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December 2022

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Saudi Arabia Welcomes China’s Xi as US Snubs Allies, Courts Enemies by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19251/saudi-arabia-welcomes-china

China is fully exploiting the cooling of US-Saudi relations engineered by the Biden administration’s repeated public personal attacks on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as well as perceived decreased support for the Saudi-led coalition’s efforts to blunt Iranian expansionism in Yemen.

The Saudis had most likely hoped that the US would finally scuttle the Iran nuclear deal for good, which did not take place.

Just a few weeks into the Biden administration, on February 12, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed the Houthis from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. A few months later, the Houthis expressed their appreciation by raining rockets and missiles down on Saudi Arabia’s “critical energy facilities” and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi leaders therefore seem to be seeking to diversify their commercial and security links by improving relations with China, as superficially symbolized by the pomp and ceremony associated with Xi’s welcome to Riyadh. If so, this Saudi initiative plays well with Xi’s concept of an emerging multi-polar world.

Xi has agreed to buy more oil from Gulf Cooperation Council states but suggested that the purchases be paid for in Chinese yuan rather than US dollars. If the oil-exporting states agree to Xi’s request, it will further reinforce the notion that US influence with Saudi Arabia is on the decline.

As evidence of this negative trend in US prestige, the Saudi crown prince ignored US warnings not to sign deals with the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei. Saudi Arabia inked Huawei-associated contracts on data centers and cloud computing.

The Saudis seem to be welcoming China as a potential strategic partner — one that will not, unlike the US, interfere in what the Kingdom undoubtedly considers its most urgent existential need.

China is fully exploiting the cooling of US-Saudi relations engineered by the Biden administration’s repeated public personal attacks on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as well as perceived decreased support for the Saudi-led coalition’s efforts to blunt Iranian expansionism in Yemen.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary Idealism Crashes into Reality Politicians who benefited from sanctuary advocacy now admit the obvious truth: Sanctuary policies are unsustainable. By Brian Lonergan

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/21/sanctuary-idealism-crashes-into-reality/

The late, great Rush Limbaugh frequently opined on his radio show that progressivism’s appeal stems from the fact that its followers are required to do nothing but “care.” Simply vent empathy or outrage—especially on social media—on behalf of an approved left-wing cause, and your otherwise dreary life can seem meaningful in the belief you are both morally superior to your ideological opponents and also saving the world. It’s a seductive pitch that has been all too successful.

The political benefits of this ideology have not been lost on state and local elected leaders, many of whom are true believers anyway. They enthusiastically virtue signal on behalf of numerous issues, and one of their favorites is sanctuary policies as a purported act of mercy toward illegal aliens. For years this was populism on easy mode, as politicians basked in the approval from their activist base without having to do much hard work.

Thanks to a combination of the Biden Administration’s disastrous border policies and fed-up red state governors, however, the party is over as sanctuary rhetoric is crashing into reality, and the curtain is being pulled back to expose their folly.

Evidence of this phenomenon can be seen even in the words of immigration realpolitik coming from the most unlikely places. In California, a hotbed of irrational sanctuary policies, Governor Gavin Newsom recently toured the southern border of his state and warned of dire consequences should the White House succeed in its effort to end Title 42 border enforcement.

“The fact is, what we’ve got right now is not working and is about to break in a post-42 world unless we take some responsibility and ownership,” Newsom said.

Responsibility? Ownership? These are uncharted waters for Newsom. He has spent most of his governorship pandering to noncitizens with initiatives like universal healthcare and state IDs for illegal aliens. For someone like Newsom to be warning that the end is near is a sign that we may be approaching a point of no return with Biden’s border sabotage.

Big-city mayors, in particular, have benefited from being sanctuary advocates. They’re now admitting the obvious truth that sanctuary policies are unsustainable. Since Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Ron DeSantis of Florida, and Doug Ducey of Arizona began sending busloads of migrants to New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has been forced to walk a tightrope of defending sanctuary policies while acknowledging his city is struggling to accept the new arrivals.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are Universities Doomed? Elite university degrees certify very little. And the secret is out.  By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/21/are-universities-doomed/

In a famous exchange in the The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

“Gradually” and “suddenly” applies to higher education’s implosion. 

During the 1990s “culture wars” universities were warned that their chronic tuition hikes above the rate of inflation were unsustainable. 

Their growing manipulation of blanket federal student loan guarantees, and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants always was suicidal. 

Left-wing indoctrination, administrative bloat, obsessions with racial preferences, arcane, jargon-filled research, and campus-wide intolerance of diverse thought short-changed students, further alienated the public—and often enraged alumni.

Over the last 30 years, enrollments in the humanities and history crashed. So did tenure-track faculty positions. Some $1.7 trillion in federally backed student loans have only greenlighted inflated tuition—and masked the contagion of political indoctrination and watered-down courses. 

 But “gradually” imploding has now become “suddenly.” Zoom courses, a declining pool of students, and soaring costs all prompt the public to question the college experience altogether. 

Nationwide undergraduate enrollment has dropped by more than 650,000 students in a single year—or over 4 percent alone from spring 2021 to 2022, and some 14 percent in the last decade. Yet the U.S. population still increases by about 2 million people a year.

Men account for about 71 percent of the current shortfall of students. Women number almost 60 percent of all college students—an all-time high. 

Monotonous professors hector students about “toxic masculinity,” as “gender” studies proliferate. If the plan was to drive males off campus, universities have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. 

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Must-see video: Tucker Carlson takes on the Zelenskyy money grab By Andrea Widburg

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/mustsee_video_tucker_carlson_takes_on_the_zelenskyy_money_grab.html

Last night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed up in Congress to demand money. As one, the entire body of American politicians swooned before the man. One person who did not swoon was Fox pundit Tucker Carlson, who pointed out some uncomfortable truths and asked the all-important question about our politicians joyously pushing us towards a hot war with a nuclear Russia. Who benefits?

Russia may be nuclear, and it may have a very nasty, cruel man at its head, but it’s important to note that Russia, despite its natural resources, is a nothing of a country. Unlike the former Soviet Union, which had tentacles, satellites, colonies, and interests around the globe, not to mention all sorts of unwilling neighboring countries swept into its net to make up that Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia is a smaller country with no serious interests abroad.

Yes, Putin meddles in Syria and Turkey, but he’s no Xi Jinping. Other than natural gas, which Europe needs, Russia has not coopted all of America’s manufacturing, from our clothes to our appliances to our medicines. Mostly, Russia does not affect us.

Indeed, there’s only one reason Russia is perceived as a threat, and that’s because leftists have come to believe their own Russia hoax accusation that Putin put Trump in the White House. He didn’t but, because Democrats and NeverTrumpers (i.e., the Republican establishment that hates Trump as much as the Democrats do) believe that, Putin must be destroyed.

What none of these fanatics have thought through is what happens if they are able to get rid of Putin. Who comes next? Xi? A megalomaniac with dreams that go beyond Russia’s current borders? Biden, who needs help putting on his pants in the morning so that the zipper faces forward, has no answers.

The insistence that Ukraine is a beleaguered democracy is nonsense, too. Ukraine is and has long been an utterly corrupt country to which Western politicians go to launder taxpayer money.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thanks to Elon, the FBI has a lot to answer for By Michael Letts

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/thanks_to_elon_the_fbi_has_a_lot_to_answer_for_.html

Things have not been good for the Federal Bureau of Investigation this year.

Thanks to its new owner Elon Musk, the “Twitter Files” have been making the rounds, revealing just what kind of relationship the social media giant has with the bureau. Apparently the two had “constant and pervasive” communications, with the FBI treating Twitter as a “subsidiary.” In other words, they were making note of accounts and tweets that needed to be taken action against.

That aligns with reports about surveillance on citizens and infringing on free speech rights in a number of ways — all in the name of “justice.”

Republicans are working on getting hold of these “Twitter Files,” in hopes of being able to get several subpoenas against both the FBI and the Department of Justice. Leading this charge is Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who will soon be the chairman for the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaking with Fox News on a recent episode of Sunday Morning Futures, he stated, “We are definitely pursuing the Department of Justice and also the FBI. We certainly intend to pursue subpoena power to expose the extent to which the FBI has been doing this.”

“While we pursue intelligence community to try to hold them accountable, while we’re doing that, Elon Musk is showing what’s happening on the other side with the willing partners, the mainstream media, social media, and really exposing coordination that was occurring between the FBI and them,” he continued.

And how. With Republicans set to take back the House next month, it appears they can finally get things moving as far as taking a closer look at what the FBI is really doing.

Turner believes that, by attaining these files, “we can cut off the funding and prevent, obviously, average Americans being impacted by FBI actions.”

But this goes much deeper than that. “The FBI… under the cover of saying they were pursuing foreign malign influence, had really exploded into activities that involved engaging with mainstream media and social media, and really impacting what is the normal debate of democracy. What’s really troubling here in my opinion is this is not based on intelligence.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our President, The Pathological Liar A shameful characteristic throughout his whole 52-year political career. by Jeff Crouere

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-president-the-pathological-liar/

The sad reality is that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, is a pathological liar. This is not a new personality trait for our Commander-in-Chief, but a characteristic that has been apparent throughout his 52-year political career.

Biden has been telling lies, including massive untruths, for decades. It is a major reason he had to exit the 1988 presidential campaign. He lied about his law school grades and plagiarized speeches from United Kingdom Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

Regularly, Biden lies about his childhood, his family, his academic career, and his record as a politician.

Does anyone really believe that, as a young lifeguard, he faced off with a “bad dude” named “Corn Pop” who had a “bunch of bad boys” armed with “straight razors?” Biden claimed he used a six-foot chain to force the gang to leave.

Biden pretends he was a tough guy and has boasted that in high school, he would have taken Donald Trump “behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

He likes to embellish his career as a college football player and lied about being on the University of Delaware team that beat the Ohio Bearcats. He said he quit the team to date the woman who would become his first wife, but, instead, he was forced to leave due to bad grades.

This week, Biden told a series of lies that are impossible to reconcile. At a town hall meeting with U.S. veterans in Delaware, Biden told a story of awarding a Purple Heart to his uncle, Frank Biden. He said that his uncle had served heroically in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, and had earned the Purple Heart, but never received it.

He declared he “got” his uncle the Purple Heart after he was elected Vice President in 2008. Biden said he awarded it to his uncle in front of family members. According to Biden, his uncle did not want the award because “the others died, I lived, I don’t want it.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A Blueprint For a Genocide of Existence Confronting the nihilistic call to rid the world of family. by Jason D. Hill

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-blueprint-for-a-genocide-of-existence/

A new breed of zealots has forged fourth-wave feminism, and it’s far more rabidly anti-family, anti-male, and anti-civilization than previous iterations of the ideological movement. You’d think because of its petty maliciousness and deranged radicalism, its appeal would be narrowly limited to the faculty lounges of liberal arts colleges. Yet since the inception of the #MeToo movement, the crazed foot soldiers of fourth-wave feminism managed not only to take their worldview mainstream, but also to put a headlock on the commanding heights of American culture.

This is as impressive as it is terrifying. These new nihilists are seething with toxic femininity, and the further spread of their noxious sentiment could likely spell the death of our country as we know it. Increasingly prevalent is their practice of exploiting female agency and identity to wage a blanket attack on society and men, to abolish the labor market, and to advocate for the end of the family. They are achieving these goals while simultaneously promulgating the idea that the family is by nature nefarious, and that female advancement can only come through the wholesale annihilation of heteronormative constructs of capitalism, work, and the family. The destructive consequences for relationships at every level of society—from the basic couple to the community to the nation—will be vast and irreparable.

In Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, feminist philosopher Sophie Lewis writes: “[But] I can’t wait to see what comes after the family. I also know I probably won’t live to see whatever it is. Still, I hope it happens, and I hope it is a glorious and abundant nothing.”

Lewis is convinced that the concept of family is a cancerous blight on existence and that nothing should replace it. Starting with the premise that capitalism is bad because it is coterminous with patriarchy, white supremacy, and a world that mandates work and privatizes care, her communist utopian vision would see a world in which mothering is queered, and traditional motherhood is abolished.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Persistence of the Left Why an ideology so graphically repudiated by history – and so bloody in its application – continues to endure. by Bruce Thornton

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-persistence-of-the-left/

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 sparked a wave of optimism and triumphalism across the West. Our nuclear-armed rival and ideological enemy had suddenly disappeared, taking with it the shadow of nuclear apocalypse. But for the Left, since 1917 the Soviet Union had been the locus of the hopes and dreams of leftist collectivism. Now history, understood as an ideological game of thrones, had ended, dashing that hope. Liberal democracy, private property, and free-market capitalism had prevailed, and no credible alternative remained.

This optimism was expressed by George H.W. Bush in 1991, when he celebrated this “new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind––peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.” Yet the demise of the USSR did not mean the end of various Marxist ideals like collectivism and the “command economy,” which haven’t just survived, but in recent decades have grown stronger under progressivist rule.

How is it that an ideology so graphically repudiated by history and so bloody in its application, has managed to endure, especially in the West, which has provided the greatest and most widespread prosperity, political equality, and freedom in human history?

The survival of the Left has nothing to do with the intellectual coherence or truth of its ideas. Leftism is predicated on dubious, if not wildly absurd, assumptions and ideas about human nature and motivation: secularism, philosophical materialism, determinism, and the technocratic fallacy that “science” can discover and exploit the timeless forces and laws of human progress and social improvement. The latter claim in particular has been repudiated by Marxism’s ghastly toll of 100 million dead, and millions more enslaved in gulags and forced-labor camps like the ones we see today in Communist China’s Xinjiang western region, where more than a million Muslim Uighurs are being subjected to forced labor and brutal “re-education.”

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

American Journal of Medicine Says a Belief in Freedom Could Be Hazardous to Your Health By Robert Spencer

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2022/12/21/american-journal-of-medicine-says-a-belief-in-freedom-could-be-hazardous-to-your-health-n1655403

One way to hoodwink the populace into accepting ever-increasing control by the omnibenevolent and all-seeing federal government is to convince them that freedom and autonomy are bad for you. But surely Leftists wouldn’t stoop that low, would they? Sure they would. PJM’s Ben Bartee had the story on Saturday: the American Journal of Medicine has published a preposterous new study warning that “distrust of the government” and “a belief in freedom” are liable to get you killed. Get back in line, sheep! Don’t put your lives on the line chasing after freedom! Slavery is so much safer!

This arrant nonsense was actually published this month in the American Journal of Medicine, proving yet again that academic study in the United States has become irremediably politicized and open to cultural and intellectual fads. Honest investigation of a controverted issue, leading to the acknowledgment of unwelcome truths, is vanishingly rare. The pretext for pushing slavery on Americans is, once again, the COVID-19 vaccine. According to Fortune magazine, this study claims to prove that “if you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash.”

The study asserts that “unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash — in which at least one person was transported to the hospital — than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol.”

Does the vaccine somehow improve your eyesight and coordination, so that you can more easily get out of scrapes while driving? Oh, nothing like that. Unvaccinated people are more likely to wreck their cars because they’re the sort of people who don’t obey the rules. The study speculates that people who are so headstrong and stubborn as to resist getting a vaccine that is causing young people in perfect health suddenly to drop dead might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.”

Now, who in his right mind would get behind the wheel and neglect basic safety guidelines? Incorrigible lovers of freedom, of course: “Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, ‘faith in natural protection,’ ‘antipathy toward regulation,’ poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.”

So actually the study is all about why you should be a good conformist and do whatever the government tells you to do, no matter what the obvious risks may be.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

You Have to Watch Rand Paul’s ‘Twas the Week Before Christmas’ VIDEO ****

By on December 22nd, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/12/21/you-have-to-watch-rand-pauls-twas-the-week-before-christmas-n1655507

Sen. Rand Paul has written his own retelling of the classic poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” called ‘”Twas the Week Before Christmas” about the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, and performs it in a video, which is currently going viral on social media.

The senator from Kentucky is seen donning a red blazer before a backdrop of a Christmas tree and a fireplace. “‘Twas a week before Christmas and all through the Senate and House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,” he begins. “The earmarks were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there. The senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads.”

As for the rest, well, just watch the video.

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