Game-Changing Weapons Begin to Flow to Ukraine After NATO Emergency Meeting

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/04/08/game-changing-weapons-begin-to-flow-to-ukraine-after-nato-emergency-meeting-n547253

On Thursday, NATO held an emergency meeting about Russia’s increasingly horrific and atrocity-filled invasion of Ukraine. However, unlike most NATO meetings, this one was substantive.

For starters, the attendees were not only NATO nations; there were also observers present: the European Union, Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine. If Putin was afraid of being surrounded before, he should take a quick look at his map now (just a reminder that Japan and Russia still have an unresolved border dispute, see Russia conducts military exercises in disputed islands).  As if to validate the stereotype of the Germans being either “at your throat or at your heel,” the German Foreign Minister showed he was definitely at Putin’s heel by leaving early.

The main issue on the table was weaponry. Quantity, quality, and purpose were all concerns. To date, the weaponry supplied to Ukraine has been defensive, and the defensive weaponry has been careful not to tip the balance of power. At best, Ukraine could achieve a Russian withdrawal to February 23 lines in most of the country while going to a 1916-style stalemate in Donbas that would give up an extensive amount of territory and reward Putin’s land grab strategy. It was reminiscent of the Star Trek episode, “A Private Little War.”

To underscore the theme, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister made it very clear what he wanted.

Biden Administration, EU and Iran’s Mullahs: Historical Mistake Repeating Itself by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18404/biden-administration-eu-iran-mullahs

The Biden administration and the EU do not need to go too far back to see the outcome of those appeasement policies and the nuclear deal with Iran. Its theocratic regime became more determined than ever, as an oblation, an offering to God, to annihilate Israel.

Right after the nuclear deal, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who enjoys the final say in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy, published a 416-page book, titled “Palestine,” with a cover featuring a map of the Middle East with no Israel in it.

In the book, Khamenei details his plan of destroying Israel and characterized himself as “the flag bearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

The more the Islamic Republic became empowered due to the appeasement it received, the more it boasted that it could destroy Israel “in less than eight minutes.”

“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” Winston Churchill said. This is exactly what is happening as the Biden administration and the European Union continue relentlessly to appease the ruling mullahs of Iran and attempting to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Biden administration and the European Union appear to believe that rewarding the Iranian regime will make it act as a constructive and modern nation-state. This idea first surfaced and was acted upon during the administration of then US President Barack Obama, who, on concluding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, pointed out that he was “confident” it would “meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies”.

England’s NHS promoting prostitution to pay for gender transition treatments By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/englands_nhs_promoting_prostitution_to_pay_for_gender_transition_treatments.html

One of England’s National Health Service-funded clinics is promoting prostitution as a way for transgender people to pay for their transition treatments.

Being a sex worker ‘can be useful and sometimes empowering’, according to a guide produced by CliniQ, a sexual counselling service for transgender people at King’s College Hospital in London. It adds: ‘It can help us pay for parts of our transition.’

The booklet by CliniQ, which is part-funded by King’s College NHS Trust and three London local authorities, also suggests that transgender men – people born in female bodies but transitioning to male – can hide the fact that they are trans when visiting gay sex parties.

That’s a great use of taxpayer’s money! The NHS and some in the LGBTQ community may think this is a capital idea, or even a “twofer.” In truth, however, it is using other people’s hard-earned tax dollars to promote an amoral way to earn money for the desecration of one’s body, which is an affront to God.

There is nothing healthy about that. Will Jolly Olde England’s NHS soon recommend that folks start selling illicit drugs as a way to pay for their stays in substance abuse rehabilitation clinics? Or try their hand at a roulette table and put everything on “red” in hopes of paying off their gambling debt? Perhaps the NHS would suggest people pay their parking tickets with money obtained by robbing a bank?

Chilling Effort to Destroy Trump Lawyers Epitomizes America’s War on Wrongthink Benjamin Weingarten

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chilling-effort-to-destroy-trump-lawyers-epitomizes-americas-war-on-wrongthink_4388006.html?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy&rs=0&&slsuccess=1

Jan. 6 served as the catalyzing event for America’s ruling class to wage a War on Wrongthink against dissenters from its orthodoxy under the banner of “defending democracy.”

At its narrowest, the Capitol breach spawned the Department of Justice’s legal pursuit and prosecution of participants as something approximating terrorists, and the January 6th Committee’s political pursuit and persecution of the conservative movement itself as terroristic.

One can draw a line from this dual-track effort to the never-ending push on the left to lock up President Donald Trump, force Justice Clarence Thomas off the bench, disqualify members of Congress from even running in 2022, and now, in an overlooked but uniquely sinister element of this ever-expanding jihad, for a group called “The 65 Project” to ruin the lives of conservative lawyers.

Unpopular though litigators might be, this vengeful, dangerous, and un-American manifestation of the War on Wrongthink should concern all Americans.

As The 65 Project, led in part by progressive operative and founder of the anti-conservative media “watchdog” Media Matters, David Brock, announced at its launch in a series of tweets:

We’ve come together to hold accountable the Big Lie Lawyers behind fraudulent lawsuits intended to overturn election results, and those that otherwise helped fuel insurrection.

Following Biden’s 2020 victory, an army of Big Lie Lawyers filed 65 lawsuits based on lies, in a malicious attempt to subvert democracy. They failed.

Men Accused of Impersonating DHS Agents Have Possible Ties to Iranian Intelligence By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/08/men-accused-of-impersonating-dhs-agents-have-possible-ties-to-iranian-intelligence-n1588109

The bizarre case of two men who posed as DHS agents, ingratiating themselves with four Secret Service employees, took an unexpected turn when it was revealed that the men are under investigation for having possible ties to Iranian intelligence — specifically, the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Investigators allege that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, posed as various officers and employees of the U.S. government, including members of federal law enforcement agencies, since February 2020. During that time, they got close to four Secret Service agents — including an agent assigned to Jill Biden’s protection detail — by supplying them with perks and gifts, including the use of a $40,000-a-year apartment.

The agents have since vacated the apartment, so investigators aren’t sure if their conversations were bugged or not.

The end game of the fraudsters is still unknown, although the ties to the IRGC would suggest that terrorism was a distinct possibility.

CBSNews:

Prosecutors said Thursday that Ali told witnesses he had connections to the Pakistani Intelligence Service, which the government said it has not yet verified. Prosecutors also said  the government recovered his passport containing three “older” Pakistani visas and two Iranian visas from 2019 and January 2020. There was an indication on Ali’s Iranian visa that he had entered that country at some point, prosecutors said, although they did not specify when.

Will Joe Biden Bring the U.S. Down With Him? David Solway ****

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2022/04/08/will-joe-biden-bring-the-u-s-down-with-him-n1588266

Joe Biden does not seem steady on his feet or clear in his mind, and at this stage the same might be said for the country he nominally governs. His unforced errors, some of which have an oddly deliberate ring to them, may have rendered the November midterms and the 2024 presidential election entirely moot. Whether the nation can remain socially, politically, and economically intact even for the next few months is an open question. Biden is a fool, but there is cunning in his folly. A frugal mind may be capable of great wiliness, and blunders may curiously work in an unintentional way to promote intentional policy. Many of Biden’s gaffes and much of his political mischief fit seamlessly into the Democrat plan for the nation. The result may not be wise, but as poet Thomas Gray wittily wrote, “where ignorance is bliss,/’Tis folly to be wise.”

There are two sorts of gaffes or blunders which Biden is prone to make: the kind that are plainly indicative of cognitive decline, and those that dovetail neatly into Democrat, neo-Liberal policy to being in a new world order associated with the Great Reset. This entails the extension of NATO, regime change in Russia, the collapse of the American middle class, and the installation of oligarchic rule in the U.S.
The elements of the master plan are obvious.

The situation on the southern border is an avowed catastrophe, for which the clueless Kamala Harris has taken much of the blame. She has been roundly condemned for failing in her duty to attend to the security breach, which was her remit, when it should have been obvious that abandoning border security was the purpose all along. Doing nothing, she did her job. Biden’s recent announcement ending the Title 42 Illegal Immigration Rule, which forced the return of more than half of illegal immigrants, is proof positive of the Democrats’ abiding intention to destabilize the nation.
When it comes to energy, the disaster compounds. Biden’s Executive Order on the first day of his assuming office canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project, and his suspending oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, has ensured that American energy independence has become a thing of the past, that energy prices would soar, and that rampant inflation would devastate the domestic economy. Skyrocketing gas prices are merely the canary in the coal mine. Blaming Russia is a patent “red” herring.
As for foreign policy, Biden was asleep at the helm, or just as likely he was steering it hard to port rather than sagely to starboard. The U.S.-backed plan to sanction Russia, place an embargo on its oil shipments, seize and block Russian banking accounts and expel the country from the SWIFT international banking and messaging network for its incursion into Ukraine was a misconception of the first magnitude. The result is undeniable: increased inflation on the home front, the strengthening of the Russian ruble, and the isolation of Russia from the West which has enabled it to cement its trade relationships with non-compliant nations like China, India, and the Arab bloc, as well as to encourage it to replace its reliance on SWIFT by increasing its proximity to the Chinese-sponsored alternative, its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra: ‘I Will Do Everything I Can to Defend’ Sex Changes for Children

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hhs-secretary-xavier-becerra-i-will-do-everything-i-can-to-defend-sex-changes-for-children/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

That’s good to know. Americans should keep it in mind next time they show up to the ballot box.

While testifying before the House Budget Committee yesterday, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Xavier Becerra affirmed that yes, his department was in favor of taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgeries for minors. “So for the record, you favor HHS funding . . . for sex-reassignment surgeries for minors?” Lauren Boebert, (R, Colo.) asked. Becerra answered:

I will do everything I can to defend any American, including children, whether or not they fit the categories you have mentioned or not. And if they talk about gender-affirming care, I am there to protect the rights of any American.

In other words: yes.

David Mamet Is a Defiant Scribe in the Age of Conformity The playwright won’t play along with woke signaling, talismanic masking or deference to petty tyrants. Barton Swaim

https://www.wsj.com/articles/david-mamet-book-recessional-free-speech-covid-mask-vaccine-mandates-lockdown-transgender-lgbtqia-sogie-woke-crt-critical-race-theory-blm-hollywood-theater-11649424996?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

“Woke signaling, blind compliance with public-health authoritarianism, deference to theater critics and tyrannical city officials—Mr. Mamet doesn’t play along.”

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, innumerable films, TV documentaries and history textbooks instructed us that the 1950s were years of conformity and conventionalism: “The Donna Reed Show,” McCarthyism, “The Organization Man,” TV dinners. In fact, the ’50s were a time of extraordinary artistic creativity, boundless technological innovation, original thinking in politics, intellectual diversity in journalism and higher education, new energy in religion, and enormous progress in race relations. What the ’80s and ’90s mistook for conformity was a naturally evolved cultural solidarity—something nearly everybody, on the left and the right, longs for now.

An informed observer of present-day America might reasonably conclude that our own decade—at least among the educated and advantaged classes—is far more imbued with the spirit of conformism than the ’50s were. Corporate managers and military leaders parrot nostrums about diversity, inclusion and sustainability that few of them believe. Museums and orchestras studiously avoid programming that might offend ideologues. Reporters and producers in the mainstream press seize on stories—or ignore them—solely because that’s what everybody else in the press is doing. Large majorities in wealthy cities dutifully comply with public-health restrictions they know to be largely ineffective, mainly because refusing to do so would invite the ire of friends and neighbors complying with those restrictions for the same reason.

Maybe America’s deciders and describers (to use Nicholas Eberstadt’s phrase) aren’t the independent-minded lot they think themselves to be.

Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History His claim that he was tough on Putin is contradicted by his eight-year record.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/barack-obama-rewrites-his-russia-history-vladimir-putin-ukraine-11649450309?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sparked an Olympic sprint of sorts as politicians run away from their abysmal records regarding Vladimir Putin. Few are running faster than former President Barack Obama, who this week tried to rewrite the history of his own Russia policies.

“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”

As for Mr. Putin, the former U.S. President purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way—I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”

Mr. Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.

The Media Are Silent Over One Particular Story Relating to Kamala Harris Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/04/08/the-media-is-silent-over-one-particular-story-relating-to-kamala-harris-n2605643

When you can’t say anything good, you might as well not say anything at all, right? Vice President Kamala Harris is a trainwreck. She’s been a nightmare on television. She’s failed at every task handed down to her by Joe Biden. She’s a master chef when it comes to word salad. Regarding Ukraine, her analysis could have been drafted by a first grader. She botched the talking points on the sanctions against Russia. It all ties into the many, many stories about how she doesn’t do the work. She often ignores the briefs her staff prepare for her in a futile attempt to not make her look like an idiot. 

We all know she creates a toxic work environment. We all know she bleeds staff. All her top people have left, and the media is doing their part in not letting everyone know that by completely ignoring the story. Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters noted the media’s silence about the virtual disintegration of Harris’ office (via Newsbusters):

Well, that makes an even dozen. Not that you would know it, but Kamala Harris has lost her 12th major staffer since last June. As each one departed, the network newscasts avoided saying any of their names, saving the Vice President from embarrassment.