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February 2021

House Republicans Demand Answers From Pelosi on Jan. 6 Security Failures By Mark Tapscott

https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-gopers-demand-answers-from-pelosi-on-jan-6-security-failures_3697484.html

Ranking Republicans on four key House committees concerned with security at the Capitol complex are demanding answers from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about her actions before, during, and after the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol building.

“It has been widely reported and confirmed by multiple sources that when [then-Capitol Hill Police] Chief [Steven] Sund requested the National Guard be activated ahead of the January 6th Joint Session of Congress, the response from the Sergeant-At-Arms (SAA), acting on your behalf, was that the ‘optics’ of having the National Guard on-site were not good and the intelligence didn’t support the move. The request was not approved,” the four GOP representatives told Pelosi in a lengthy letter made public on Feb. 15.

“Furthermore, on January 6th, in the middle of the on-going attack of the Capitol, Chief Sund again notified the SAA of his request for approval to authorize the National Guard. It took over an hour for his request to be approved because the SAA had to run the request up the chain of command, which undoubtedly included you and your designees.”

The four signers of the letter are Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Administration, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

Free World Should Draw ‘Red Line’ Against Communist China: Former Pompeo Adviser By Cathy He and Jan Jekielek

https://www.theepochtimes.com/free-world-should-draw-red-lines-against-communist-china-former-pompeo-advisor_3697498.html

The world needs to wake up to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) bullying and lay down its own rules to deter the regime’s aggressions, the China adviser to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says.

Miles Yu, a Chinese-born academic who helped shape the Trump administration’s China policy, called out the CCP’s tactic of threatening the United States, telling it not to interfere in issues deemed to be the regime’s “internal affairs,” including Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang—which it dubs “red lines.”

“This is [the] Chinese Communist Party’s ‘red line,’ that’s all. It’s not red lines based upon international law,” Yu said in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program.

Most recently, the regime’s top diplomat warned the Biden administration that “any trespassing would end up undermining China–U.S. relations and the United States’ own interests.”

When the regime tells countries that the topic of Xinjiang is a “red line,” what it’s really saying, according to Yu, is, “We’re going to lock up a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, we torture them, we suppress their freedom.

“And you, the international community, … are not allowed to say a word in protest. Otherwise you’re not respecting us.”

Biden’s Rough Start With the World This has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-rough-start-with-the-world-11613430041?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

It hasn’t been the most promising start. Less than a month into Joe Biden’s presidency, and his administration is already engaged in spats with China, Russia and Iran. It is also discovering that U.S. allies are not quite as happy with Mr. Biden’s Feb. 4 announcement that “America is back” as many Democrats might have hoped.

In Asia the administration’s Myanmar policy—imposing sanctions that signal displeasure without materially affecting the army’s ability to rule—has attracted little enthusiasm. On Feb 15, India’s foreign minister hailed Indo-Japanese cooperation on regional infrastructure projects that link Myanmar with its neighbors, a not-so-subtle signal that India intends to go on cooperating with Myanmar no matter what Washington wants. Simultaneously, the large portion of the Indian press that supports the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is aflame with resentment that Vice President Kamala Harris’s niece, Meena Harris, seems to be siding with protesters against BJP policies.

European leaders are also dismissive of American moralism. French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the importation of U.S.-academic and cultural wokeness as a threat to the French way of life, while pragmatists on the Continent are pushing to strengthen economic relations with Russia and China—virtually ignoring the Biden administration’s efforts to raise the pressure on human-rights abusers in Moscow and Beijing. With the U.S. trade representative’s recent announcement that Trump-era retaliatory tariffs on European wine, cheese and food imports aren’t going away soon, this has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record.

A Deep Green Freeze Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

Biden Administration: Our New Vaccination Sites Will Not Include . . . Vaccine Doses By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-administration-our-new-vaccination-sites-will-not-include-vaccine-doses/

This morning brings another example of how the Biden administration’s much-touted plan to expand and accelerate the pace of vaccinations is less than meets the eye. The plan to establish 100 federally supported vaccination sites by the end of February means the federal government will deploy tents and staffers . . . but not more doses of vaccine, which is pretty fundamental to running a successful vaccination site.

Eager to protect more people against the coronavirus, health officials in Oklahoma jumped at the chance to add large, federally supported vaccination sites. They wanted them in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and a third, mid-size city, Lawton, thinking the extra help would allow them to send more doses to smaller communities that had yet to benefit.

“We felt like if we could get them in the metro areas, what that would allow us to do is . . . free up a lot of our other resources to do more targeted vaccinations in underserved areas,” said state Deputy Health Commissioner Keith Reed.

Those plans are now on hold after the state learned that the sites would not come with additional vaccines. Instead, the doses would have to be pulled from the state’s existing allocation, and the three sites alone might have used more than half of Oklahoma’s vaccine supply.

“We’re not prepared to pull the trigger on it unless it comes with vaccine,” Reed said.

Alex Berenson Attacks the Vaccine That Will End the Lockdowns By Isaac Schorr see note please

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alex-berenson-attacks-the-vaccine-that-will-end-the-lockdowns/

Neither argument holds much water. Berenson, who has been right on most issues relating to Covid is not an epidemiologist and Schorr who has been wrong so often is not a virologist. But much is yet to be determined on the relatively new vaccines….rsk

Some people just won’t take “yes” for an answer.

Alex Berenson, an independent writer who was once at the New York Times, has been among the loudest critics of the restrictions that have been put in place to fight coronavirus. And, in some cases, he has been right. Which makes it all the more confounding that, just as the vaccines are making it possible to loosen or abolish those restrictions, Berenson is trying to convince the public that the vaccines don’t actually work.

Berenson argues that our focus should be “on the Israeli data showing thousands of infections and scores of deaths in people who have received both doses” of the vaccine. But this is absurd. Only four Israelis have died two weeks after receiving their second dose, which is the amount of time needed for the vaccine to be maximally effective. All four were over the age of 60 and therefore particularly vulnerable to the disease.

None of this should be surprising to anyone with even the most modest understanding of how vaccines work, or with the slightest willingness to look into the data. Vaccines are not catch-all solutions. Some vaccinated people will get sick, some will die. What the vaccines are meant to do is mitigate risk, and my goodness, do they mitigate a whole lot of risk. A new study analyzing 600,000 vaccinated and 600,000 unvaccinated Israelis showed that “the inoculated group produced 94 percent fewer symptomatic COVID-19 cases, and 92 percent fewer cases of serious illness.” Berenson’s point is that because that number isn’t 99 or  100 percent, it’s not worth taking. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so injurious.

Biden Orders Kung Pao Chicken During First Official Call With China

https://babylonbee.com/news/on-bidens-first-official-call-with-china-he-orders-kung-

Biden made his first official call to Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday, and ordered a Kung Pao Chicken #5 with fried rice and two egg rolls.

“Listen here, Xi — I ain’t messing around here,” said Biden. “I wanna Kung Pao and General Tso’s. And give me some fried rice with a couple of those deep-fried cabbage-twinkies with the ducktail sauce.”

Biden’s press secretary later confirmed the call with China was a “robust” discussion about foreign trade and human rights, but she did not go into further detail.

Anonymous sources inside the White House say Biden is frustrated after waiting for over 12 hours for his order to show up, promising to “never order from China again.”

“I’ll never let China eat my lunch!” Biden later was heard saying. The U.S. Ambassador to China has announced Biden will be placing high tariffs on fortune cookies until he gets all the food he ordered– or a full refund. 

Prominent University College London Scholar Resigns After Academic Board Rejects Leading Definition of Antisemitism: ‘You Are All Going to Hell!’ By Benjamin Kerstein

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/02/15/prominent-university-college-london-scholar-resigns-after-academic-board-rejects-leading-definition-of-antisemitism-you-are-all-going-to-hell/

DPS Note: This is in the UK. But if you’re in America and have access to news other than from the legacy media, you know it’s here and getting worse. In fact, if you happen to be in Congress, you can be a real Jew hater and get to be vice chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Africa and global human rights issues which covers Israel amongst other countries.

A prominent scholar at University College London has resigned in disgust after the institution’s Academic Board demanded the administration rescind its adoption of the leading definition of antisemitism.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition, which has been adopted by governments and educational institutions worldwide, is opposed by some in academia for including antisemitic ideas and rhetoric that attack Israel and Zionism.

The Board called on the university to “replace the IHRA working definition with a more precise definition of antisemitism.”

Opinion: Is Israel still a US ally? The answer was no David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-is-israel-still-a-us-ally-the-answer-was-no/

Jen Psaki’s circuitous answer wasn’t pretty but it said plenty.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

There are at least 42 ways to say “yes” in English. Biden’s White House press secretary chose none of them. That’s because the answer was “no.”

“Does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?”

The question was simple enough, but at last Friday’s press briefing, Jen Psaki couldn’t get the appropriate one-syllable answer to form on her lips, which is incredible, because even if you plan to shaft Israel at every turn, you still say, “Of course it is!” Then you throw out the well-worn cliches like, “unbreakable,” “unshakeable,” and “special relationship.”

Psaki did none of that, so she gets credit for being honest, if turgidly so. She said, instead:

“Well, you know, again, I think we — there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes — one that we, I think, confirmed an interagency meeting just last week — to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East. We’re — we’ve only been here three and a half weeks, and I think I’m going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give, kind of, a complete laydown of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues.”

She didn’t even circle back.