ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Climate Cult and Their Green Lethargy Future Environmentalists have waged war on fossil fuels, the Industrial Revolution, and capitalism in general. Their “solutions” will make us all poorer, more vulnerable, and less free. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/03/the-climate-cult-and-their-green-lethargy-future/

When I was in Congress, I once went on a fact-finding trip to Pakistan. At the time, the country was being wracked by a terrorist bombing campaign intended, in large part, to destabilize the government of President Pervez Musharraf. What I found, however, was that President Musharraf was facing another threat to his rule. 

During a brief stay in Islamabad, my hotel room suddenly went dark one evening. It wasn’t terrorism. It was a rolling power blackout. Earlier, I had heard firsthand accounts of the dissatisfaction this caused Pakistanis, including how the rolling blackouts facilitated extremism’s spread and tactics. The blame for the blackout was placed squarely on Musharraf. As I looked out my window across an eerily darkened capital city, given all the challenges facing them, I couldn’t help but pity the Pakistani people for having to endure yet another tribulation: having to live with such a substandard power grid.

Now, the Pakistani people can pity me.  

Per Fox News, the apocalyptic climate cult is bringing their rolling blackouts to Michigan to benight the state whose ingenious, hardworking people and the unparalleled industrial prowess they built and operated had once put the world on wheels and kept the world safe. 

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Left Despises People of Color By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

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

Under the guise of caring and concern, the Left continues its assault on Black people, aka People of Color.

First, it began with substandard education to Black children and the control of the school systems by the teachers’ unions, who shill for the Democrat party.

Not surprising, these very children could not compete academically because they were never given the basic tools to do so.  But the seed was planted fostering the implicit bias that Blacks were simply not capable of doing well.

So, the next step was to institute affirmative action.  After 60 years, it has been discovered, for example, that while these very students could have done well in second tier law schools, far too many could not compete in the elite schools and dropped out. 

The chaos that now describes American education has created ignorance of a magnitude that is terrifying.  Of course, it has affected the Caucasian students, but it has only worsened things for the Black students.

Obama speeded up the process of victimology when he decided that disparate discipline measures needed to be addressed.  Thus, if a child’s melanin level met the standards, that was all that mattered.  Behavioral problems, misdemeanors and felonies were simply glossed over as the misdeeds of these students were attributed to racism in America.

And now, the low expectations of soft bigotry rear their ugly head again as race-based grading systems will now be implemented in Illinois schools. Of course, it is a natural outgrowth of the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity programs that the Left has insinuated into school systems across the country. Achievement and merit have been eliminated but race rules the roost. 

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Don’t Look Now, but Biden’s Iran Policy Is Still Failing By John Hannah & Michael Makovsky

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/dont-look-now-but-bidens-iran-policy-is-still-failing/

John Hannah, a former national-security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the Randi and Charles Wax Senior Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official, is JINSA’s President and CEO.

Iran envoy Robert Malley’s testimony revealed that the administration’s Iran policy has run its course and failed.

Drowned out by news of the horrific school shooting in Texas and the ongoing war in Ukraine, last week’s congressional testimony by President Biden’s Iran envoy, Robert Malley, passed largely unnoticed. That’s unfortunate. Overflowing with empty talking points bearing little relation to reality, it underscored that the administration’s Iran policy has reached a dangerous dead end — one that Biden’s team either doesn’t recognize or refuses to deal with.

Malley’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee represented the first time that the administration had been required to account publicly for its yearlong effort to entice Iran back into the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Predictably, Malley spent a lot of time blaming President Trump’s withdrawal from the deal for the subsequent escalation of Iran’s nuclear program and regional aggression. Fair enough. But he studiously avoided the uncomfortable reality that Iran’s most worrisome nuclear advancements — including its unprecedented decision to enrich a bomb’s worth of uranium to 60 percent — have occurred on Biden’s watch. Ditto the fact that Iran-backed attacks targeting U.S. troops and partners in the Middle East doubled during Biden’s first year in office as compared with Trump’s last year in office. Iran’s behavior might have been bad under Trump’s maximum-pressure policy, but it has gotten significantly worse under Biden’s more accommodationist approach.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden Lied about Gun-Manufacturer Immunity. He Wasn’t Close to the Truth.By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-lied-about-gun-manufacturer-immunity-he-wasnt-close-to-the-truth/?utm_

I know this will be hard to believe, but Joe Biden lied in last night’s speech to the nation. Here is one especially egregious example:

We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we’d be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.

Biden has made this claim before, as did Hillary Clinton. Politifact rated it false in 2015. As Biden knows perfectly well, or should know unless his mind is completely shot, there are multiple industries that enjoy federal statutory immunity from lawsuits over the use of their products.

Biden refers to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by President George W. Bush in 2005. (Biden opposed it at the time.) Under the ordinary principles of tort law, product-liability lawsuits are for defective products that malfunction; the manufacturer of a legal product cannot be held responsible for the product working as designed, unless it has somehow failed to warn users of a risk of use. This is why Biden’s analogy to cigarettes is flawed: The theory of many product-liability lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers was either that cigarettes were marketed with false assurances of their safety or that the manufacturers concealed dangers of the product. That is obviously not true of guns: Everybody knows that guns are lethal weapons if used as designed.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why Trump Is the Loser in a Georgia Election Rematch The former president managed to alienate Peach State Republicans by making common cause with Stacey Abrams against Gov. Brian Kemp. Barton Swaim

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trump-is-the-loser-in-a-georgia-rematch-kemp-abrams-raffensperger-primary-voters-11654283552?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Ordinarily it’s a bad idea to search for national political significance in state primary elections, but these are not ordinary times.

The data points: On May 24 Republican Gov. Brian Kemp defeated former Sen. David Perdue by 52 points, and Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger bested his nearest opponent, Rep. Jody Hice, by 18 points. Both men were incumbents, but their challengers are accomplished politicians in their own right.

The remarkable thing about both races is Donald Trump’s assertive role in them. He carried on one-sided feuds with both winners and endorsed the losers. Mr. Raffensperger had insisted that Mr. Trump’s allegations about widespread voter fraud in Georgia were false, and in a 2020 postelection phone call with the president flatly rejected the idea that the secretary of state could “find” the 11,780 votes needed to deliver Georgia. Mr. Kemp later certified the election, moving Mr. Trump to call for the governor’s resignation and to say he was “ashamed” to have endorsed him in 2018. The former president’s hostility to both incumbents seemed to indicate electoral trouble for them, but they had none.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Covid Vindication for Ron DeSantis A Florida Inspector General report debunks the charge that the state manipulated case and death counts.

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-ron-desantis-governor-covid-data-manipulation-rebekah-jones-ig-report-11654292011?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

A frequent phenomenon of our times is the flurry over an alleged scandal that on examination turns out to be false. The latest case is the claim that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis manipulated Covid data.

Mr. DeSantis became public-health enemy number one by defying the left’s lockdown consensus early in the pandemic. When former state health department employee Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired for refusing to fudge state Covid data to support the state’s reopening in spring 2020, national and local media outlets reported her allegations as fact.

“Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data,” NPR reported. After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant of her home, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “sent the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup” the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorialized.

But according to the Governor’s office, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

George Washington, George Jarkesy, and the Administrative State’s Lack of Fundamental Justice John Berlau

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://cei.org/blog/george-washington-george-jarkesy-and-the-administrative-states-lack-of-fundamental-justice/

The recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Jarkesy v. SEC is a victory for limited constitutional government on many levels. As Mario Loyola, professor at Florida International University and senior fellow here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes in The Wall Street Journal, the court “has taken what could be a historic step toward restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances.”

The case involved the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking penalties for alleged fraud against hedge fund manager George Jarkesy. Utilizing a provision of the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” of 2010, the SEC chose to pursue Jarkesy in an internal proceeding before an administrative law judge (ALJ) rather than a normal federal court that is part of the judicial branch created by the Constitution’s Article III. As Loyola points out, in Jarkesy’s and other cases, the SEC “acts as rulemaker, prosecutor, and judge for America’s securities laws.”

On multiple grounds, the Fifth Circuit majority found the SEC’s denying Jarkesy the venue of a federal court in which to defend himself to be in violation of the Constitution. The court ruled that, because fraud has been a common-law offense to which jury trial right attaches, and the SEC in-house proceeding lacked a jury of his peers, Jarkesy was denied his Seventh Amendment guarantee of trial by jury.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Wake-Up Call for Public Education

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://news13now.com/2022/06/02/a-wake-up-call-for-public-education/

A recent national analysis contained a deeply disturbing finding that has generated little public discussion when it should be causing an outcry: Nearly 1.3 million students have left public schools since the pandemic began. Most states have seen enrollment declines for two straight years. In New York City, K-12 enrollment has dropped by an astounding 9%.

Given that state education funding formulas rely on student population numbers, a large reduction in students will lead to a corresponding reduction in school budgets. That’s the law of supply and demand. Otherwise, at this rate, the public will soon be paying teachers to lead half-empty classrooms.

The message to educators and elected officials could hardly be clearer: Too many public schools are failing, parents are voting with their feet, and urgent and bold action is needed. Until now, however, the only governmental response has been to spend more money — too much of which has gone to everyone but our children.

Since 2020, Congress has sent an additional $190 billion to schools, in part to help them reopen safely and stave off layoffs. But in many districts, union leaders resisted a return to in-classroom instruction long after it was clear that classrooms were safe. And by and large, remote instruction was a disaster. By one analysis, the first year of the pandemic left students an average of five months behind in math and four months behind in reading, with much larger gaps for low-income schools.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

McCormick concedes to Oz in Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary by Tal Axelrod and Caroline Vakil

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://thehill.com/news/campaign/3511563-mccormick-concedes-to-oz-in-pennsylvania-senate-gop-primary/

Businessman David McCormick has conceded to rival Mehmet Oz in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, capping off a confusing and narrowly divided process.

McCormick said during a media availability on Friday that he had “came so close” on election night and had spent more than two weeks “making sure that every Republican vote was counted in a way that would result in the will of Pennsylvanian voters being fulfilled” after a recount was called with Oz leading by fewer than 1,000 votes.

“But it’s now clear to me, with the recount largely complete, that we have a nominee. And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his victory,” he said. “And I told him what I always said to you — that I will do my part to try to unite Republicans and Pennsylvanians behind his candidacy, behind his nomination for the Senate.”

In a brief Twitter thread, Oz confirmed that McCormick had called him and said he was “tremendously grateful” for his support.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sussmann’s cozy relationship with the FBI revealed by Jerry Dunleavy

Posted By on June 4th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/sussmanns-cozy-relationship-with-the-fbi-revealed

Michael Sussmann’s cozy relationship with the FBI was revealed during his two-week trial and in a new letter by congressional Republicans, shedding new light on the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer’s close ties to the bureau as he pushed since-debunked Trump-Russia claims.

Sussmann, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee when it was hacked in 2016, was acquitted by a jury this week after being charged with lying to the FBI about whom he was representing when, in September 2016, he pushed false allegations of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray this week with details they had learned about the relationship between Perkins, Sussmann, and the bureau.

“We have learned that since March 2012, the FBI approved and facilitated a Secure Work Environment at Perkins Coie’s Washington, D.C., office, which continues to be operational. In a letter dated May 25, 2022, the law firm confirmed and acknowledged the arrangement,” Jordan and Gaetz told Wray.

“We have been informed that former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann had access to this Secure Work Environment, and during the course of his recent trial, it was disclosed he had special badge access to FBI headquarters.”