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March 2022

What’s happening to the Marines? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/whats_happening_to_the_marines.html

Lately, when we think about what’s happening to America’s military under Biden, we’ve been focusing on the Pentagon’s obsessions with race, LGBTQ+++ issues (especially transgenderism), women’s rights, and political “wrong think” (i.e., conservativism). That obsession has consistently put progressive social policy ahead of military cohesion and readiness. However, Jim Webb, who was a Marine infantry officer while in Vietnam, then the Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan and, lastly, a Virginia senator during the Obama years, has written an op-ed about a different concern: The potentially damaging, purely operational changes Marine commandment Gen. David Berger intends to impose on the Corps.

Webb raises the issues in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Berger’s proposed changes including (1) eliminating infantry battalions, (2) reducing the number of Marines in the remaining battalions, and (3) eliminating two reserve-component battalions, 16 cannon artillery battalions (to be replaced by 14 rocket artillery battalions), all of the Marine Corps tanks, and multiple tilt-rotor, helicopter, and attack helicopter squadrons.

From the outside looking in, that seems like a very significant force reduction. It turns out that this isn’t just an uninformed lay person’s perception. Marines are also worried about Berger’s plans:

Among Marines there are serious questions about the wisdom and long-term risk of dramatic reductions in force structure, weapon systems and manpower levels in units that would take steady casualties in most combat scenarios. And it is unclear to just about everyone with experience in military planning what formal review and coordination was required before Gen. Berger unilaterally announced a policy that would alter so many time-honored contributions of the Marine Corps.

Secret Seizure of James O’Keefe Cloud Email, Abusive DOJ Lawyers and a Vindictive Father President By J. Christian Adams

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2022/03/26/secret-seizure-of-james-okeefe-cloud-email-abusive-doj-lawyers-and-a-vindictive-father-president-n1584457

In the Washington D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Va., carjackings have made the news lately. Thieves steal cars at Virginia gas stations and race across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac and into Maryland to relative safety.

The Department of Justice doesn’t seem to be doing anything about enforcing the federal laws prohibiting transport of stolen goods across the Virginia-Maryland state line.

If the carjacker was named James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, things would be very different.

The saga of James O’Keefe’s quite possibly completely legal acquisition of Ashley Biden’s diary, and the resulting DOJ secret seizure of his emails from the Microsoft Office 365 cloud, is disgraceful. The lawyers involved should be ashamed, and perhaps even sanctioned by the bars to which they belong. It is an example of a Justice Department even more politicized than it was under Eric Holder, something few thought possible.

It also is a warning about storing documents and communications on someone else’s computer, aka the Cloud.

BOMBSHELL REPORT: Hunter Biden Emails Show He Secured Funds for Biolabs in Ukraine By Kevin Downey Jr.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/03/26/bombshell-did-russia-invade-ukraine-because-of-the-bidens-biolabs-hunters-laptop-says-yes-n1584441

If you thought Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was just a collection of drug porn, buckle up. It appears as though Hunter’s emails show that he invested in and helped find millions of dollars for biolabs in Ukraine, which is one of Putin’s declared reasons for invading the nation.

FACT-O-RAMA! U.S. officials have dismissed Putin’s accusations of Biden’s funding of Ukrainian biolabs as “Russian propaganda.“

Vyacheslav Volodin, Russia’s State Duma speaker, claims the emails are solid proof that Hunter and Gropey Joe Biden are involved in Ukraine’s bioweapons research.

According to the New York Post, “US intelligence officials had earlier dismissed Russia’s messaging as war propaganda, explaining that Ukraine’s network of biological labs dedicated to pathogen research were not secret, and had publicly received funding from Washington.”

Although the statement was posted on Tass, Russia’s state-run propaganda outlet, the New York Post, said Volodin’s claim is “accurate” based on emails from Hunter’s laptop reviewed by both The Post and the UK Daily Mail.

Volodin further declared, “US President Joe Biden himself is involved in the creation of bio laboratories in Ukraine. An investment fund run by his sun [sic] Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States’ military biological program. It is obvious that Joe Biden, as his father and the head of state, was aware of that activity.”

Volodin also openly accused George Soros of helping to fund the biolabs.

He stresses that involved in the same program was the fund of the ‘notorious mastermind of color revolutions, George Soros, who openly calls for changing government in our country.

Here are the details, and remember also that then-Vice President Joe Biden was in charge of relations with Ukraine at the time all of this was happening:

Hunter Biden was a partner in a company called Rosemont Seneca.
Rosemont Seneca invested $500,000 in a pathogen research company called Metabiota. Hunter also helped raise millions more for the company through investors.
Emails from his laptop show Hunter introduced Metabiota to his friends at Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which was paying Hunter $50 thousand per month as a “board member.”
The money was used for a “science project” involving biolabs in Ukraine.

Now we know why Burisma was paying all that cheddar to Hunter: he was bringing them money for their biolabs. Hunter’s own emails appear to prove it.

A NJ University Will Offer a Masters Degree in ‘Happiness Studies’ Landon Mion

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2022/03/26/a-nj-university-will-offer-masters-degrees-in-happiness-studies-n2605074

Centenary University in New Jersey announced the launch of a new degree program, a “Master of Arts in Happiness Studies.”

The program, which the school said is the first of its kind, will “explore the implications of happiness for individuals, the workplace, and our broader society” and will cost students $17,700. According to the university’s announcement, the program will launch virtually in the fall.

Centenary University President Bruce Murphy said in his announcement at the World Happiness Summit in Miami, Florida on March 18 to mark the United Nations International Day of Happiness that the program was designed to “promote well-being and resilience in the midst of current world stress.”

“This online, 30-credit graduate degree is an interdisciplinary program designed for leaders who are committed to personal, interpersonal, organizational, and societal happiness,” Murphy said. “Grounded in science and research, this new degree will study happiness and resilience to prepare graduates to make an impact in a wide range of fields.”

Biden Says Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power,’ White House Walks It Back Moments Later By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-says-putin-cannot-remain-in-power-in-speech-on-ukraine/

President Biden said Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” in a speech on the invasion of Ukraine on Saturday.

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. For free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden said at the end of a speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland. They “have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity and freedom and possibilities.”

Then Biden added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

A White House official issued a comment minutes later saying that Biden was not calling for regime change.

“The President’s point was Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the official said.

Earlier in the address, Biden repeated a pledge to defend NATO allies. While Ukraine is not a member of the NATO alliance, Poland and the Baltic states on Russia’s border are members.

We need to build an exit ramp from Ukraine for Putin By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/we_need_to_build_an_exit_ramp_from_ukraine_for_putin.html

The horrors we see daily on our television screens of damage to Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities are bad enough, but the prospect of escalation into a nuclear conflict now seems within the realm of possibility.  That would make the damaged cities and millions of refugees that upset us today seem like the good old days if nukes start flying between two superpowers, each with thousands of warheads in inventory.  Making sure that doesn’t happen should be the top priority of everyone at the NATO Summit Thursday, and in Kyiv and Moscow officialdom, too.

It looks as though Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not going well, with thousands of Russian deaths and casualties; multiple dead generals; and lots of equipment, including one significant ship, destroyed.

But we must take every report from both Moscow and Kyiv with a huge grain of salt.  It is the responsibility of wartime propagandists to lie whenever it might benefit their side, after all.  And there are analysts who see Russia as methodically achieving its goals of partitioning Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine off from the rest, and neutralizing the rest as a buffer between itself and NATO.  This color-coded map of voting results in the 2010 Ukraine election closely resembles the language preferences, with blue regions that supported Yanukovych speaking Russian and red regions that voted for Tymoshenko speaking Ukrainian.

Reject Ketanji Brown Jackson If confirmed, she’ll be even worse than Sotomayor and Kagan. by Josh Hammer

https://spectator.org/reject-ketanji-brown-jackson/

The issue with Ketanji Brown Jackson, the 51-year-old federal appellate judge who is our senile president’s Supreme Court nominee, is not necessarily her on-paper qualifications. By most traditional metrics, she is “qualified”: She has served as both a district court and appellate court judge, served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, formerly clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (the man she has been nominated to replace) and is a double-Harvard alum. In terms of “objective” criteria, this is an impressive resume.

Instead, the issue with Judge Jackson is that she is a left-wing ideologue who, if successfully confirmed by the Senate, will devote the next few decades endeavoring to move the Supreme Court far to the left. All relevant indications are that she will approach her job not like her (slightly) more pragmatic former boss, but like a leftist activist — in the mode of her possible future colleague, the midwit partisan flack Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Worse, Jackson, due to the outrageous race- and sex-conscious nominating process in which President Joe Biden selected her, is uniquely unfit to render equal justice under the law for legal issues affecting race and sex. Even worse, she is a proponent of critical race theory and, despite getting nominated solely due to her XX chromosomal structure, appears ignorant as to how to differentiate men from women. Worst of all, she has shown a peculiar juridical soft spot for some of society’s very worst offenders — pedophiles and child pornographers.

In a just world, Jackson’s nomination to replace Breyer would be soundly defeated. And at a bare minimum, every Republican senator should vote against her.

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Favorite Critical Race Theory Book Rejects the Constitution A judge who does not believe in the Constitution, but believes in critical race theory, is unfit. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/ketanji-brown-jacksons-favorite-critical-race-daniel-greenfield/

The existence of a speech by Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, praising Derrick Bell, the godfather of critical race theory, and citing his book, “Faces At the Bottom of a Well”, as an influence has been widely reported. Conservatives have covered Bell’s racist views, his praise for Farrakhan, his antisemitism, and attacks on America. Much of this was already hashed out during the exposure of the relationship between Barack Obama and Derrick Bell.

But it’s important to specifically focus on Jackson’s interest in “Faces At the Bottom of the Well.”

In her speech, Jackson mentions that Bell, whom along with his wife she praises throughout her speech, “wrote a book in the early 1990s about the persistence of racism in American life”.

The subtitle of the book, which few people have mentioned, is, “The Permanence Of Racism”.

Persistence and permanence are not the same thing. But this is another example of Jackson subtly distorting Bell and his book in order to make their extremism seem more moderate.

Jackson goes on to say that, “My parents had this book on their coffee table for many years, and I remember staring at the image on the cover when I was growing up; I found it difficult to reconcile the image of the person,who seemed to be smiling, with the depressing message that the title and subtitle conveyed. I thought about this book cover again for the first time in forty years when I started preparing for this speech.” That would have made her ten years old.

As others have pointed out, “Faces At the Bottom of the Well” was published when Jackson was in her early twenties during Bell’s tantrum against Harvard University. It’s unlikely that Biden’s Supreme Court nominee grew up with the hateful text, but it’s entirely plausible that she was influenced by the book which came out when she was at Harvard and then Harvard Law.

Since Bell began his racial strike against Harvard Law before she had completed her undergraduate degree, it’s unlikely that she had taken any of his classes, but the former member of the faculty was clearly an influence on her. Perhaps Jackson’s memory is faulty or she’s deliberately backdating the book’s influence to her childhood to make it seem more innocent. Surely no one could blame a ten year old for being attracted to a racialist text.

Climate Change is About Control, Stupid – Not The Environment William L. Kovacs

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/23/climate-change-is-about-control-stupid-not-the-environment/

The apocalyptic talk about climate change is nothing more than a diversion tactic by the government, the radical Left, and their mainstream press. The many laws, the trillions in federal appropriations and tax credits, and the unworkable proposals to address climate change will not slow the rise of the oceans or heal the planet.

Lobbying for more climate regulation is to enhance the power of the authoritarian state, not protect the environment.

The radical Left has the world obsessing over whether we have 10, 20 or 50 years before the eve of destruction. The hysteria gives the government the excuse it needs for more controls over the energy we use, the products we purchase, the homes we live in, the food we eat, and since the pandemic when we can leave our homes. However, the data supporting the climate studies are rarely made public so that scientists can test the reproducibility of the studies.

Citizens of the United States already live under a legal framework that contains over 3,000 separate criminal offenses in 50 titles of the U.S. Code, 23,000 pages of federal law, over 200,000 regulations, and almost daily Executive Orders that usually limit those actions deemed objectionable to the kakistocracy.

Additionally, the government has in reserve 136 emergency laws allowing it to assume control over industrial production, communications and banking, and most aspects of commerce. Most of these emergency laws are effective when the president declares them effective.

“Predictions of apocalyptic events that would result in the extinction of humanity, a collapse of civilization, or the destruction of the planet have been made since at least the beginning of the Common Era.” So far, the planet still exists. George Orwell noted, “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their wishes, and the grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

The terrifying moment someone switched Biden’s brain off in Poland By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/the_terrifying_moment_someone_switched_bidens_brain_off_in_poland.html

Like many people in failing health (physical or mental), Biden has his good days and his bad days. Somehow, a lot of those bad days are on foreign soil perhaps because—and this is often a problem for people with dementia—he’s away from a familiar environment. Maybe that’s why, in Poland, Biden told members of the 82nd Airborne that they’d soon be on the ground in Ukraine and see the war there for themselves. Did Biden just leak that he’s about to start WWIII or did we hear the ramblings of a damaged, fading brain? Either way, wise people are worried.

Here’s a video of Biden’s statement. However, don’t pay attention only to his words. Instead, note his affect: Slurred speech, vague wandering in a little circle, zero energy. This is a man who seems either to be on way too many drugs or, alternatively, to have been cut off from the drugs that normally keep him functioning: