The announcement of CEPA pointed the way to three real and potential impacts that Biden could have in the Middle East:

A blossoming of bilateral initiatives within the private sector and civil society;

Geopolitical and economic benefits will have spillover effects across the region, and possibly the world; and

Opening channels of communications between the Arab states of the Gulf and Israel to further peace and prosperity in the region, including the Palestinians.

May this work — especially, under the far-sighted leadership of Biden, if he eliminates Iran’s nuclear threat — continue to bear more fruit.

As President Joe Biden reportedly prepares to go the Middle East next month, a positive development for him to build on and turn around his poll numbers, and possibly win a Nobel Peace Prize for totally eliminating the threat of Iran going nuclear, is the signing on May 31, 2022, of a groundbreaking trade agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel.

Europe’s Leaders Must Not Stumble Towards a New Munich by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18634/ukraine-russia-new-munich

Mr Macron, in particular, has emerged as the chief European cheerleader in favour of Ukraine making concessions to Russia to end the fighting, while the leaders of Germany and Italy, which both rely heavily on Russia for their energy needs, are also said to favour Ukraine ceding territory to Moscow – a result that would only whet the appetite of other predators looking on.

Rather than agreeing to their demands, Mr Zelensky responded by pointedly reminding his visitors that the more weapons Ukraine receives from the West, the faster it will be able to liberate its occupied land and end the war.

In this context, plans by the European Union to offer membership to Kyiv represent a welcome gesture of support for the Ukrainian people, one that should provide a much needed morale boost for Ukrainian forces.

In what amounts to a significant geo-political shift in Europe, the European Commission has given its backing to Ukraine’s bid to be given candidacy status, the first step towards achieving full EU membership.

The challenge for the EU now will be to make sure priority is given to processing Kyiv’s application, and not allow it to become caught up in the stultifying bureaucracy of Brussels.

Any attempt by the EU to delay Ukraine’s membership of the bloc will simply be taken as a sign by Mr Putin that Europe is not prepared to defend its allies, and encourage the Kremlin — and others — to launch further acts of aggression.

At a time when there is mounting concern that European leaders are suffering from “war fatigue” over the Ukraine conflict, the prospect of Kyiv becoming an official candidate for European Union membership constitutes a much-needed morale boost for the Ukrainian people.