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September 2022

Can the GOP Accommodate Two Rock Stars? By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/can_the_gop_accommodate_two_rock_stars.html

Fresh from his deft Martha’s Vineyard gambit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew into Kansas on Sunday to rally support for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, now running for governor against incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly.

Saul Alinsky, the acknowledged master of forcing poseurs to honor their own policies, could not have done better than DeSantis. No political stroke in memory has succeeded in exposing liberal hypocrisy quite so effortlessly and effectively. Had the Islanders taken the 50 illegal aliens in, they might have checked DeSantis’s move and saved a little face, but they didn’t. They lived up to their most ludicrous stereotypes, calling in the National Guard and deporting the hapless Venezuelans to some sterile Army base on the mainland. It will be years before “Martha’s Vineyard” is anything but a template for a meme or a punch line to a joke.

Both Schmidt and U.S. Senator Roger Marshall had fun with Martha’s Vineyard in the speeches they gave preceding DeSantis’s. The SRO crowd at the Olathe (O-lay-the) Civics Center ate it up. When DeSantis took center stage, the thousands in attendance were primed. They surged to their feet and roared their appreciation. If it wasn’t clear before this past week, it was clear to everyone in Olathe. Ron DeSantis has arrived.

Before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump tower in June 2015, the GOP had gone more than a quarter-century without a rock star. Now, it has two, and that is the challenge. Although he ran as the moderate candidate in the 2020 GOP primary, Marshall, a medical doctor, has been a pleasant surprise for conservatives. That said, he did not mention Trump in his speech. Schmidt has also been tagged as something of a moderate, but one would not have guessed that from his intense and impressively disciplined speech. He did not mention Trump either.

House Democrats Vote Down Resolution to Investigate Hunter Biden By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/21/house-democrats-vote-down-resolution-to-investigate-hunter-biden/

On Tuesday, the Democratic majority on the Oversight Committee of the United States House of Representatives blocked a resolution calling for the Biden Administration to hand over documents related to the shady business deals of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

As Breitbart reports, the “resolution of inquiry” was led by Congressman James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican on the committee. While it was supported by all 19 Republicans on the committee, the 23 Democrats voted against it after only two hours of debate on the measure.

“If the Democrats vote against this resolution, then they are continuing in their coordinated effort to shield a potentially compromised President from necessary congressional oversight,” said Comer before the vote. “We must shed light on the Biden family’s international business schemes to determine if there is a national security threat.”

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who is on her way out of Congress after losing her primary earlier this year to fellow incumbent Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), called the measure a “nakedly partisan effort,” while also falsely accusing Republicans of being “obsessed” with Hunter Biden.

This Should Terrify Every American: DOJ Harasses Citizens for Exercising Their First Amendment Rights By Hans A. von Spakovsky

https://pjmedia.com/columns/hans-a-von-spakovsky/2022/09/20/this-should-terrify-every-american-doj-harasses-citizens-for-exercising-their-first-amendment-rights-n1630918

The Justice Department has hit the Eagle Forum of Alabama with a voluminous subpoena that violates the organization’s First Amendment rights to speak freely, engage in the political process, and talk to their elected representatives. It’s an intimidation tactic, pure and simple, and shows just how partisan the department has become. This out-of-control behavior should scare every citizen and volunteer organization, no matter where they stand on the political or social spectrum.

Eagle Forum is a very small non-profit in Alabama. It only has one full-time employee and a second, part-time employee. Virtually all of its work on issues of interest to its members is done by volunteers.  It is the quintessential, uniquely American grassroots membership organization that French historian Alexis de Tocqueville lauded in Democracy in America.

As the Eagle Forum’s motion to quash the government subpoena says, one of the issues its members have been concerned over is “gender-altering medical treatment to minors” and the “permanent and adverse effects of such medical procedures on those minors.” Those serious, lifelong effects deeply concern many physicians and parents.

Members of the Eagle Forum made their worries known by doing things every American has an absolute right to do: they spoke out, made speeches, organized meetings, talked to other residents and organizations in the state, and contacted their elected state representatives. In other words, they exercised their constitutional rights to engage in “freedom of speech,” to “peaceably assemble,” and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” They also exercised their right to associate, recognized by the Supreme Court as implicit under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Coming Austerity Crisis In the past, fiscal conservatives warned that future generations would pay the debt Democrats were accumulating. If the Democrats have their way, that future will arrive much sooner than we think. By Chuck Warren

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/21/the-coming-austerity-crisis/

The U.S. government’s debt is 150 percent of the gross domestic product. The current inflation is just the first problem caused by the debt. If deficit spending continues, soon high interest rates and the decline of U.S. debt credit will follow. Instead of incrementally fixing the problem, austerity economics will be the outcome. The Greeks went through it in 2007 and 2008, and they will be the first to tell you it was no fun. Congress, and especially during sessions with Democratic majorities, bears much of the blame for this.

Every time Democrats controlled the Congress during a Republican administration over the past two decades, they appropriated more money than the president requested. These additional expenditures, including the interest paid on them, well exceed $1 trillion in isolation. 

But each budget builds on the previous budgets enacted. For instance, the Trump Administration’s proposed budget for 2021 would have cut the deficit by $850 billion in 10 years. Adding up the money saved annually over those 10 years, it would have been trillions of dollars. If Congress had committed to the budgets submitted by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the money saved would have totalled trillions more. 

On top of this, recall how Congress in 2007 rejected President Bush’s Social Security reforms, a program which remains the largest item on the federal budget by far. There is no study to show how much U.S. taxpayers would have saved if Democrats in Congress had not added money to the budget or reformed Social Security, but one can easily estimate that it would have been trillions of dollars.

Why Democrats didn’t do it is twofold. Spending is always popular if nobody has to pay for it, and they thought that the debt would never become a problem, or that, if it did become a problem, they would no longer be around to fix it or suffer the consequences. 

But others had a more ideological reason.

Martha’s Meltdown Model The Martha’s Vineyard experience marks a unique opportunity for modern bicoastal progressivism. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/21/marthas-meltdown-model/

Martha’s Vineyard has been all over the news. 

The tony resort community so loves aiding and comforting the undocumented immigrants who were flown in from Florida that it hugged them—for barely 48 hours. 

Oddly, the Left became unhinged when red-state governors—whose states the last two years were flooded with some 3 million illegal aliens—finally decided to spread welcoming chores among affluent blue-state communities. 

It was a natural fit. 

Most, like Washington, D.C., and New York, were on record as sanctuary city jurisdictions. In the abstract, they endorse open borders and celebrate diversity—from the serenity of thousands of miles away. 

The uproar at Martha’s Vineyard prompted the Democratic hierarchy to do some explaining. Why had it not earlier objected to the federal government night flights of tens of thousands of border crossers to red-state communities that had opposed illegal immigration? 

And why be angry with governors who were only emulating that policy by flying in a mere 50 newcomers—in the light of day—to a far wealthier and liberal-minded sanctuary resort?

How the US Squandered Its Strategic Minerals by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18789/us-strategic-minerals

While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials — especially strategic ones such as titanium, tungsten and cobalt, which are used in the defense industry — the US for the past several decades has been selling off huge chunks of the strategic minerals stockpile to the extent that the National Defense Stockpile is reportedly reaching insolvency.

By comparison, China, as of 2020, was the world’s third-largest exporter of titanium, while the US was the number one destination for the Chinese titanium exports.

It is China’s growing influence in Africa, especially through its Belt and Road Initiative, the global infrastructure and economic development project that the Chinese Communist Party launched in 2013, that has helped China achieve such near monopolies when it comes to precious resources and raw materials.

The rare earths dependency on China stems in part from the fact that extracting rare earth minerals is an extremely polluting process that China has been willing to undertake, while most other countries have not, including the US, which ironically prides itself on having extremely strict environmental regulations in place.

The US, according to Reuters, has only one rare earths mine and no capability to process rare earth minerals. If China were to stop exporting them to the US, the country would fast run out of the basic building blocks required to produce the military hardware that the US needs, not to mention all the other items where rare earth minerals are needed.

At present, 40 out of Africa’s 54 countries participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“Beijing has increased its control of African commodities through strategic direct investment in oil fields, mines, and production facilities, as well as through resource-backed loans that call for in-kind payments of commodities. This control threatens the ability of U.S. companies to access key supplies.” — U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2020 Report to Congress.

“The PRC’s [Communist China’s] long-term goal,” the Pentagon wrote in 2020, “is to create an entirely self-reliant defense-industrial sector—fused with a strong civilian industrial and technology sector—that can meet the PLA’s needs for modern military capabilities.”

While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials — especially strategic ones such as titanium, tungsten and cobalt, which are used in the defense industry — the US for the past several decades has been selling off huge chunks of the strategic minerals stockpile to the extent that the National Defense Stockpile is reportedly reaching insolvency.

Charles in Charge How will an already fractious Britain fare under an ardently Islamophilic king? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/charles-in-charge/

“In any event, could Charles ever possibly be the kind of monarch his mother was – perfectly proper, totally disciplined, always at a lofty but at the same time somehow humble remove? Well, his manifest grief over her death has certainly won him a great deal of good will, both at home and abroad. And his promise to put his pet causes behind him, the good (support for traditional architecture) along with the bad (climate change and, good God, homeopathy) was a relief. But there’s reason to fear that he won’t be keeping that promise for long. In a September 17 address to a gathering of “faith leaders” at Buckingham Palace, he spoke of his “duty to protect the diversity of our country by protecting a space for faith itself.” He came very close to apologizing for his own Anglicanism and for the Anglican oaths he would take at his coronation. From any other freshly installed king, this little speech might sound like routine stuff; but Charles isn’t just any king. He’s a king, alas, with a long history of intense admiration for Islam.”

Yes, I watched the queen’s obsequies on Monday from start to finish – first the funeral at Westminster Abbey, then the committal service at Windsor, and in between the magnificent procession through the fabled streets of London. And yes, I was moved. And impressed. Never in our lifetimes has there been such a remarkable ceremonial display. It made the opening and closing ceremonies of any given OIympics look like the grand opening of a carwash. And for me the day’s events, which I viewed mostly on GB News, were greatly enhanced by the contributions of various historians and royal know-alls, above all the brilliant David Starkey.

Born and raised in America, I never had much truck with royalty. Yes, I was fascinated by the history of the English monarchs – especially the Tudors, Starkey’s specialty. But except for a brief, weird flirtation, back when I lived in Amsterdam, with the Dutch queen Beatrix, who has since abdicated, I always had a proper republican allergy to the idea of ordinary people – “subjects”! – bowing down to their purported betters. The whole set-up wasn’t just inequitable and outrageously unfair to taxpayers – why should British citizens support a so-called “royal family” who live not just in one 775-room palace but in several of them, apparently for variety’s sake? – but also to the royals themselves, who are doomed by an accident of birth to live exceedingly unnatural lives combining privilege on an unimaginable scale with a degree of inhuman deprivation, on a number of fronts, that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment if imposed on death-row murderers.

The West Mimics Mao, Takes a Green Leap Forward The green scramble to transform energy is reminiscent of China’s forced industrialization. By Helen Raleigh

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-west-mimics-mao-takes-a-green-leap-forward-clean-energy-china-communism-farming-industrialization-quota-11663767101?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The green movement’s rush to transform the energy economy while ignoring the laws of nature and economics calls to mind China’s ruinous Great Leap Forward. By 1957, Mao Zedong had grown impatient with his country’s slow industrial development relative to the West. He sought to transform China quickly from an agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse through forced industrialization and agricultural collectivization.

Steel production was a priority of the Great Leap Forward. Mao wanted China to surpass the U.K. in steel output within 15 years. Across the country, including in the village where my father lived, people tried to contribute to this goal by building small backyard furnaces. Each village had a production quota to meet, so everyone—including children and the elderly—pitched in. Using everything they could find to keep the furnaces burning, villagers melted down farming tools and cooking pots. These efforts yielded only pig iron, which had to be decarbonized to make steel. That was a process a backyard furnace couldn’t handle. The effort and resources were wasted.

The steel campaign diverted manpower from farming, even as the government ordered farmers to meet unrealistic quotas. Local party officials initially compelled farmers to experiment with ineffective and sometimes harmful techniques, such as deep plowing and sowing seeds much closer than usual. When these radical methods failed to increase yield and depleted the soil, local leaders had no choice but to lie to their political superiors about how much had been produced (a practice referred to as “launching a Sputnik”). Based on these false production figures, the state demanded villages sell more grain than they could spare. In a vicious circle, the more the local officials lied about their output, the higher the central government set the quotas. Farmers were forced to hand over every bit of grain they had, including the following year’s seeds, to meet the quotas. Resistance was violently suppressed.

The combination of lies, failed experiments, absence of labor and violent requisition practices led to famine. From 1959 through 1961, an estimated 30 million to 40 million Chinese people died from hunger. The Chinese government continues to refer to the famine as a natural disaster, pretending forces beyond their control were to blame for this man-made calamity.

CDC Oversells the ‘Bivalent’ Covid Shot The FDA approved it without clinical trials, and there’s reason to doubt it beats the original vaccine. By Paul A. Offit

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-oversells-the-bivalent-covid-shot-hospitalizations-vaccine-booster-omicron-pandemic-pfizer-moderna-china-illness-death-11663793472?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone over 12 receive a “bivalent” Covid-19 vaccine as a booster dose. But only a select group are likely to benefit, and the evidence to date doesn’t support the view that a bivalent vaccine containing omicron or its subvariants is better than the monovalent vaccine. The CDC risks eroding the public’s trust by overselling the new shot.

The existing Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines were designed to protect against the original strain of the novel coronavirus, known as Wuhan-1. The strain that left China, however, was D614G, the first variant. Between January 2020 and December 2021, D614G was replaced by the alpha variant then the delta variant. At the end of 2021, Oxford conducted a study to determine whether the mRNA vaccines still provided protection against severe illness and death caused by the variants. They did.

Then things changed. At the end of 2021, the omicron variant (BA.1) and its subvariants (BA.2, BA.3, BA.4 and BA.5) supplanted delta. Not only was omicron more contagious than delta; it also evaded immunity. Even the fully vaccinated were at risk of mild illness, and some of severe illness. A third dose was recommended, then a fourth. The CDC found that both a third and fourth dose reduced hospitalizations.

But not everyone benefited. Those who did fell into three groups: the elderly, people with serious health problems and people who were immunocompromised. As the CDC launches its fall booster dose campaign, it would be wise to focus on those at risk rather than the young and healthy.

The ‘DeSantis Is Worse Than Trump’ Campaign Begins

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/22/the-medias-desantis-is-worse-than-trump-campaign-begins/

When New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote a love letter of sorts to Donald Trump and his “soft edges and eccentricity,” it didn’t take long for people to see this for what it is: an opening salvo by the press to start demonizing the next Republican.

In his column, Bouie coos about how Trump is “funny, he has stage presence, and he has a kind of natural charisma. He can be a bully in part because he can temper his cruelty and egoism with the performance of a clown or a showman. He can persuade an audience that he’s just kidding — that he doesn’t actually mean it.”

Anyone not blinded by Trump hatred would probably agree with this description. But it is Bouie who doesn’t actually mean what he’s saying.

Bouie is a guy who, when Trump first ran for president, declared definitively that “Trump is a fascist,” and that this was “the political label that best describes what the GOP front-runner has become.” Then he spent four years recoiling at the horror of the Trump presidency.

Bouie’s new-found love of Trump has nothing to do with a change of heart and everything to do with portraying the other leading presidential contender — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — as far worse than Trump.

And the only reason to do so now is because of the fact that DeSantis’ recent actions have raised his profile nationally and increasingly endeared him to conservatives.