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November 2021

Corrupted science: The Left’s Machiavellian bludgeon By Michael J. Maxwell

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/corrupted_science_the_lefts_machiavellian_bludgeon.html

“For all intents and purposes, today’s science is steeped in politically charged leftist manipulation, propaganda, and skullduggery. ”

Science is a noble human endeavor with the goal of discovering, examining, testing, explaining, harnessing, and preserving physical nature for the benefit and advancement of humankind. Moreover, the virtuous pursuits of science serve to augment our understanding of the previously unknown.

In its purest application, science is never truly settled. Science is not suited to reach concrete conclusions on the how, when, where, or why of the cosmic mysteries of the material universe, its creation, or Creator. For science, in its historically accepted proper application, is not based on conjecture alone. Scientific theories must be proven factually, through exhaustive experimentation and testing, to become relevant, applied, and useful.

The publishing of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in 1916 was followed by extraordinarily frustrating, peer-generated attacks on his groundbreaking science. A booklet was published in 1931 titled A Hundred Authors Against Einstein, featuring many ill-informed contributions. In total, 121 authors are identified as opponents to Einstein’s vaunted Theory of Relatively.

Today, Einstein’s gravitational theory has withstood all the frontal attacks by his peers, many of whom were seemingly jealous, egotistical scientists who forever tarnished their own reputations, becoming infamous naysayers of Einstein’s genius.

Did Einstein relish these inferior peer reviews? Of, course not! But did they serve to prove the validity of his theory beyond a reasonable doubt? Absolutely!

In the current state of scientific inquiry, even Einstein would be shouted down and classified a heretic had he stood up to and challenged the murky, politically correct, unchallengeable, “settled science” of climate change or COVID-19 mandates. Why? Because, the vacuous term “settled science” is now a sacred cow of the tyrannical, propagandizing, leftist crusaders, no matter how ambiguous and errant it is.

23 Aliens Previously Convicted of Homicide Charged With Illegal Reentry in Arizona And that’s in Biden’s first nine months. Terence P. Jeffrey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/23-aliens-previously-convicted-homicide-charged-terence-p-jeffrey/

Since February, which was President Joe Biden’s first full month in office, 23 aliens who had previously been convicted of homicide in the United States were charged in Arizona with illegally reentering this country.

We know this because the office of the U.S. attorney for Arizona regularly publishes these numbers. It puts out a monthly report on “immigration and border crimes” in its district, which encompasses all of Arizona.

In February alone, for example, the office reported that 190 foreign nationals in Arizona had been charged with “illegal reentry” to this country. Among these, 151 had already been convicted of a non-immigration crime in the United States. These included 44 aliens who had what the U.S. attorney’s office described as “violent crime convictions.” Two of these had already been convicted of “homicide” in the United States.

But that did not stop these two from allegedly returning illegally to this country after they had been deported.

Among those whom the office of the U.S. attorney charged from February through October with illegally reentering this country were 400 aliens who had previously been convicted here of what the U.S. attorney characterized as a “violent crime.”

There were also aliens who had previously been convicted of crimes that are not characterized as violent but that could clearly pose a danger to the public. These included 320 who had previously been convicted of driving under the influence and 846 who had previous “drug crime convictions.”

The return to the United States of deported aliens who had previously been convicted of homicide did not stop with the two charged in Arizona in February with illegal reentry.

Thanksgiving Day: Another Front in the Leftist War on America Guess who wants to “reconsider” and “reevaluate” America’s day to give gratitude?Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/thanksgiving-day-another-front-leftist-war-america-bruce-thornton-0/

For going on a century, the international Left has been seeking to discredit and undermine the United States. One front in this war comprises attacks on American history, monuments, and the traditional holidays that recognize and celebrate this country’s exceptional institutions, especially political and economic freedom, and the unalienable rights of individuals.

Having failed serially and ruined every country it has governed, the Left has a deep hatred for the nation and principles that achieved what socialism could only promise. Defending our national traditions, then, is not about time off from work, shopping, overeating, and binging on football, but about our being grateful for our freedom, and the importance of the history of our nation’s beginning.

Given the Left’s long animus, there’s no surprise in a story about several American universities gathering at an event that asks whether Americans should “reconsider” and “reevaluate”  Thanksgiving. According to the event’s advertising,

Starting in 1970, many Americans, led by Indigenous protesters, believed that Thanksgiving should be rededicated as a National Day of Mourning to reflect the centuries-long displacement and persecution of Native Americans. The recent shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day reflects a changing national mood. . . .  “Should Americans reconsider Thanksgiving when wrestling with our country’s complicated past?”

Such thinking reflects leftist revisionist history of the Howard Zinn and 1619 Project ilk, which in fact doesn’t correct the alleged partial and partisan historical record of America’s birth and scrub away its self-justifying myths, but rather simply replaces that history with an even more egregiously mythic one that violates every historiographical canon, especially the requirement that we avoid presentism––judging the past by the ideologically tainted standards of today.

Manchin Urges Biden to Restore Keystone XL Pipeline By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/manchin-urges-biden-to-restore-keystone-xl-pipeline/

Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) on Tuesday called on President Biden to reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline as the U.S. struggles with gas shortages and skyrocketing prices.

“I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built which would have provided our country with up to 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies,” the moderate senator said in a statement.

“To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard-working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country’s future,” Manchin said, referring to the group of major oil-producing countries.

The statement came after the Biden administration announced plans to release 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat soaring gas prices.

Manchin, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has previously advocated against Biden’s decision to revoke a permit for the pipeline. In February, he said that pipelines nationwide “continue to be the safest mode to transport our oil and natural gas resources, and they support thousands of high-paying, American union jobs.″

However, Biden has suggested that the U.S. end its dependence on fossil fuel and has committed to forging a path for the U.S. to have a carbon-free electric grid by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050.

“This is the decade that will determine the answer. This decade,” Biden said during an international climate summit earlier this month. “The science is clear: We only have a brief window left before us to raise our ambitions and to raise — to meet the task that’s rapidly narrowing.”

How Democrats Ruin Everything: The New York Times By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-democrats-ruin-everything-the-new-york-times/

This New York Times video doesn’t exactly shout, “Vote Republican” because everyone involved in it, and everyone it is aimed at, is a Democrat. But if Democrats can mess things up this badly, what other conclusion are we supposed to draw? Democrats make things worse is the resounding message here. I agree, except unlike the production team of the video, I don’t find this baffling.

The message of the video is that Democrats are hypocrites who don’t live up to their values. Of course they don’t! But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that they make everything worse. Watch the video. It’ll knock you out that this came from the Times.

Five Moderate Dem Senators Reject Biden’s Pick for Top Bank Watchdog By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/five-moderate-dem-senators-reject-bidens-pick-for-top-bank-watchdog/

Five prominent moderate Democratic senators have vowed to reject President Biden’s nominee, Saule Omarova, for the nation’s top bank watchdog role over her aggressive approach to regulating the financial sector.

Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee Jon Tester, Mark Warner, and Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), as well as Democratic Senators John Hickenlooper and Mark Kelly have all declared their opposition to Omarova as head of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Biden officials still endorse Omarova, even though her confirmation is increasingly unlikely given these lawmakers’ disapproval.

“The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination,” a White House official told Axios.

“Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position,” the official added. “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”

The former law professor drew criticism from Republicans during a congressional hearing last week for her past academic works in which she advocated to “end banking as we know it.” Her position would preside over lenders holding an extremely high value of assets. Senator Kennedy grilled her over her purported praise of a number of economic practices exercised by the Soviet Union.

Voting Is For Citizens New York City’s latest effort to extend the franchise to legal permanent residents would devalue citizenship and dilute the power of the vote. Seth Barron

https://www.city-journal.org/noncitizen-voting-devalues-citizenship

New York City’s political leaders are prepared to extend the franchise to noncitizens by creating a new class of persons called “municipal voters.” These new voters would include Legal Permanent Residents—LPRs, known familiarly as “green card” holders—and other noncitizens “authorized to work in the United States.” Municipal voters would be permitted to vote in all local elections, including primary, general, and special elections for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, city council, borough president, and in local ballot initiatives. They would not be permitted to cast ballots in state or federal elections.

About 37 percent of New York City residents were born abroad. The majority of these more than 3 million people are naturalized citizens, entitled to vote in any election, assuming they meet the requirements of being 18 years old and not currently in prison or on parole. The “municipal voter” legislation would apply to the 650,000 LPRs in New York City and approximately 150,000 others who hold employment-eligible visas, or who have received “deferred action” status under DACA.

New York City has about 5.6 million registered voters, 90 percent of whom are considered “active.” Expanding the rolls by another 800,000 voters would potentially create a major new voting bloc, though it is not clear that these voters would be especially motivated to go to the polls. Voter turnout in New York City, especially in local elections, is extraordinarily thin, with typically less than 20 percent of registered voters bothering to take the trouble; one imagines that noncitizens would have even less engagement in the process. The effects on some council races, however, could be meaningful: the noncitizen population is distributed unequally around the city, so districts in parts of Queens or the Bronx with populations more than 50 percent noncitizen could see a much greater impact than other areas of the city with higher concentrations of citizens.

Allowing noncitizens to vote was normal in the early years of the American republic, though New York State ended the practice in 1804. Arkansas was the last state to abolish alien voting in 1926. In the wake of the 1968 teachers’ strike, New York City opened voting for local school boards to all residents, on the premise that noncitizen parents of schoolchildren ought to have a say in how their schools were run. But school boards were abolished in 2002, when direct control of the Department of Education was concentrated under the mayor, and the city’s experiment with noncitizen voting ended then, too.

BRET STEPHENS Can Liberals Survive Progressivism?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/opinion/liberals-survive-progressivism.html

It’s been nearly 30 years since then-Gov. Bill Clinton took a break from the campaign trail to oversee the execution of death-row inmate Ricky Ray Rector. Morally, it may have been repugnant to kill a man so mentally handicapped by a failed suicide attempt that he set aside the pecan pie of his last meal because he was “saving it for later.”

Politically, it was essential.

By the early 1990s the American left had spent a generation earning a soft-on-crime image in an era of growing lawlessness. In 1988, Mike Dukakis secured the Democrats’ third landslide loss thanks in no small part to his stalwart opposition to the death penalty. Four years later, it was difficult to imagine any Democrat reaching the White House without a literal blood sacrifice to the gods of law and order.

Now Democrats seem intent on reviving that reputation. In Waukesha, Wis., six people were killed and at least 60 injured when Darrell Brooks drove his Ford Escape through a Christmas parade, according to the police. Brooks already had a lengthy rap sheet and had reportedly run over a woman with the same S.U.V. early this month. But, as The Times reported, he had been “quickly freed from jail on bond after prosecutors requested what they now say was an inappropriately low bail.”

What happened in Waukesha on Sunday is among the consequences of easy bail. And bail reform — that is, reducing or eliminating cash bail for a variety of offenses — has been a cause of the left for years.

Then there is California, which in 2014 classified possession of hard drugs for personal use and the theft of up to $950 of goods as misdemeanor offenses. In the Bay Area, the results have been stark: San Francisco’s overdose deaths rose to 81 per 100,000 people in 2020 from 19 per 100,000 people in 2014.

In the meantime, shoplifting has become endemic, brazen and increasingly well organized, culminating in mobs of looters ransacking stores and terrifying customers in the Bay Area last week. Local shops are closing, neighborhoods are decaying, encampments of drug addicts have proliferated, and streets are befouled by human excrement — a set of failures Michael Shellenberger calls in his thoroughly researched and convincing new book, “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” “the breakdown of civilization on America’s West Coast.”

As for the rest of the country: Can anyone seriously say that Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia or New York has been improved in recent years under progressive leadership? Why did rates of homelessness register their biggest jumps between 2007 and 2020 in left-leaning states like New York, California and Massachusetts — and their biggest decreases in right-leaning ones like Florida, Texas and Georgia?

MY SAY: GIVING THANKS IN WORDS AND MUSIC

There is on the eve of Thanksgiving Day so much to be grateful for in my personal life but this is a national holiday where our gratitude is directed to our magnificent nation. The song “America the Beautiful” expresses it eloquently. The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859-March 28, 1929) and the music composed by a church organist Samuel Augustus Ward (December 28, 1848 – September 28, 1903).

“America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!”

I wish you all a joyous holiday!….rsk

Europe’s Migrant Crisis Demonstrates Biden’s Weakness by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17956/europe-migrant-crisis-biden

Mr Xi’s confidence that he has nothing to fear from Mr Biden was clearly reflected in the patronising tone he adopted towards the US leader from the outset of their three-and-a-half hour meeting, referring to Mr Biden as his “old friend”, when he is clearly no such thing.

By contrast Mr Biden proved unwilling to raise any issues that might prove uncomfortable for the Chinese leader, such as Beijing’s role in causing the Covid-19 pandemic that has wrought havoc throughout the world.

The Russian autocrat [Putin] is also well aware of Mr Biden’s weak disposition as a result of the three-hour summit the two leaders attended in Geneva last June, the most notable outcome being the American President’s utter capitulation to Moscow on long-standing arms control demands.

Consequently, the only winners from Europe’s latest migrant crisis are likely to be Mr Putin and his thuggish Belarusian ally….

Nothing better illustrates the ability of rogue states to take advantage of Joe Biden’s pitifully weak leadership than the role Belarusian despot Alexander Lukashenko has played in creating a migrant crisis in the heart of Europe.

As Mr Biden’s unimpressive performance during his recent video summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping has graphically demonstrated, the US leader appears increasingly out of his depth on the world stage, to the extent that Washington’s adversaries see Mr Biden’s weakness as working to their advantage.