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July 2022

Biden Administration: The Friendliest to Iran’s Mullahs? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18706/biden-administration-friendliy-iran

Even [Iran’s mullahs] probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

Now, in Natanz, the Iranian regime is digging an underground nuclear facility that is reportedly extremely difficult to bomb.

The problem is that Iranian leaders keep testing the Biden administration with violations — such as increasing uranium enrichment to near weapon-grade levels, the transfer of weapons and oil to Venezuela, attempting to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, trying to kidnap a US citizen on American soil, targeting US bases in Iraq with barrages of missiles, harassing US Navy ships, smuggling weapons in violation of UN resolutions, and turning off International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cameras that monitor the regime’s nuclear activities — and keep witnessing no repercussions.

As a result, the ruling mullahs have become even more emboldened to ramp up their nuclear program.

Iran’s leaders can also see that the Biden administration is not holding accountable those countries that are violating the sanctions on Iran, including China and Venezuela, which continue to buy Iranian oil.

The Biden administration’s appeasement and inaction, sadly, have done nothing but breed terrorism and transgressions. It is to be hoped that the Biden administration will not leave the world an expansionist, terror state, Iran, imminently armed with nuclear weapons.

Prior to the Biden administration, since the ruling mullahs came to power in 1979, two US administrations — the Obama and Carter administrations — appeared soft on the Iranian regime. Now, the Biden administration seems to have perfected the skill of appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran.

Even they probably cannot believe that they have gotten away with so many violations since the Biden administration assumed office.

Federal Judge Sentences 69-Year-Old Grandmother With Cancer to 2 Months in Jail For ‘Parading’ in the Capitol on January 6 By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/14/federal-judge-sentences-69-year-old-grandmother-with-cancer-to-2-months-in-jail-for-parading-in-the-capitol-on-january-6/

A federal judge has sentenced a 69-year-old Idaho grandmother and cancer patient to two months behind bars for parading in the Capitol, a misdemeanor.

Pam Hemphill pleaded guilty in January to one count of demonstrating, picketing, or parading in a Capitol building.  The diminutive senior was photographed inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Hemphill, a former drug and alcohol counselor, flew to Washington, D.C. from Idaho on Jan. 5 hoping to see the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned. She was arrested in August of 2021.

At her sentencing hearing Tuesday, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, flatly told Hemphill that she will be serving time behind bars.

In addition to the 60 days in jail, Hemphill will spend three years on supervised release. Pursuant to her plea agreement, she will also have to pay $500 in restitution toward the estimated $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol.

“I’m heading to the prison! Just know your prayers and support is keeping me going emotionally and spiritually! Love you guys dearly!” she tweeted on Tuesday.

How Universities Weaponize Freshman Orientation By Abigail Anthony

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/how-universities-weaponize-freshman-orientation/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=second

Instead of simply informing students about the resources on campus, orientation can amount to an ideological hazing.

I arrived at Princeton University in September 2019. I had looked at Princeton online and thought, “one day . . .” Suddenly, I was experiencing day one. My eager arrival on campus was emotionally amplified by bright smiles, copious pamphlets, and dormitory supervisors dancing in tiger suits. Orientation innocently began with introductions of names and hometowns — then descended into divisive lectures and panels. The intention of these programs was not to assimilate us into our new (and intimidating) surroundings, but rather to coerce students into accepting and affirming a resident orthodoxy.

We often hear about how college students are indoctrinated in the classroom. But the brainwashing begins on move-in day.

Ideally, freshman orientation should be a procedural, social assimilation to familiarize students with the resources the university offers and how to access them. However, Princeton University undertook a mission to present incoming students with sexual, moral, and political guidance, wholly omitting widely held perspectives and effectively insulating progressive views from intellectual trial. Moreover, attendance at these events was compulsory, thus constituting an ideological hazing.

The mandatory “Safer Sexpo” event series within orientation provides condoms, lube, and other sexual products; in 2020, the university provided unspecified “sex toys” to students and emphasized “solo sex.” Each year, freshmen are given a “You’re So Sexy When You Aren’t Transmitting STI’s” comic book with crude pornographic drawings, complete with a condom attached to the back; the author’s website clarifies that “the ideal target audience for this book is college campuses and sex positive organizations that are involved with young people and adults.” Students are informed where they can obtain contraception, abortifacients, and abortions, but there’s no mention of local pregnancy centers. There is a mandatory LGBTQ+ panel, which provides flyers of “The Genderbread Person” diagram. The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center Peer Ed Training Terminology handouts include a “primer on trans inclusive feminism” which explains that “trans women are women” and “there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.” The Way You Move play includes characters hooking up without regret; meanwhile, an abstinent character is nonexistent.

Starbucks CEO: Progressive Cities ‘Have Abdicated Their Responsibility in Fighting Crime’ By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/starbucks-ceo-progressive-cities-have-abdicated-their-responsibility-in-fighting-crime/

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, suggested Wednesday that major U.S. cities and those managing their governments are neglecting the crime issue to the detriment of commerce and community safety.

“I must say, in my view at the local, state and federal level, these governments across the country and leaders, mayors and governors, city councils have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental health,” Schultz reportedly said at an internal meeting, according to a video posted on Twitter.

The business leader’s remarks came after his company announced plans to permanently close 16 locations in five progressive U.S. cities, including six in Seattle, six in Los Angeles, two in Portland, one in Philadelphia, and one in Washington, D.C., by the end of the month due to repeated security disturbances. Such incidents included customers and other members of the public using drugs in the stores.

“I don’t have to spend too much time on what’s going on in the country and how America is becoming unsafe, but you all read the press release over the last couple of days that we are beginning to close stores that are not unprofitable,” Schultz lamented. “It has shocked me that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners have is their own personal safety.”

Democrats are stuck with Biden Who can they tap now that they’ve turned on Joe? Kamala? Please by Peter Van Buren

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/democrats-are-stuck-with-biden/

The New York Times and the Washington Post sent up flares last weekend: one way or another, they said, Joe Biden is on borrowed time. The last man standing who ended up the answer to Anyone But Trump turned out so inadequate for the job that Deep State media gave him a vote of no confidence and said he should go.

The Times wrote a scathing summary of What Everyone Knows: that Biden at 79 is a wreck. In their words, the man “is testing the boundaries of age and the presidency.” He can barely walk unassisted. He has zombie moments on stage. He is fully dependent on wife Jill to nudge him onward, redirect him, get him back on the TelePrompTer — and even then he will read anything there, including stage directions, Ron Burgundy-like.

Not a pretty picture. It is also not a new picture, given the pass on campaigning the MSM granted Biden, which helped hide all this back in 2020. That’s why the critical articles are so noteworthy: they denote a change. From here to 2024, it is okay to (finally) talk about how old and 25th Amendment-ready Biden is. The Times has already published its first follow-up.

The 25th Amendment got a bad name during the Trump years, being invoked as the handy-dandy alternative to multiple failed impeachments and prosecutions, a kind of last chance to dump a seated president when all else fails. In fact, the amendment, written after the Kennedy assassination exposed the problems of no clear line of deep succession in the Constitution in the nuclear age, provides precisely the mechanism needed in Joe Biden’s case.

Biden’s wacky gaffes have strayed over the line. His clumsy and chaotic policy killed innocents in Afghanistan and embarrassed the United States globally. His claim that “Putin cannot remain in power” in response to the Ukraine war, and that the US would absolutely defend Taiwan, threatened relations with two superpowers. Aides rushed to blurt out that nothing had changed and gently correct the president. Falling off a standing bike is a problem for Joe; falling off a nuclear policy is a problem for America. Biden either needs to resign for “personal reasons” (the timing set so it does not appear tied to the latest Hunter revelations) or face the judgment of the 25th and reality. He is medically no longer fit to carry out his role as Anyone But Trump.

The U.S. Misery Index Worsens as Unchecked Bidenflation Grows By Gwendolyn Sims

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2022/07/15/the-u-s-misery-index-worsens-as-unchecked-bidenflation-grows-n1612816

The U.S. government announced Wednesday that June’s federal inflation numbers increased to a staggering 9.06% — a 40-year high. According to the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) news release, inflation is being felt keenly and across the board:

The increase was broad-based, with the indexes for gasoline, shelter, and food being the largest contributors. The energy index rose 7.5 percent over the month and contributed nearly half of the all items increase, with the gasoline index rising 11.2 percent and the other major component indexes also
rising. The food index rose 1.0 percent in June, as did the food at home index.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.7 percent in June, after increasing 0.6 percent in the preceding two months. While almost all major component indexes increased over the month, the largest contributors were the indexes for shelter, used cars and trucks, medical care, motor vehicle insurance, and new vehicles. The indexes for motor vehicle repair, apparel, household furnishings and operations, and recreation also increased in June. Among the few major component indexes to decline in June were lodging away from home and airline fares.

From the updated BLS data, economists quantify the economic health of the country. To do so, they add the current U.S. unemployment rate, which is a stagnant 3.6%, to the current rate of U.S. inflation, which is a jarring 9.06%, to produce a snapshot of the country’s economy. The result is known as the U.S. Misery Index.

LIBERAL WORLD ORDER: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

War has always been man’s nemesis, combatting his desire for global peace. Unfortunately, war has won, perhaps because the latter is an unrealistic ideal, not possible given man’s imperfections. Nevertheless, just because world peace has never been achieved does not mean the search for it should cease, though any search should be leavened with realism. We live in a world as it is, not as we would wish it to be.

Does global peace depend on a governing world order, or does it depend on maintaining a balance of power among sovereign nations having membership in organizations like the UN, the IMF and the WHO? If so, how much authority should each state cede to global authorities? A more basic question: Is lasting peace even possible given the fallibility of humans and with states having myriad views on governance? Limited wars may be unavoidable. What should be paramount is reducing the risk of annihilation by nuclear weapons. Should not nations and societies, instead of attempting a world order, first build cultures of respect, tolerance, civility and decency?

In his 2014 book World Order, Henry Kissinger wrote: “No truly ‘global’ world order has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe nearly four centuries ago, at a peace conference in the German region of Westphalia.” The Peace of Westphalia concluded the Thirty Years War, and it established modern Europe with sovereign states. Yet their efforts did not prevent Napoleon from trying to unite Europe in the first two decades of the 19th Century, nor did it stop Hitler from trying to do the same 120 years later. It did not prevent lights from “going out all over Europe” in August 1914.

Biden Claims Inflation Numbers ‘Out of Date’ Because of Lower Gas Prices the Last Two Weeks By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/07/15/biden-claims-inflation-numbers-out-of-date-because-of-lower-gas-prices-the-last-two-weeks-n1613112

This is a good example of a desperate man reaching for a life preserver that turns out to be a shark fin.

Joe Biden is in the Middle East, where the Muslims don’t like him or the country he leads very much at all. No American flags greeted Biden as his motorcade made its way through Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s capital. Biden spent the better part of his first year in office blasting Saudi Arabia and its leader, Mohammed bin Salman, for his part in the death of a Washington Post writer.

Now, he’s coming to the Saudis on his knees, begging them to increase oil production.

Being overseas, Biden is relieved because he doesn’t have to listen to the constant carping of the media and even his own party about prices. The day after the consumer price index showed a frightening rise of 9.1 percent over the last year, and the producer price index showed a rise of 11.3 percent in wholesale prices, Biden decided to pretend things weren’t so bad.

Good Friday, Joe Biden By: David Harsanyi

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/15/good-friday-joe-biden/

Here is the president of the United States speaking in East Jerusalem:

BIDEN in East Jerusalem: “…the background of my family is Irish American and we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years.”

My first thought on hearing Biden’s comment was that the women of Easter Rising would have wanted to string him up for abortion heresy. But jokes (and eternal damnation) aside, it’s difficult to understand what the president is saying here.

Is he contending that the “Palestinian people,” like the Irish, have first claim to the land, ignoring the consistent Jewish presence in Israel since — let’s be conservative — a few centuries before the unified Kingdom of Israel, around 1000 BC, or around 1600 years before the Muslims invaded? Is he saying that the British took control of Israel in 1917 so they could settle the land with foreigners and displace Muslims? Does he realize that the British were in “Palestine” — where they often abdicated their responsibility to protect the Jewish minority — only 30 years, as opposed to 850? Doesn’t the Jew who fled Europe to return to the Middle East have more in common with the Catholic who fled England for Ireland in the 1600s or America later on?

It’s not just us. Western democracies are fragmenting. Richard Pildes –

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinions-it-s-not-just-us-western-democracies-are-fragmenting/ar-AAZCpNO?cvid=4689798c14724d5fab4b32a8a5fa9bf7

Three major elections on the same Sunday in June — in France, Colombia and Spain — tell the fundamental story of democracy in our era: the continuous disaffection with government, the collapse of traditionally dominant parties and figures, and the constant search for alternatives — which is quickly followed by yet more disaffection and the search for yet other alternatives. This is no longer a narrative of dysfunction distinctive to one country, if it ever was. The Conservative Party in Britain is now scrambling to find a new prime minister; the government in Italy is near collapse. The nature of political authority has fundamentally changed. Political power has become fragmented, as voters abandon traditional parties and turn to upstart, insurgent parties or independent, free agent politicians from across the political spectrum.

In multiparty democracies, such as the three that held elections last month, the fragmentation of political power makes it more difficult to form governments, causes those governments to be fragile and prone to collapse, and weakens their capacity to deliver effective policies. Politics in the United States, with our well-entrenched two-party system, are nonetheless being shaped by similar forces — although here fragmentation means the Democratic and Republican parties are torn by internal factional conflicts that party leaders struggle to surmount. Such battles made the House Republican caucus ungovernable when Reps. John Boehner and Paul Ryan took turns as House speaker, leading both to abandon that powerful position. They’re also why the Democratic Party damaged itself, perhaps irreparably for this year’s midterms, with a prolonged internal debate over whether to link major infrastructure legislation with the grander aspirations of the Build Back Better bill, as well as conflicts between the party’s moderate and progressive wings that have hamstrung immigration policy and kept critical bipartisan legislation to boost U.S. chip manufacturing in prolonged limbo. Even with unified control of government, the parties find it difficult to govern.