MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Netflix, Ron Howard Do Seth Rich a Major Injustice By Jack Cashill

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/netflix_ron_howard_do_seth_rich_a_major_injustice.html

“It should have been an open and closed case of a tragic robbing,” writes Gretchen Small in Bustle.com of the 2016 Seth Rich murder, “but what ensued was an alt-right conspiracy theory movement designed to take attention off of Donald Trump and put pressure on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

Small accurately summarized the thesis of “A Murder in D.C.,” an episode in the Netflix series, “Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet.” I suppose she could be forgiven her failure to know that Rich wasn’t robbed. The producers failed to share that rather critical detail, one detail out of many that allowed them to keep airheads like Small ignorant of the real scandal — the media scandal. In this case, the cover-up may well have been worse than the crime.

Although I do not know who killed Seth Rich, I do know that the media did everything in its power to discourage anyone from finding out. Ron Howard, a loyal Democrat, served as executive producer of this visually well-crafted series. Not surprisingly, the episode in question does little but showcase the media’s ongoing role as protector of Democratic secrets.

The Alt Right — whatever that is — had almost nothing to with the case save for a little internet gossip. Julian Assange, the darling of the media before he started releasing DNC emails, was the man who moved the curious beyond the “botched robbery” scenario trotted out by the D.C. Police.

EDUCATION, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

San Diego Med School Has ‘Orwellian Bureaucracies’ Focused on Adding CRT to Curricula, Nonprofit Finds Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ucsd-school-of-medicine-has-orwellian-bureaucracies-focused-on-adding-crt-to-curricula-nonprofit-finds/

A new report by the nonprofit Do No Harm found the University of California San Diego School of Medicine has increasingly focused on “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts in recent years, including incorporating principles of critical race theory into curricula.

“At the institutional level, UCSD’s medical school has created a number of internal bureaucracies dedicated to the ideas of DEI at both the staffing and teaching levels, including in ways that can foster active discrimination and a lower quality in medical outcomes,” writes Do No Harm, a nonprofit focused on stopping the “woke takeover” of health care.

The report notes that UCSD took “symbolic actions,” including implementing a “pass/fail” policy for medical students during their first two years and forming an “Anti-Discrimination Task Force” in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care as part of its “commitment to becoming an anti-racist institution.”

The medical school also has a Family Medicine Diversity and Anti-Racism Committee, which is run with a mission to “help achieve greater health equity and social justice,” including by pushing to teach a curriculum “grounded on a framework of empathy and anti-racism,” retain and hire a “diverse faculty,” and promote scholarship focused on “healthcare disparities.”

The committee has hosted a number of talks on topics including race in medicine; implicit bias; microaggression; health disparities in women; contraception bias; border health; immigrant, refugee and asylee health; Asian American healthcare disparities; LGBTQ Health; advocacy; and spirituality.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Taboo Lifts on Discussing Biden’s Age By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-taboo-lifts-on-discussing-bidens-age/

Almost overnight, Biden’s age, mental state, memory, and health changed from the elephant in the room to a topic that is now acceptable for Democrats and the media to discuss. Hey, how about the rest of us who noticed all of this a long time ago?

Suddenly, It’s Okay to Say Biden Is Really Old and Out of Touch

Did you notice that discussing Joe Biden’s age, memory, and mental state — denounced as the “gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life” by CNN’s Chris Cillizza when I wrote about this issue last August — became an acceptable subject for quiet and subdued expressions of public concern in the past week or so?

This isn’t about Biden falling off his bicycle. Last week, Mark Leibovich wrote in the Atlantic that Biden shouldn’t run for another term because, in his view, though Biden’s mental sharpness and physical health are just fine right now, they might not be in a few years:

They say, for the most part, that Biden is coping fine. You know, despite the 8.6 percent inflation, his depressed approval numbers, his vice president’s worse approval numbers, the looming wipeout in the midterms, and all the other delights attending to Biden as he awaits the big, round-numbered birthday he has coming up in a few months. But here’s another recurring theme I keep hearing, notably from people predisposed to liking the president. “He just seems old,” one senior administration official told me at a social function a few weeks ago.

He seems old, you say? Hmm. Has anyone else noticed this?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

If Trump Committed ‘Insurrection,’ Indict Him Already Any first-year law student knows the DOJ has no hope of getting a conviction. Larry Elder

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/if-trump-committed-insurrection-indict-him-already-larry-elder/

OK, so indict him already.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor the first day of the televised Jan. 6 select committee hearings, said: “(Former President) Donald Trump was at the heart of a coordinated effort to overturn the 2020 elections, to overturn our constitutional order, and inflict permanent damage upon our democracy.”

But Democratic committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., when asked about possible Justice Department charges against Trump, said: “Attorney General (Merrick) Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know what’s at stake here. They know the importance of it. But I think they’re rightfully paying close attention to precedent and history, as well as the facts of this case.” Not exactly full speed ahead.

And the day after the first hearing, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, said: “(Criminal referrals to the DOJ are) not our job. Our job is to look at Jan. 6. What caused it and make recommendations after that. … We don’t have the authority.” Committee member Liz Cheney, R-Wis., disagreed, tweeting, “The Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time.”

Trump, on Jan. 6, in his speech before the riots, said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Two days earlier, according to Alec Schemmel of the Media Research Center: “A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Disastrous Coalition Government Collapses Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/06/israels-disastrous-coalition-government-collapses-daniel-greenfield/

I was in Israel some years back and no one believed that there would be a second election. Now the country is on track to a fifth election that may put Netanyahu back in power. Anything has got to be better than the abominable leftist-Islamist-RINO equivalent nightmare that’s been running the country into the ground.

Israel is based on a European-style parliamentary system. The only unifying theme of the coalition was to force out Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

In the service of that, Communists, the Muslim Brotherhood, assorted leftist parties and a former “conservative” party worked together. 

And the only amazing thing is that it lasted this long. 

Explaining the insanity is hard, but here’s a sample.

Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar blamed the downfall of the government on “irresponsible behavior by Knesset members in the coalition,” referring to its multiple rebels. He said the goal of the next election would be to prevent Netanyahu from returning to power and “mortgaging the country to his own personal interest.”

There is still a chance that Netanyahu will succeed in forming an alternate government within the current Knesset. This would happen if members of the coalition, from New Hope and Yamina, switch sides and join Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Providing Former Taliban Associates with Visas and Asylum The Biden administration continues its assault on U.S. national security.Michael Cutler

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/biden-administration-exacerbates-threats-national-michael-cutler/

Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan has created unprecedented threats to U.S. national security as I noted in an earlier article, Biden’s Catastrophic Policies: Immigration and Afghanistan and those threats are about to be exacerbated by a policy change of the Biden administration.

On June 14, 2022 The Los Angeles Times reported, Some Afghan refugees now have chance to avoid terrorism designation that blocked path to U.S.

Here is how this disconcerting news report begins:

Doctors, teachers, engineers and other Afghans who were forced to associate with the Taliban will now have a chance at asylum or visas after the Biden administration loosened a terrorism-related designation on Tuesday, according to government officials and documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The exemption will be applied on a case by case basis after security vetting and is expected to help Afghans who fled their country after U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban took over last August, as well as some Afghans who entered the U.S. earlier, said officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration assurances that each case will be adjudicated on a case by case basis that will involve security vetting does absolutely nothing to assuage my serious concerns.

The fact that among the refugees are doctors, teachers and engineers does nothing to prove that these individual do not pose a threat to US security.  I would remind you that Osama bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering (which, in fact, made him all the more dangerous) and George Habash the founder of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) an exceedingly violent terrorist organization, was a pediatrician.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Dem’s Inflation-Fighting Plan Is A Cruel Joke

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/21/the-dems-inflation-fighting-plan-is-a-cruel-joke/

‘Today the Democratic House takes a strong step to bring down crucial kitchen table costs of the pump and grocery store and across the board.”

That’s the transcript of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor before all but five of her fellow Democrats voted for the “Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act” last week.

Pelosi’s garbled syntax aside, the only thing this bill would lower is the public’s trust in anything Democrats say these days. Despite its title, this bill would expand government but do nothing – repeat, nothing – to lower prices today, tomorrow, or any time in the future.

Among the Democrats’ brilliant inflation-fighting ideas is to create a new meat police to harass the meat industry. Another is to expand a subsidy program for farmers that has already proved ineffective in keeping food prices from skyrocketing. Finally, it would expand the use of ethanol – a plan that even President Joe Biden admits will fail to lower fuel prices.

Biden loves to blame high food prices on the supposed lack of competition among meat packers. This is a favorite Democratic tactic whenever the price of something goes up. If oil prices soar, they accuse Big Oil of conspiring to rip off consumers. Now it’s Big Meat.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ukraine War Blows Up EU’s Superpower Delusion by Soeren Kern

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18610/eu-superpower-delusion

As the war has dragged on, European unity has collapsed and efforts to transform the European Union into a European superstate — a United States of Europe — have been exposed for what they are: delusions of grandeur.

The EU’s largest member states — France and Germany — have sought to appease Putin at the expense of Ukrainian sovereignty. French President Emmanuel Macron, the strongest backer of European strategic autonomy, insists that Putin should not be “humiliated” and has even called on Ukraine to make territorial concessions to help the Russian dictator save face.

“Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France. We all better focus on how to put Russia in its place. This will bring peace and save lives.” — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

“Did anyone talk to Adolf Hitler like that during WWII? Did someone say Adolf Hitler had to save face? That we should proceed in such a way that it is not humiliating for Adolf Hitler?” — Polish President Andrzej Duda, Bild, June 9, 2022

“The end of French exceptionalism. Once you claim your main role to be a mediator between right and wrong, days of grandeur are over. ‘Saving face’ is a weak diplomatic aim; Putin can take personal responsibility for his face.” — John Chipman, Director General, International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Peace at any cost is what we have done for 20 years with Putin. Peace at any cost means Putin wins. We end up losing.” — Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, Politico, May 30, 2022.

“The west has two goals in the war in Ukraine: to uphold Ukrainian sovereignty and to deter Russia from any similar assaults on European countries in the future…. If another round of European diplomacy leaves Russia once again sitting on its military gains in Ukraine, then Putin will regain political strength at home and feel empowered to launch new military adventures in the future.” — John Sawers, former head, MI6, Financial Times, June 8, 2022.

“The lesson of current experience is that only the United States is capable of holding Russia in check. The vehicle for this remains NATO, which has not outlived itself, but is more important as the security policy core of a free West than it has been for decades.” — Ulrich Speck, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 8, 2022.

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have jointly visited Ukraine in an attempt to present a unified European front regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. The one-day visit was long on rhetoric but short on substance: European unity remains elusive.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Assault on Children’s Psyches California’s ethnic-studies curriculum is fueling a mental-health crisis among teenagers. Leor Sapir

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/the-assault-on-childrens-psyches

Patricia (a pseudonym) is the mother of a teenage girl who in recent years has come to identify as transgender. She lives in California, considers herself progressive, votes Democrat, and leads a group for parents of children with rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)—that is, youth who suddenly experience distress with their bodies and believe that undergoing medical “transition” will make them whole again. When I spoke to her recently, she recounted how her daughter’s at-first-lesbian and then trans identity emerged in response to feelings of shame about being white.

I have since spoken to more than a dozen ROGD parents and parent-group leaders who tell a similar story. Their schools compulsively tell their children how awful it is to be white, how white people enjoy unearned “privilege,” how they benefit from “systems” put in place by and for white people for the sole purpose of oppressing “people of color.” Plagued by guilt, the children—almost all of them girls—rush to the sanctuary of “LGBTQ+” identity. Once there, they are catapulted into hero status. According to Patricia, some teachers at her daughter’s school are more forgiving toward “queer” and “trans” kids who hand in their homework late.

The students, especially the girls, absorb this messaging. They are acutely sensitive to how identity affects their social status and academic fortunes. They want the warmth that comes with queer/trans identity, but above all they don’t want to be thought of as vicious oppressors. Lacking maturity and self-confidence, they fail to put “anti-racist” indoctrination in its proper context. They do not appreciate its ahistorical, anti-intellectual, and anti-humanist foundations, nor are they aware of the incentives leading teachers and administrators to foist it on them. Being white is not something these teenagers can escape, but they can mitigate its social costs by declaring themselves part of an oppressed group.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

U.S. Restraint Has Created an Unstable and Dangerous World Decades of ignoring the menaces posed by Russia and China has led the West to a precipice.

Posted By on June 21st, 2022

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/17/us-miliitary-strategy-geopolitics-restraint-russia-china-ukraine-war/

By H. R. McMaster, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former U.S. national security advisor, and Gabriel Scheinmann, the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society.

The Biden administration failed to deter Russia from its second invasion of Ukraine. Like his predecessors in the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden went to great lengths to placate and reassure Russian President Vladimir Putin in return for stable relations. Biden defied Congress when he refused to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, unilaterally extended U.S. adherence to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty without reciprocation by Russia, and honored Putin with a bilateral summit during his first overseas trip. As Putin amassed his troops on Ukraine’s borders, Biden pulled U.S. naval forces out of the Black Sea, refused to send additional weapons to Ukraine, enumerated everything the United States would not do to help Ukraine defend itself, and evacuated U.S. Embassy staff and military advisors. More broadly, the administration proposed a real cut to the defense budget; sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy; restricted U.S. production capacity for oil, gas, and refined products that might have displaced Russian supplies; and signaled its willingness to overlook Russian and Chinese aggression in exchange for hollow pledges of cooperation on global issues such as climate change. After surrendering Afghanistan to a terrorist organization and conducting a humiliating retreat from Kabul, the administration’s attempts to deter the Russian invasion with threats of punishment were simply not credible.

Deterrence, however, does not disintegrate overnight. Contrary to the narrative of U.S. belligerence and imperialism that has been impressed on countless university students, the United States has, since the end of World War II, largely pursued a policy of restraint despite its considerable military power.