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January 2022

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden Is Not Alone. Democrats Have Been Delegitimizing Elections for Years By David Harsanyi

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/biden-is-not-alone-democrats-have-been-delegitimizing-elections-for-years/

For the people lamenting the ‘Big Lie,’ this rhetoric actually is nothing new.

Y esterday, Joe Biden joined Chuck Schumer and numerous other Democrats in a partisan attempt to preemptively delegitimize the 2022 election. Twice the president was asked by reporters whether voters could trust the electoral system, and twice the president contended that a fair election was unlikely unless the Senate was blown up and the Democrats’ election power grab was passed — a maneuver that poses a far more serious and lasting threat to the constitutional order than anything Donald Trump is cooking up right now. “I think it would easily be illegitimate,” said Biden. “The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in proportion to not being able to get these reforms passed.” Vice President Kamala Harris, sent out on the morning shows today, offered basically the same position.

For people lamenting the “Big Lie,” this is nothing new. Trump’s election-fraud conspiracy theories have been endlessly documented. Sometimes it sounds as if he’s merely appropriated the language of Democrats, who’ve been playing this ugly game for years. And it’s not only the post-election evidence-free Stacey Abrams–sore-loserism that we’re typically subjected to. It’s far more pervasive.

During Trump’s first impeachment — headier times, when we were still pretending to care about the fate of Ukraine rather than inviting Putin to take a slice — Democrats argued that ousting Trump was a precondition to a fair election. Nancy Pelosi warned colleagues that maintaining the position that elections should decide Trump’s fate was “dangerous” and “only adds to the urgency of our action, because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.” Adam Schiff, one of the leading culprits in the Russia “collusion” swindle, concurred: “The President’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Never once, incidentally, have any of these people offered a scintilla of evidence demonstrating that a single person’s vote was changed, altered, or appropriated by Trump or Russians or anyone else. Yet at one point, a healthy majority of Democrats claimed to believe that Putin had altered vote tallies. How many Democrats still believe it?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Doubles Down, But the American Voters Are Smarter By Lawrence Kudlow

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/national/biden-doubles-down-but-the-american-voters-are/91957/

So, no reset or midcourse changes for President Biden. That’s what we learned in the President’s presser. Big government socialist policies are alive and well. He’s doubling down.

According to Mr Biden, the polls are wrong, you see, the country really loves him and his policies. So his job is to travel around and better communicate his achievements and his goals to the American people.

That’s basically how I read yesterday’s performance. Trouble is for Uncle Joe, the public actually knows full well what his so-called achievements and policies are.

Voters are smarter than the radical left thinks. Polling is as much art as science, but seldom have I seen as much unanimity.

From Byron York’s column yesterday, the Gallup poll shows a remarkable swing from a year ago, when 49% considered themselves Democrats against 40% Republicans. Now it’s just 42% Democrats against 47% Republicans. That’s a net 14-point swing over just one year. Unprecedented.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The global warming question that can change people’s minds By Selwyn Duke

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/the_global_warming_question_that_can_change_peoples_minds.html

Late last year, I got into a discussion with a fellow who was quite sold on the idea that man’s activities were warming the Earth. While not a hardcore ideologue, it was apparent the gentleman had accepted the climate change narrative presented by mainstream media and believed we truly were imperiling the planet. I didn’t say much to him initially, as we were engaged in some recreation, but later on I resurrected the topic and told him I just wanted to pose one question.

“What is the ideal average temperature of the Earth”? I asked.

It was clear he was without an answer, so I explained my rationale. “If we don’t know what the Earth’s ideal average temperature is,” I stated, “how can we know if a given type of climate change — whether naturally occurring or induced by man — is good or bad? After all, we can’t then know whether it’s bringing us closer to or moving us further away from that ideal temperature.”

It was as if a little light bulb had lit up in his head, and he said, “You know, that’s a good question!”

I haven’t seen the man since, as we were just two ships passing in the night, and I don’t know how his thinking has evolved (or regressed) between then and now. I do know, however, that someone who’d seemed so confident and perhaps even unbending in his position had his mind opened with one simple question and a 20-second explanation.

Of course, part of the question’s beauty is that no one can answer it. There is no “ideal” average Earth temperature, only a range within which it must remain for life as we know it to exist. At the spectrum’s lower end, polar creatures proliferate; at its higher end, tropical animals do (though warmer temperatures do breed more life, which is why the tropics boast 10 times as many species as does the Arctic. Moreover, crop yields increase when CO2 levels are higher).

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Regulatory Burden for Every Room of Your House The Biden administration moves to make appliances more expensive and less effective. By Ben Lieberman

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-regulatory-burden-for-every-room-of-your-house-energy-efficiency-standards-household-dishwasher-furnace-natural-gas-11642719043?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Skyrocketing inflation, empty store shelves, rising crime and endless Covid restrictions have been grabbing headlines, but lesser-noticed regulatory mischief from the Biden administration may prove just as bad. The president’s bureaucrats are working on enough annoying regulations to affect every room in your house:

• The kitchen. The Trump administration took steps to fix the Energy Department’s efficiency standards for dishwashers that had the unintended consequence of increasing the time to clean a load of dishes from an hour or less in older models to well over two in new ones. But now the Biden DOE is in the process of reinstating these time-wasting and unpopular rules.

• The bathroom. In one of several agency measures that limit freedom of choice, the DOE has tightened water-use limits for certain types of showers. In addition, for those who prefer incandescent light bulbs surrounding their bathroom mirror (or anywhere else), the DOE is targeting these bulbs with energy-efficiency standards likely to boost their price to $7 each, leaving LEDs as the only viable option.

• The laundry room. Washing machines have been hit with multiple rounds of energy and water-efficiency regulations that have compromised performance and even forced some owners to buy and use special products to eliminate the stink that accumulates in the new models. Compliant dryers, like the new dishwashers, take longer to do the job. But rather than consider consumer-friendly improvements to existing standards, the Biden DOE is working to make them more stringent.

• The basement. Your next new furnace may be significantly more expensive, thanks to regulatory changes percolating through the Biden DOE bureaucracy. Furnaces are currently available in natural-gas or electric versions, but the DOE is all-in on the war against gas, which environmentalists hate because it’s a fossil fuel and thus a contributor to climate change. The agency has initiated steps toward new efficiency regulations that would skew the market toward electric versions, a costlier option.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Societal psychosis and the ‘mental illness’ excuse By Ruthie Blum

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-694114

Less than two hours before a Pakistani-born British Muslim took four Jews hostage at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas last Saturday, African-American Martial Simon pushed a young woman into an oncoming subway at the Times Square station in New York City.

In the first case, only the perpetrator wound up dead. In the second, it was the victim who lost her life.

These two unrelated incidents have more in common than immediately meets the eye. Both involved assailants who were well-known to law enforcement. Each was said by family members to be suffering from “mental illness.”

Let’s start with Malik Faisal Akram. Entering the synagogue during Shabbat-morning services and announcing his affiliation with Pakistani terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, the armed foreign national held the rabbi and three congregants captive for 11 hours straight. (The rest of the already dwindling flock was participating via Zoom, due to the spike in COVID-19 infection.)

For most of the day, FBI SWAT-team agents negotiated with Akram, whose reference to Siddiqui as his “sister” turned out to be an expression of ideological, rather than literal, kinship. But his emotional attachment to “Lady al-Qaeda” was strong enough for him to travel across the ocean to demand her release from the prison where she is serving an 86-year sentence for the attempted murder of US soldiers in Afghanistan and in connection with a plot to carry out a mass-casualty attack.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

I’m Stuck With an Anti-Semitic Labor Union It denounces Israel and treats me as a second-class citizen for resigning. By Avraham Goldstein

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/im-stuck-anti-semitic-semitism-public-labor-union-intimidation-dues-cuny-city-university-new-york-janus-11642714137?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

New York

As an observant Orthodox Jew born in the Soviet Union, I’m no stranger to resisting intimidation at significant cost. In 1971 my family petitioned authorities to leave the country after we suffered anti-Semitic harassment and physical assault. Our petition was denied and we were forced to live and work in that hostile environment for 15 years. Eventually, we settled in Israel, and I later established an academic career in New York. But the bigotry I fled has caught up with me.

I am a tenured professor of mathematics at the City University of New York. I joined the faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, nearly 10 years ago. In June, union officials—who speak for me under state law—issued a resolution I, and many of my colleagues, view as anti-Semitic.

The resolution condemned “the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel” and required chapter-level discussion of possible union support for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. It equated the policies of Israel, of which I am a citizen and where I still have family, with apartheid. Many of my Jewish colleagues and I were outraged.

I had paid thousands of dollars in union dues for workplace representation, not for political statements or attacks on my beliefs and identity. I decided to resign my union membership and naively thought I could leave the union and its politics behind for good. I was wrong. Union officials refused my resignation and continued taking union dues out of my paycheck. But those weren’t the issues that led me and five of my colleagues to sue them.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media Doesn’t Stop Lying, It Doubles Down On Its Lies Daniel Greenfield

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/01/media-doesnt-stop-lying-it-doubles-down-its-lies-daniel-greenfield/

NPR claimed that Sotomayor was forced to work remotely because Gorsuch wouldn’t wear a mask despite Chief Justice Roberts asking everyone to wear masks. In an extraordinary move, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Sotomayor have all denied the story.

This hasn’t even slowed down NPR which is in a conflict over how hard to sneer its way past it.

This Daily Beast headline ought to clarify the execrable arrogance in play here, “NPR ‘Founding Mother’ Unloads on Public Editor Over SCOTUS Story: ‘She’s Not Clarifying Anything!'”

Fake, but accurate. In an accurate, but fake sidebar, the media managed to turn an innocuous Mitch McConnell quote into a racial slur.

Mitch McConnell says Black people vote just as much as ‘Americans’ – Courier Journal

Mitch McConnell Suggests Black Americans Aren’t Really ‘Americans’ McConnell didn’t misspeak—at best, he uttered a white nationalist Freudian slip. – News One

The rest of the garbage parade quickly arrived.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Fractured Fairy Tales The President’s talent for political fiction. Don Feder

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/joe-bidens-fractured-fairy-tales-don-feder/

Joe Biden has been called a pathological liar, Pinocchio on steroids, delusional and totally detached from reality.

That’s unfair. Instead, let’s just say the president has a flair for fiction. Think of him as a master storyteller to put Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm to shame. Here are a few of my favorite Biden bedtime stories:

The Democrats Freedom to Vote Act will secure the right to vote for millions of Americans the GOP is trying to disenfranchise – Biden said Republicans working for election reform (secure ballots) are on the side of George Wallace not Martin Luther King. So, according to POTUS, to stand with the civil rights icon means supporting ballots mailed out en masse, casting ballots by putting them in drop-boxes, no requirement of signature verification, and no ID of any sort if you vote in person. DC now requires proof of vaccination and a photo ID to enter most indoor venues. That must mean that Mayor Bowser stands with George Wallace.
 
White Supremacy is a threat to democracy – Did white supremacists riot in more than 23 states in 2020, burning whole city blocks? (Actually, that was BLM and Antifa.) Are there hundreds of churches preaching white supremacy? (No, but there are hundreds of mosques preaching jihad.) Are foreign governments supporting white nationalism? (Oh, you must mean the way Iran, Yemen and half a dozen other Islamic states fund jihad here?) White supremacy is the Democrats’ “look-over-here” ploy to distract the credulous from Islamic extremism and leftists subversion.
 
What happened on January 6, 2021 was an insurrection or an attempted coup, if you prefer. – You betcha, struck at the very heart of democracy it did. Except, the only death directly attributable to the riot at the Capitol was an unarmed protestor shot by Capitol police. In fact, none of the rioters had guns. (How do you overthrow a government with supersonic jets by throwing folding chairs?) January 6, 2021 is the Democrats’ Reichstag fire. The goal is to criminalize the conservative movement and the half of the country that agrees with Donald Trump. The real threat to democracy isn’t the non-insurrection of 2021, but using the myth to crush dissent.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Taxpayer-Funded Lawyers for Illegals So-called “deportation defense” is the next big thing in radical causes. Matthew Vadum

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/taxpayer-funded-lawyers-illegals-matthew-vadum/

Leftists like to keep criminals, rioters, and illegal aliens out on the streets where they can do damage to American society instead of behind bars where they belong.

Leftist groups like the Kamala Harris-endorsed Minnesota Freedom Fund, National Lawyers Guild, and the ACORN successor group, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), set up bail funds for rioters to get them back out on the streets causing mayhem.

Now radicals are doing the same thing for illegal aliens.

The best friend of illegal aliens right now is the Brooklyn, New York-based Vera Institute of Justice, which spends much of its resources freeing illegals who often fail to appear for immigration hearings, from immigration detention facilities.

The extremist open-borders and anti-law and order narratives on Vera’s website, reeking of anti-Americanism, read like they were written by Noam Chomsky.

According to Vera: “In its scale and brutality, the American justice system is a global aberration[,]”; “The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world[,]”; and “People of color are incarcerated at an unmistakably higher rate than white people.”

The group’s mission is “[t]o end the overcriminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Press Conference – and the Blame Game Boasting, gaffes, delusions and passing the buck. Joseph Klein

By on January 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/bidens-press-conference-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden began his January 19th news conference with scripted remarks boasting about his first-year performance. He continued with an eyebrow-raising, delusional self-assessment for nearly two hours, in which he claimed that he had “probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen” while blaming Republicans and COVID-19 for failing to do even more.

“Can you think of any other President that has done as much in one year?” Biden asked reporters rhetorically. In one sense, he had a strong point: it is a challenge to think of any other U.S. president who has done more damage to the country domestically and globally in his first year in office than Joe Biden has done.

Biden rambled much of the time in responding to questions from the press regarding such topics as Russia’s designs on Ukraine, the economy, COVID-19, his pledges to bring unity to the country, and the fate of his Build Back Better and voting “reform” legislation. Rampant crime in cities across the country and unremitting surges of illegal aliens across the open southern border with Mexico did not come up.

Biden made his usual share of faux pas, most notably seeming to give Russia leeway for a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki quickly released a statement intended to walk back this gaffe. Biden himself followed up with his own “clarifying” statement but it was too late. “We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shot back on Twitter. “Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones.”

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