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February 2022

Canada and the tyranny of emergencies By Johannes Karl Otto Danneskiold-Samsoe

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/canada_and_the_tyranny_of_emergencies.html

Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a “state of emergency” against his own citizens in what has become the latest fashionable trend to crush dissent and demand obedience to the state. The BBC reports:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act to crack down on anti-vaccine mandate protests.

Mr Trudeau said the scope of the measures would be “time-limited”, “reasonable and proportionate” and would not see the military deployed. (snip)

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at Monday’s news conference that banks would be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order.

Vehicle insurance of anyone involved with the demonstrations can also be suspended, she added.

Ms Freeland said they were broadening Canada’s “Terrorist Financing” rules to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms, as part of the effort.

Whoopi’s back, and she hasn’t learned anything By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/whoopis_back_and_she_hasnt_learned_anything.html

After a highly publicized two-week pinch-on-the-wrist suspension for displaying her ignorance, trivializing and distorting the Shoah, (Holocaust) on the chick chat show, The View,  Caryn Elaine Johnson, AKA Whoopi Goldberg, returned to a highly publicized, rousing welcome from her like-minded co-hosts.

Emerging from her exile for a highly publicized non-apology apology on Stephen Colbert’s lefty gabfest, Johnson/Goldberg confirmed she still hasn’t learned anything.  And neither have the other Viewettes, who criticized their bosses for their closed-mindedness toward their pal Goldberg.

In all fairness, you can’t blame this sorry crew’s puzzled reaction — after all, Goldberg’s highly publicized, non–politically correct, equally repulsive pronunciamentos on race, religion, and sex issues never caused trouble.  Indeed, they have only enhanced her reputation over the years.

Specifically, many people are looking back on Goldberg’s defense of her friend, actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson, on The View in 2010, following his racist and antisemitic comments about Black and Jewish people — including an audio recording of the actor saying that he hoped his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, was “raped by a pack of n——.”

“I don’t like what he did here,” she said on the show.  “But I know Mel and I know he’s not a racist.  He may be a bonehead.  I can’t sit and say that he’s a racist, having spent time with him in my house with my kids.” (snip)

We all remember or have read about Goldberg’s infamous 1993 roast held at the Friars Club where her boyfriend at the time, Ted Danson, performed in blackface and said a slew of N-words and racist jokes. Goldberg ardently defended the routine and admitted to writing some of it, telling the press that she has “never been about political correctness.”

The January 6 Pipe Bombs Look Like Another FBI Hoax No one still trying to convince the public that two pipe bombs were planted near the Capitol in advance of January 6 can be believed.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/14/the-january-6-pipe-bombs-look-like-another-fbi-hoax/

In the 15-minute time span before the joint session of Congress convened at 1:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021, two incidents that set the stage for the day’s ensuing chaos happened simultaneously.

First, a man named Ryan Samsel, after taking some sort of direction from Ray Epps, overran a thin line of police and metal racks in what would be the first official breach of Capitol grounds around 12:50 p.m. (Samsel was charged and has been incarcerated for more than a year; Epps faces no charges.) Joining Samsel were members of the Proud Boys and a still-unknown number of FBI informants.

Around the same time, a woman named Karlin Younger who just happened to be walking to a laundry facility near the Republican National Committee headquarters just happened to look down and see what she believed was a pipe bomb nestled between a dumpster and a fence right next to the building. 

Both events fueled panic in the nation’s capital just as a contentious meeting to certify the Electoral College vote in the 2020 presidential election got underway in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. Then, the news got worse. Capitol police reportedly discovered another explosive outside the DNC headquarters. 

The New York Times immediately broke the story: “The device that was found at the R.N.C. was a pipe bomb that was successfully destroyed by a bomb squad, according to an official for the R.N.C,” reporters Maggie Haberman, Michael Schmidt, and Katie Benner wrote. “The package at the D.N.C. has yet to be identified, according to a top Democrat briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.”

Big Tech covers up Biden’s crack pipe giveaway America’s information gatekeepers are the Democrats’ rapid-response unit: Chadwick Moore

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/big-tech-media-crack-pipe-biden-free-beacon/

A throwaway line item in an otherwise innocuous spending package unveiled one way the Biden administration and the Democratic party sees “racial equity.” The Washington Free Beacon revealed a week ago that the Department of Health and Human Services would be distributing free crack pipes to drug users to promote hygiene and advance racial equity. The cost was around $30 million and the program is similar to what left-wing fiefdoms like Seattle and San Francisco already do.

The story had all the elements of tabloid gold — even better in clickability than the last Biden crack pipe story: Hunter’s laptop. Easily digestible in a single headline, sparing readers from grisly images of the president’s son getting a footjob, the story also succinctly validated everything we already knew about Democrats, their priorities and the left’s grotesque and fundamentally evil treatment of the black community.

“Equity” is, of course, intentionally and stridently divorced from “racial equality,” but in a way the party hopes you won’t notice. The equal society, a battle cry of the old school liberal, we now understand was the platform on which to build the equitable society. Equality, it turns out, was a bit too conservative in practice, was pretty much already in place and, for the left, nauseatingly in-step with the US Constitution.

Biden Administration Kills Israel-to-Europe Gas Pipeline by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18232/israel-europe-gas-pipeline

Biden’s decision — reportedly coordinated with Turkey but reached without consulting Israel, Greece or Cyprus, the main countries involved in the project — undercuts three of the strongest American allies in the Mediterranean region.

EastMed’s cancellation — variously described as a “disastrous decision,” a “strategic mistake” and an act of “appeasement” of Erdoğan — represents a major geopolitical victory for the Turkish strongman.

The EastMed pipeline has been in the works for more than a decade. The Israel-Greece-Cyprus project — joined by Bulgaria, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia — has long been seen as a way to diversify natural gas supplies to Europe.

The Turkish government has always insisted that Israeli gas can only be sold to Europe through Turkey.

“The Americans do not want the pipeline because Ankara might ‘get angry.'” — Theofrastos Andreopoulos, defense analyst, defensenet.gr.

“If Erdogan perceives the non-paper as some form of appeasement by Washington, he will simply double down on his gunboat diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean and play the role of spoiler in the region.” — Richard Goldberg, a member of the U.S. National Security Council during the Trump administration.

Is the Biden administration truly concerned about climate change, or does it want to prevent Israel from becoming a strategically important supplier of natural gas to Europe?

“The reversal on the EastMed pipeline becomes only more hypocritical and offensive given the fact that President Biden continues to clear the path towards completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.” — U.S. Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“This is a disastrous decision that imperils European security and opens the door for further Russian energy hegemony in European gas markets. It should be reversed.” — Ariel Cohen, veteran energy analyst, The Hill.

“Turkey is not looking to participate in Eastern Mediterranean initiatives, it wants to dominate them. Ankara’s goal is not one of cooperation but of regional primacy if not hegemony.” — Endy Zemenides, Executive Director, Hellenic American Leadership Council.

The Biden administration has abruptly withdrawn American support for the Eastern Mediterranean (EastMed) pipeline, a project aimed at shipping natural gas from Israel to European markets. The White House said the project was antithetical to its “climate goals.”

Biden Unleashes Dog-Role-Playing Fetishist On Key Nuclear Post His sexual fetishes include tying up his partner while he eats dinner and watches Star Trek.Jeremiah Poff

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/biden-unleashes-dog-role-playing-fetishist-key-jeremiah-poff/

The Biden administration’s new top dog at a key nuclear energy agency is an MIT-trained engineer whose sexual fetishes include tying up his partner while he eats dinner and watches Star Trek.

Sam Brinton was appointed to serve as deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy at DOE last month after serving a stint at the gay and transgender suicide prevention organization the Trevor Project.

Besides working at the Trevor Project, Brinton also holds a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had previously advised former President Donald Trump on nuclear waste matters.

Deputy assistant secretaries at Cabinet agencies are typically under-the-radar political appointments that do not require Senate confirmation. But Brinton’s garnered attention on social media after the popular Twitter account LibsofTikTok tweeted a picture of Brinton standing over three men role-playing as dogs.

The image went viral and brought attention to Brinton and the Biden administration’s decision to install the outspoken activist and nuclear waste expert to the Energy Department role.

Brinton has a history of promoting sexual fetishes and kinks related to animal role-playing. A post in the student newspaper at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2017 says the nuclear waste expert held a discussion on kinks and sex education at the campus.

“Throughout the entire talk, Brinton was open about his experiences, the kinks he partakes in, and the nature of his relationships,” the article reads. “He left us with countless anecdotes, like how he enjoys tying up his significant other like a table, and eating his dinner on him while he watches Star Trek.”

The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.

One Super Bowl, Two National Anthems? The uses and misuses of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/one-super-bowl-two-national-anthems-bruce-bawer/

His mother was a white girl who’d been abandoned by her black baby daddy before the infant’s birth. She gave the child up for adoption, and he found a home with a white couple who’d lost two sons because of heart defects. By all accounts they were loving parents. Yet six years ago, during a pre-game performance of the national anthem, their adopted son, who’d become a NFL quarterback, introduced the toxic business of “taking a knee” as a protest against the purported oppression of black people by white Americans. With that one action, Colin Kaepernick unleashed a whirlwind of mischief that inflicted very real and substantial damage upon his country’s precious, hard-won social cohesion, thereby ensuring that he would go down in history not as an athlete but as an activist with a thoroughly destructive legacy.

If the impact of Kaepernick’s actions extended to every corner of American society, their first impact was on his own sport. As “taking the knee” became popular in the world of football – professional, college, and high-school alike – boys and men who’d learned to regard one another as teammates, as brothers, now saw themselves as irremediably divided by skin color. This sense of racial division was exacerbated just this past February 1, when Brian Flores, a former coach who is both black and Hispanic and who was fired last month by the Miami Dolphins after two successful seasons on the job, filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL alleging racism in the “hiring and retention of Black Head Coaches, Coordinators and General Managers.”

Trump Really Was Spied On Durham says techies linked to the Clinton campaign had access to White House and Trump Tower internet data.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-really-was-spied-on-2016-clinton-campaign-john-durham-court-filing-11644878973?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Special Counsel John Durham continues to unravel the Trump-Russia “collusion” story, and his latest court disclosure contains startling information. According to a Friday court filing, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign effort to compile dirt on Donald Trump reached into protected White House communications.

The filing relates to Mr. Durham’s September indictment of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represented the Clinton campaign while he worked for the Perkins Coie law firm. Mr. Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI at a September 2016 meeting when he presented documents claiming to show secret internet communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank. The indictment says Mr. Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was presenting this information solely as a good citizen—failing to disclose his ties to the Clinton campaign. (He has pleaded not guilty.)

The indictment revealed that Mr. Sussmann worked with “Tech Executive-1,” who has been identified as Rodney Joffe, formerly of Neustar Inc. The indictment says Mr. Joffe used his companies, as well as researchers at a U.S. university, to access internet data, which he used to gather information about Mr. Trump’s communications.

Mr. Durham says Mr. Joffe’s “goal” was to create an “inference” and “narrative” about Mr. Trump that would “please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at [Perkins Coie] and the Clinton Campaign.”

A plague of phony experts and elites Totalitarian ideas are now out in the open Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/plague-phony-experts-elites-anthony-fauci-canada/

Quick: what do you think when someone tries to convince you of something by prefacing their remarks with the phase “Experts say”?

I think of that rude, two-word imperative of Germanic origin that ends in “You.”

As Laplace said in another context, it is par expériences nombreuses et funestes that I have this almost Pavlovian reaction.

The “experts,” alas, are not expert, i.e, “possessing a high degree of skill in or knowledge of” a certain subject.

For proof of my contention I offer the name of Anthony Fauci or the organization that glories in the acronym CDC, that is, the Centers for Disease Control. They are both a bit like Michael Avenatti, once championed everywhere as a genius and presidential material, but now universally exposed and discredited. Remember last year when the public health “experts” said that it was dangerous for people to gather in crowds, but entirely OK if the gathering was for the purpose of promoting Black Lives Matter? Fun times.

In the coming months, as the Democrats loosen the preposterous, virtue-signaling, counterproductive mask mandates, requirements to display your “vaccination status,” etc., just remember that it is not because “the science” has changed. The data never supported those draconian expedients. What’s changed are the polls, and the Dems are nervously eying the 2022 midterm elections. They are right to be nervous.

But I digress. The plague of experts we face is akin to the plague of locusts, vividly recounted in Book 10 of Exodus. “And the locusts went up over all the land… very grievous were they; For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened,” and so on. The key thing to appreciate, however, is the link between experts and another short word beginning with the letter “e,” “elites.”

ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE A YEAR AGO?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/15/are-you-better-off-than-you-were-a-year-ago/

Turn the clock back a year. President Joe Biden, just weeks after taking office, was pitching his American Rescue Plan, saying that “It’s big, and it’s bold. And it’s a real answer to the crisis we’re in.”

Biden promised that the $2 trillion spending spree would “generate more growth, higher incomes, a stronger economy, and our nation’s finances will be in a stronger position.” We’d be at “full employment by the beginning of next year.”

Well, here it is. Next year. And nothing Biden promised has come to pass. By most measures, in fact, we’re worse off than we were before Biden “rescued” us.

The economy is growing more slowly than expected. Incomes are being eaten up by rising inflation. Optimism is below where it was during the height of the pandemic in 2020. The nation’s finances are in far worse shape, with the national debt up $1.8 trillion since Biden took office. We’re still nearly 3 million jobs shy of the previous peak. Oh, and COVID deaths under Biden now top 430,000 – more deaths than happened while Donald Trump was president.

Let’s go through some of the specifics of how we’re worse off than a year ago.