TOM GROSS: THE MEDIA’S TAKE ON ELON MUSK AND TWITTER

The takeover of Twitter yesterday by free speech advocate Elon Musk may herald a significant change in global political debate, and provide a major platform for views challenging “woke” opinion.

Predictably many in the liberal establishment – who has enjoyed a near monopoly on mainstream media opinion – are outraged.

The Washington Post – owned by the super-rich Jeff Bezos – was so alarmed that Twitter now may become more balanced that the paper called for Biden to move against Musk in order “to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.”

Below are four articles on Musk’s buyout, from The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and two from The New York Times.

As the Wall Street Journal notes:

Current management is correct that most regular social-media users don’t want a daily bath of Russian bots, jihadist propaganda, noxious harassment and so forth. Ditto for advertisers, who represent about 90% of the company’s revenue. Yet Silicon Valley’s tech lords have decided they want to be arbiters of speech on political topics like climate change and the origins of Covid.

Kyle Smith writes in The New York Post:

This whole thing apparently got started because Musk was willing to spend $44 billion to keep reading the Babylon Bee. It was five days after the right-leaning Bee got suspended from twitter for making a joke about the transgender (male-to-female) individual Rachel Levine, who is the assistant secretary for health and human services, that Musk sent his famous tweet asking, “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to” the principle that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy?” In a followup post, he noted, with uncharacteristic earnestness, “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”

You could argue the Bee’s joke about Levine was nasty. So freaking what? The best comedy is nasty. Jokes are supposed to say the unsayable. If your idea of comedy is people saying the sayable, watch Stephen Colbert. Neither Colbert nor anyone else ever gets banned from anything for calling Republicans Nazis, by the way. Would you rather be called a Nazi, or . . . a man?

Did a Key FBI Agent in Whitmer Plot Attempt to Surveil Steven Crowder? It appears Jayson Chambers, one of the key FBI Agents involved in the entrapment effort, did just that. Why? By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/25/did-a-key-fbi-agent-in-whitmer-plot-attempt-to-surveil-steven-crowder/

In 2017, Steven Crowder, a conservative activist and host of a popular YouTube channel, infiltrated Antifa with his producer.

Weeks before a speaking engagement by Ben Shapiro at the University of Utah—an event Antifa planned to disrupt violently—Crowder worked his way into the group through the use of burner phones and encrypted chats. Crowder secretly recorded discussions between Antifa thugs promising to use “plain clothes and hard tactics” to shut down Shapiro’s speech on September 28, 2017. This included distributing weapons such as ice picks, combat knives, and guns.

Despite a heavy law enforcement presence for Shapiro’s speech, pockets of violence did erupt as Antifa confronted police and Shapiro supporters outside the venue, resulting in the arrest of a handful of rabble-rousers. Crowder then posted a video account of his undercover operation and noted a collective lack of interest by major news organizations in Antifa’s violent pre-planning efforts.

An FBI agent, however, appeared to want more information from Crowder about Antifa’s behind-the-scenes work. It’s unclear how Crowder contacted this particular FBI agent shortly after the Shapiro protest but he described the encounter on Megyn Kelly’s podcast last week: “We got on the phone with a guy at the FBI and he asked ‘how did you get involved, how did you get on this Antifa app?’” Crowder told Kelly about the initial call, wondering aloud why the FBI didn’t know how to access the encrypted chat. The FBI, Crowder said, didn’t express any interest in capturing the perpetrators, which Crowder found “odd.”

The correspondence with this FBI agent, working out of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit in Michigan, continued for some time then tapered off. It wasn’t until recently that Crowder heard the name of his one-time FBI contact: Jayson Chambers.

Chambers was one of the key agents involved in the FBI-concocted plot to “kidnap” and “assassinate” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. He was primarily responsible for handling Dan Chappel, the informant hired by the FBI in the spring of 2020 and compensated at least $60,000 to execute the scheme. “This was the guy on a fishing expedition with my office!” Crowder told Kelly about Chambers. 

Biden Unilaterally Surrenders to Russia and China in Satellite Wars Our enemies will have a clear field for destroying our satellites. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/biden-unilaterally-surrenders-russia-and-china-daniel-greenfield/

Kamala Harris arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base where Discoverer-1, the first satellite to enter a polar orbit and America’s bold response to Russia’s Sputnik, was launched to announce that we would be unilaterally surrendering to Russia and China in the growing satellite wars.

Last November, Russia had conducted a DA-ASAT or direct-ascent anti-satellite test which demonstrated its ability to take out satellites. The Russians had used their A-235 anti-ballistic missile system to destroy their own Kosmos 1408 satellite. The message was clear: Moscow had the ability to clear out enemy satellites in the event of any conflict. Including ours.

“I don’t want to get ahead of specific measures that we may pursue,” Biden apparatchik Ned Price fumed, but had vowed that “we won’t tolerate this kind of activity.”

At Vandenberg, Kamala announced that the response would be absolute and total surrender.

Responding to Russia’s anti-satellite weapons test and Communist China’s earlier 2007 ASAT test, the Biden administration vows that it will surrender and refuse to deploy ASAT weapons.

“I think everyone here recognizes how extraordinary space is,” Kamala Harris rambled. “Space — it affects us all, and it connects us all.”

Fauci Lets His Megalomania Show

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/26/anthony-fauci-is-unhealthy-for-america/

The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser made last year what C.S. Lewis might have called a “lunatic, liar, or lord” statement when he essentially claimed to be the embodiment of science. (Hint: he’s a bit of the first, all of the second, but wants to be the third.) Five days ago, this man went even further, declaring that the executive branch should be free to act outside of boundaries put in place to prevent an all-powerful presidency.

He’s a menace. We’d all be better off if he were a Washington Nationals batboy rather than a powerful government functionary and influential media darling.

Anthony Fauci – we won’t grant him the honor of the title of “Dr.” because he’s far more bureaucrat than healer – who heads the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases is not science, even though in June 2021 he said his critics, of whom there are many but not enough, are “really criticizing science because I represent science.”

But he does have the mindset of an authoritarian.

During a CNN interview Thursday, Fauci expressed surprise and disappointment over federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s ruling that overturned Washington’s planes, trains, and public transportation mask mandate.

“Those types of things really are the purview of the” Centers for Disease Control, he said. “This is a public health issue.

“We are concerned” – said the man who also issued a “now is the time to do what you’re told” threat – “about courts getting involved in things that are unequivocally public health decisions. I mean, this is a CDC issue; it should not be a court issue.”

Biden Leaves Americans Vulnerable by Shortchanging Missile Defense With Iron Dome, Israel will have a better missile defense than the continental United States. Israel’s leaders, unlike America’s, have placed a priority on deploying systems to protect its population. By Ira Stoll

https://www.nysun.com/article/biden-leaves-americans-vulnerable-by-shortchanging-missile-defense?utm_content=

With Iron Dome, Israel will have a better missile defense than the continental United States. Israel’s leaders, unlike America’s, have placed a priority on deploying systems to protect its population.

The Pentagon recently sent Congress the 2022 National Defense Strategy, including a Missile Defense Review.

The document is classified and therefore not available to the public. The Defense Department promises an unclassified version will be “forthcoming,” but we’re still waiting. 

In the meantime, it is no wonder the Biden administration is trying to keep the information away from the voters. Once the electorate starts to understand how little the president and Vice President Harris are doing to protect the country, the political consequences could be devastating.

What is public is the president’s budget request: It seeks $9.6 billion for missile defense. That may seem like a lot — until you consider the context. 

In 2020, the final year of the Trump administration, the Missile Defense Agency requested $9.2 billion. In 2021, Biden’s first budget included an $8.9 billion request. Given inflation running at 8 percent a year, the $9.6 billion is effectively a cut from what Mr. Trump asked for. 

The sum for the Missile Defense Agency is a mere 1.2 percent of Mr. Biden’s $773 billion discretionary budget request for the Department of Defense. Most of the money would be for research and development, not deployment.

The here and now of Holocaust remembrance By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-here-and-now-of-holocaust-remembrance/

 It is of tragic relevance that anti-Jewish Arab riots, rocket fire and hate-filled solidarity protests around the world have upstaged the lead-up to Yom Hashoah, which begins on Wednesday evening.

Normally at this time, Israel’s preparations for Holocaust Remembrance Day are highlighted in news broadcasts and discussed at length by the punditocracy. Even during the more than 25-month pandemic period, when the customary somber memorials around the country were canceled altogether or replaced by Zoom ceremonies, the day marked by Israel for the anniversary of the Nazi genocide of the Jews—purposely slated for the week before Israel Independence Day—was treated with deference.

This year, however, one would be hard-pressed even to realize that the date is fast approaching. If anything, Israelis have been invoking the Holocaust mainly to decry the events in Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, played on this very heartstring last month when he addressed Israel’s Knesset via video.

The desire to universalize the particular plight of the Jews is nothing new. Nor is it surprising that many Jews are at the forefront of the effort to turn “never again” into a slogan that applies to any and all forms of death, destruction and discrimination.

For the past few years, even a number of prominent Israelis have joined the endeavor with gusto, not only through false analogies but by using the occasion of Holocaust remembrance to warn the Jewish state about its own dangerous extremists. Though some purveyors of this pernicious “cautionary tale” happen to be members of parties in Israel’s governing coalition, including in ministerial positions, their narrative has difficulty permeating the national membrane.

For one thing, most Israelis are too concerned with their personal safety in the face of shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and Molotov cocktails to worry about the purity of their souls and adherence to an unrealistic “rules of engagement” doctrine.

Arrest of ‘Mossad Agents’ to Justify Tehran’s Anti-Semite, Anti-Western Strategies Majid Rafizadeh

https://townhall.com/columnists/majidrafizadeh/2022/04/25/arrest-of-mossad-agents-to-justify-tehrans-antisemite-antiwestern-strategies-n2606282

On Wednesday, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) announced that it had arrested three individuals on charges of spying for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. The identity of the persons in question or the evidence that led to allegations against them were not revealed.

Vulnerable political parties or authoritarian regimes that lack an agenda for prosperity and development have always invoked foreign boogeymen, in that they are useful to blame for one’s failures. For example, In 1980, the mullahs provoked their western neighbor into war and used the “the divine blessing”— as former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini put it — to wipe out domestic opposition. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (PMOI), the People’s Fedayeen Organization, or any progressive movement that would have dared to speak out for democracy or women’s rights faced brutal crackdown, as a fifth columnist.

The Iranian regime has also a long history of using charges such as espionage and “collaborating with hostile states” to justify harsh sentences for political detainees. This impulse has accelerated in recent weeks as Tehran has been trying to expand its regional meddling as a hedge against the likely collapse of its 2015 nuclear agreement with the United States and five other world powers.

Opposition to Israel’s very existence has always been a central focus of the clerical regime’s appeals for “Muslim unity,” but this has faced newfound challenges since 2019 when a number of regional countries including Iran’s chief rival Saudi Arabia moved to normalize relations with Israel. Tehran has repeatedly condemned such efforts and has sought to leverage them against pre-existing relationships among other Arab and Muslim nations.

Don’t Say It: An Interview with Amy Wax Alexander Riley

https://americanmind.org/salvo/dont-say-it-an-interview-with-amy-wax/

American campuses have become the last place to find open debate about controversial matters.
Editors’ Note

Last December, Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, raised hackles on the Left when she appeared on Glenn Loury’s podcast to discuss the topic of American identity in an age of mass immigration from non-Western countries. Professor Wax’s comments prompted a round of denunciations and demands that she be suspended from her duties at the University of Pennsylvania. The following is a lightly-edited transcript of a conversation between Amy Wax and Alexander Riley from February of this year.

Alexander Riley: There is much going on in the current effort to cancel you at Penn Law. As is clear from the facts of the case here and in previous situations where you’ve faced pressure from your institution for perfectly defensible statements, important questions about tenure and academic freedom are at issue here. What does freedom of academic inquiry mean, and what does tenure protect, if a professor cannot present cases that might make someone somewhere unhappy?

Amy Wax: Nobody wants to talk about what’s most interesting about this. I did a podcast recently with Gad Saad and we discussed some of this on a meta-level. We were talking about how academia operates. I think there is a growing divide between academia—where less and less real intellectual life takes place—and what’s happening extra-academically, in think tanks and in online sites such as podcasts and Substack. There are now all sorts of fora and places of contact in which there’s a real exchange of ideas and you can talk about things like what I was talking about with Glenn Loury on his podcast.

We have a very large number of Asians who are capable, whose families are strong and who are pretty traditional in their personal conduct, but whose values are totally non-Judeo-Christian, completely foreign to us. At what point do we become South Asia? At what point do we become India, which is a failed state, by the way. Nobody wants to ask, “Why do Asians vote Democratic?” People have emailed me to say “Well, why do Jews?” That’s a good question too!

SMOKING GUN: White House Visitor Logs Prove Joe Biden Met With Hunter’s Business Associates By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/04/25/smoking-gun-white-house-visitor-logs-prove-joe-biden-met-with-hunters-business-associates-n1592526

Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any involvement with or knowledge of his son Hunter’s business dealings,

But according to visitor logs from the Obama administration, Eric Schwerin, Hunter Biden’s top business partner, visited the White House 19 times between 2009 and 2015 and met with then-Vice President Biden on at least one of those occasions.

Schwerin is the former president of Hunter’s now-dissolved firm Rosemont Seneca, and logs show that he met with Vice President Joe Biden on November 17, 2010, which was when Hunter was striking multi-million-dollar deals in foreign countries, including China.

In addition to meeting with Joe Biden, Schwerin’s other visits involved meetings with Biden’s staff and second lady Jill Biden’s staff.

“In October 2009, just months after Hunter co-founded Rosemont Seneca, Schwerin met with Evan Ryan, Vice President Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice president’s office is based, according to the visitor logs,” the New York Post reports. Emails also show that Ryan “acted as a conduit for Hunter Biden and his cronies.”

According to the logs, the following visits to the White House were amongst those made by Schwerin:

Meeting with Joe Biden aide Evan Ryan (10/28/2009)
Meeting with Jill Biden special assistant Meg Campbell (2/13/2010)
Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Michele Smith (10/24/2010)
Meeting with Joe Biden (11/17/2010)
Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Kellen Suber (8/22/2011)
Meeting with Jill Biden aide Betsy Massey (3/31/2012)
Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Michele Smith (2/7/2012)
Meeting with Joe Biden’s Director of Administration, Faisal Amin (3/28/2013)
Meeting with Joe Biden assistant Kathy Chung (5/20/2013)

Angry Moms vs. LGBTQ Groomers in Spicy Glendale School Board Meeting By Megan Fox,

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/04/25/angry-moms-vs-lgbtq-groomers-in-spicy-glendale-school-board-meeting-n1592514

The 2022 “year in review” specials should feature the angry moms of school board meetings. The army of moms standing up against the sexualization of their children by groomer teachers is a defining moment in the culture wars this year. It is happening again in Glendale, Calif. at the Glendale Unified School District, and the board there got an earful at their last meeting after a third-grade teacher, Tammy Tiber, was caught teaching LGBTQ sexuality to 8-year-olds three days a week.

The teacher played several videos for her 8-year-old students that addressed “queer kid stuff,” “pride parades,” “love is love,” and a lesson on Stonewall. One of the videos (below), called Talking to Kids About Pride Month, was pretty disturbing.