Displaying posts published in

December 2022

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The populist who gets things done With Ron DeSantis, we see American populism shifting from words to action.Sean Collins

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/17/the-populist-who-gets-things-done/

Ron DeSantis is the man of the moment in American politics. The Republican governor of Florida first gained a national profile in 2020 for defying Covid lockdown orthodoxy and later for his battles against woke. His smashing re-election victory in the Midterms this November – defeating his Democratic opponent by almost 20 percentage points – has propelled DeSantis to new heights. According to a recent poll, Republicans now prefer DeSantis over Trump to be the party’s presidential candidate in 2024 by a huge 23-point margin. The New York Post has declared him ‘DeFuture’. And he already leads Biden in one early election survey.

It is the breadth of DeSantis’s victory in November that has most excited Republicans. He turned a state that was recently considered ‘purple’ – that is, a toss-up between the Democrats and Republicans – into a deeply red state. He ‘rewrote the political map’, as he himself has put it, winning cities and suburbs across Florida, and support from a variety of demographic groups. His pick-ups included the formerly Democratic bastion of Miami-Dade County, which is 70 per cent Hispanic. The voters of Florida had a close-up view of DeSantis for four years and obviously liked what they saw.

In comparison to Trump, DeSantis just looks more dynamic. Virtually every one of Trump’s handpicked candidates was defeated in the Midterms, making Trump a big reason why a much-anticipated ‘red wave’ did not materialise. Trump also faces potential criminal charges for the ‘January 6’ attack on the Capitol and for the retention of confidential documents at his Florida home. The 76-year-old former president announced his candidacy for the 2024 election last month with a snoozer of a speech (some dubbed it ‘low energy’, referencing Trump’s jibe about Jeb Bush in 2016). His first post-announcement meeting was with an anti-Semitic celebrity (Kanye West) and an anti-Semitic nobody (Nick Fuentes).

DeSantis clearly gets under Trump’s skin. Trump’s nickname for him, ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’, is weak, given that he’s not remotely sanctimonious – another sign that Trump has lost his touch. In the past few weeks, Trump has launched unprovoked rants against DeSantis and has sulked about the Florida governor’s supposed disloyalty. In response, DeSantis has kept studiously quiet, which has only driven Trump more nuts.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The truth about Covid McCarthyism The elites’ blacklisting of lockdown dissenters was shameful and self-destructive. Brendan O’Neill

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/19/the-truth-about-covid-mccarthyism/

There were two viruses that the authorities wanted to control in 2020 and 2021. The first was the virus of Covid-19. The second was the virus of dissent. Throughout the pandemic, experts referred to lockdown scepticism and Covid misinformation as their own kind of disease, as a contagious malady that might sicken the masses’ minds as surely as Covid sickened their bodies. British politicians referred to a ‘pandemic of misinformation’. We must protect people both from ‘physical disease and the “disease of misinformation”’, scientists insisted. ‘False information has plagued the Covid response’, said one academic. Plagued – what a striking choice of verb. And if contrary ideas are an infection in the body politic, then it’s clear what the cure must be: censorship.

Nearly three years on from the start of the pandemic, it’s apparent that censorship was central to lockdown. It wasn’t only our everyday lives that were forcibly put on hold – so was our right to say certain things and even think certain things. In the US, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was fawned over by the liberal media for his handling of Covid, has been deposed in a lawsuit that accuses him and the Biden administration more broadly of colluding with Big Tech to undermine the American people’s speech rights during the pandemic. The lawsuit is brought by the attorney general of Missouri, Eric Schmitt. The transcript of the questioning of Fauci was released earlier this month. It’s a frustrating read. Fauci continually says he doesn’t recall or doesn’t know in response to questions about his alleged role in suppressing speech in the Covid era. But it seems clear that, informally at least, he helped to devise and enforce the parameters of acceptable thought during the pandemic.

Consider the Great Barrington Declaration. Fauci had high-ranking discussions about how to counteract this open letter that raised ‘grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental-health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies’. Freedom-of-information requests show that Fauci was asked by officials to engage in a ‘quick and devastating takedown’ of the GBD. He hopped to it. He ‘jumped into action to smear and discredit the GBD in the media’, as one account describes it. This included writing off the GBD’s authors – Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya – as ‘fringe epidemiologists’ who were peddling ‘nonsense’. We know now that Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford, was subsequently shadow-banned on Twitter and even added to its McCarthyite ‘Trends Blacklist’, meaning his tweets would never make it into ‘trending topics’. The algorithm weaponised against a heretical professor who had been publicly denounced by Fauci.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

White Students Are Prohibited From Applying to This UNC Fellowship: Aaron Sibarium

By on December 20th, 2022

https://freebeacon.com/campus/white-students-are-prohibited-from-applying-to-this-unc-fellowship/

The public university dragged into court over its race-conscious admissions policy is now advertising a research fellowship that bars white applicants from applying.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—whose affirmative action program, along with that of Harvard University, is under review by the Supreme Court—sponsors the Fellowship for Exploring Research in Nutrition, which accepts applications exclusively from students who are “Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC),” according to the program’s website. Fellows earn thousands of dollars, live in on-campus apartments paid for by the university, and receive generous mentorship opportunities, including letters of recommendation.

“The field of nutrition is overwhelmingly comprised of white researchers,” an ad for the fellowship states. “Increased BIPOC representation in food policy research is critical for developing effective, equitable, comprehensive, and culturally competent policies that address nutrition-related health disparities.”

On Monday, the economist Mark Perry filed a complaint about the fellowship with the District of Columbia’s Office of Civil Rights. The complaint, which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, asks the office to investigate the university for “race-based discrimination.”

UNC Chapel Hill did not respond to a request for comment.

The program, which UNC Chapel Hill announced last week on its website, comes as UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard await a verdict from the Supreme Court over a lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action. The group argues that both schools are violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial discrimination by the recipients of federal funds, and that UNC Chapel Hill, as a public university, is also violating the 14th Amendment, which bans racial discrimination by the government.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

SBF: Virtue-Signaling Scammer The crypto king used high ideals to mask low motives: Matthew Continetti

By on December 20th, 2022

https://freebeacon.com/columns/sbf-virtue-signaling-scammer/

The former head of crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, stands accused of many crimes. But no one has ever charged him with reticence.

Between 2019, when he first appeared on the scene, and December 12, 2022, when Bahamian police took him into custody—conveniently preventing him from testifying before Congress the next day—the 30-year-old MIT graduate and former billionaire would not shut up.

No audience was too small. No subject was beyond the pale. Given the opportunity, SBF would announce his veganism, discuss his fashionably liberal politics, and outline the tenets of his utilitarian worldview, his philosophy of “effective altruism.” His remarkable and short-lived career is a case study in high ideals serving as cover for low motives. It also illustrates the double-standard that liberals apply to business scandals.

Words poured from SBF’s disheveled self, faster than you can mint a bitcoin. Last year his net worth soared, reaching an estimated $20 billion. He ascended to the top rank of political donors, giving millions to Joe Biden in 2020 and contributing more money to Democratic candidates in 2022 than everyone but George Soros. Friendly media profiled “The Mysterious Cryptocurrency Magnate Who Became One of Biden’s Biggest Donors” and “A Crypto Emperor’s Vision: No Pants, His Rules.” “I have a lot of things to say,” he told New York magazine.

That’s for sure. SBF admitted to obsessive compulsion, to attention deficit disorder, to depression, and to playing Magic: The Gathering well into adulthood. He would jabber away on social media, during video game sessions, at investor conferences, and on television and podcasts. Rumors swirled about his love life, which may or may not have involved something called a “polycule.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Elon Musk should remain Twitter CEO to keep up the free speech fight Twitter CEO Elon Musk has exposed how our law enforcement agencies worked with Twitter to censor free speech. He should not walk away now. Liz Peek

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/elon-musk-remain-twitter-ceo-keep-free-speech-fight

Elon Musk is a hero of our times. Risking his personal safety and fortune, he bought Twitter and pushed back against the Left’s repugnant effort to shut down Americans’ freedom of expression. In addition, he has exposed the dangerous collusion between our social media giants and the FBI, which appears to have subverted our elections.

Now Musk is threatening to call it quits. This must not happen.

In an online poll, Musk asked the Twitterverse whether he should “step down” as head of Twitter, and promised to abide by the outcome. He tweeted soon after the launch of the referendum: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

The bad news for Musk fans is that 57% of the 17 million people who participated said he should indeed quit his post; 43% said he should not. 

Will the quixotic entrepreneur follow through, and abandon his $44 billion undertaking? Will he allow the Leftist thought police to resume their control of what Americans can see and read? 

We can only hope he changes course, or somehow accedes to the letter of his self-imposed plebiscite without actually abandoning the fight. Nothing could be more important.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Rise of the DeSantis Democrats Like Reagan Democrats once upon a time, these voters have already reshaped the political landscape in Florida. Can they do the same nationally in 2024? Olivia Reingold

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rise-of-the-desantis-democrats?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

MIAMI—It’s almost 11 p.m. on a recent Friday night at ONE Gentlemens Club, and it’s dead except for the girls in their thongs, sitting on pleather couches, waiting for someone to give a lap dance to. No one can talk to anyone else. It’s too loud for that, what with the electronic drum, the incessant rapping. The rap is supposed to inspire twerking—and tens. Tonight, no one’s twerking. 

Tory Williams is alone at the bar in fishnets and boots. She should be mixing drinks. 

“Did you vote in the recent election?” I write in my notebook, then pass it to her.

She nods. When I ask who she voted for, a grin appears. “DUH-SAN-TIS,” she mouths. 

“Why DeSantis?” I shout. Williams is a black woman who looks to be pushing forty. She has a fiancé and, after two slow years, a job. It was her brother, she says, who made her rethink her politics. 

Finally, she shouts back, over the bar, through the din: “Money.”

Williams is one of the DeSantis Democrats: Florida voters who, until recently, identified as Democrats but in November opted to reelect Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—he who resisted the Covid lockdowns, tangled with Disney, and governed with a record budget surplus—in a landslide. 

It’s unclear how many DeSantis Democrats there are: DeSantis’ vote count jumped from roughly 4 million in 2018 to 4.6 million in 2022. Lots of those voters are presumably independents or Republicans who didn’t vote last time. 

But some are disaffected Democrats alienated from the party they once belonged to. That’s evident from the longtime Democratic strongholds that DeSantis flipped, including Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, where DeSantis skyrocketed from a 21-point loss in 2018 to an 11-point win in 2022—a net gain of more than 30 percentage points. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Stanford Guide to Acceptable Words Behold the school’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptable-words-elimination-of-harmful-language-initiative-11671489552?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Parodists have it rough these days, since so much of modern life and culture resembles the Babylon Bee. The latest evidence is that Stanford University administrators in May published an index of forbidden words to be eliminated from the school’s websites and computer code, and provided inclusive replacements to help re-educate the benighted.

Call yourself an “American”? Please don’t. Better to say “U.S. citizen,” per the bias hunters, lest you slight the rest of the Americas. “Immigrant” is also out, with “person who has immigrated” as the approved alternative. It’s the iron law of academic writing: Why use one word when four will do?

You can’t “master” your subject at Stanford any longer; in case you hadn’t heard, the school instructs that “historically, masters enslaved people.” And don’t dare design a “blind study,” which “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Blind studies are good and useful, but never mind; “masked study” is to be preferred. Follow the science.

“Gangbusters” is banned because the index says it “invokes the notion of police action against ‘gangs’ in a positive light, which may have racial undertones.” Not to beat a dead horse (a phrase that the index says “normalizes violence against animals”), but you used to have to get a graduate degree in the humanities to write something that stupid.

The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is a “multi-phase” project of Stanford’s IT leaders. The list took “18 months of collaboration with stakeholder groups” to produce, the university tells us. We can’t imagine what’s next, except that it will surely involve more make-work for more administrators, whose proliferation has driven much of the rise in college tuition and student debt. For 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrative staff.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Jan. 6 Inquiry’s Not-So-Grand Finale Criminal referrals of Trump add nothing but political complication.

By on December 20th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jan-6-inquirys-not-so-grand-finale-donald-trump-criminal-referral-justice-department-11671488663?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The House Jan. 6 committee decided Monday that the best way to cap its 18 months of work would be a political gesture. It thus referred President Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for his efforts to reverse the 2020 election, which culminated in the Capitol riot.

What is this supposed to accomplish? A Congressional referral to the Justice Department has all the legal force of an interoffice memo. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Mr. Trump’s schemes to stay in office. The Jan. 6 committee’s loud public intervention makes his job more complicated, given the clear partisan context.

The House Jan. 6 inquiry has done useful work gathering documents and putting witnesses under oath. The wiser course was to let the established facts speak for themselves, while releasing full transcripts of its interviews to provide a complete public record.

***

The questions for Mr. Smith are whether Mr. Trump’s reckless conduct was criminal and whether indicting him is prudent and good for the country. The House referral cites laws against insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement to the government. But getting a conviction requires a unanimous jury, and the House theories of the case have serious problems based on the current public evidence.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Administration and the Two-State Delusion by Bassam Tawil

By on December 19th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19248/biden-two-state-delusion

The results of several public opinion polls, including the most recent one, demonstrate that Blinken and his team are either engaging in self-deception or simply fail to understand or see what most Palestinians want: Killing more Jews and the obliteration of Israel.

This is not the first poll to show that a majority of Palestinians oppose the “two-state solution.” That is because they are clamoring for a Palestinian state not alongside Israel, but instead of Israel.

The rising popularity of Hamas among the Palestinians is a clear sign that most of them identify with the Islamist group’s goal of destroying Israel.

According to the latest poll, if new presidential elections were held today, the Biden administration’s favorite Palestinian interlocutor, Mahmoud Abbas, would receive 36% and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would get 54%. In addition, 75% said they want the 87-year-old Abbas to resign.

The Palestinians, in short, are telling Blinken and the Biden administration that they can keep dreaming about the two-state fantasy for as long as they wish, but that they prefer “armed struggle” and terrorism to peace negotiations with Israel.

It would have been a good idea if Blinken had listened to what Hamas leaders clearly said in the past few days during rallies to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of their group.

Marking the anniversary occasion, Hamas issued a statement on December 14 that basically refutes claims by some Westerners that it has become a “moderate” group that is ready to accept the “two-state solution.”

Anyone who supports the establishment of a Palestinian state would be paving the way for the Palestinians to use the West Bank and Gaza Strip as launching pads to attack and destroy Israel.

The way for the international community – starting with the US — to turn the problem around is through insisting that any aid is strictly conditioned upon the Palestinians abandoning their calls for terrorism…,If there is any non-compliance, payments must actually be withheld….Otherwise, all of the aid that does not “disappear” is openly being used to bankroll terrorism, jihad and killing Jews.

Days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to the “two-state solution,” the Palestinians responded by repeating their rejection of the idea and their support for more terrorism against Israel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Great Britain: Multiculturalism and Islam Turn It Upside-Down by Giulio Meotti

By on December 19th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19217/britain-multiculturalism-islam

This year, Leicester’s famous multiculturalism, so praised by the establishment, exploded. Knife attacks, stone- and bottle-throwing, cars torched, religious symbols under siege, dozens wounded, including policemen…. Then the hunt for Hindus began in Britain’s streets.

“Leicester to be first city where white people are minority,” announced The Independent in 2007. Some understood that it would not end well.

What happened? Leicester became Islamized fast. In 2001, the Muslim population was 11%. By 2017, it made up 20%. Among children, Islam is dominant.

For the first time since the 7th century AD, England is no longer majority Christian.

A British bishop, the brave Michael Nazir-Ali, was attacked for denouncing the existence of “no-go areas” in the UK.

No one knows what Britain will be like in 30 years. We might, however, be concerned about a scenario in which large parts of the UK and Europe could resemble Pakistan.

“Leicester has become the poster city for multicultural Britain, a place where the stunning number and size of the minorities – the 55 mosques, 18 Hindu temples, nine Sikh gurudwaras, two synagogues, two Buddhist centres and one Jain centre – are seen not as a recipe for conflict or a millstone around the city’s neck, but a badge of honour,” was how, in 2013, the British liberal newspaper The Independent celebrated the transformation of Britain’s tenth-largest city.

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