Displaying the most recent of 92838 posts written by

Ruth King

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another sign the Dem establishment fears DeSantis more than Trump By Thomas Lifson

By on March 18th, 2022

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

It would be hard to find a person who better represents the liberal media establishment than Thomas B. Edsall, whose career includes the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In his latest column for the Times, he attempts to slam Ron DeSantis, letting the world know that the Democrats fear him more than Donald Trump at the top of the 2024 presidential ticket.  But in the process of doing so, far from damaging the Florida governor with the GOP electorate and middle-of-the-road voters, he awards DeSantis badges of honor.

Consider:

DeSantis relishes using the state to enforce his aggressive social agenda and has consistently plotted a hard-right course on issues from critical race theory to transgender rights.

For example, DeSantis sponsored and pushed through the legislature the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act” — or the Stop Woke Act for short — which now awaits his signature.

The legislation, Florida H.B. 7, bans teaching critical race theory that suggests that

A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cringe: Biden tells St. Patrick’s Day group, ‘I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid By Monica Showalter

By on March 18th, 2022

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

Is there anything that senile Joe Biden touches that doesn’t turn to something awful?

Here’s a report from the London Daily Telegraph:

Joe Biden opened a St Patrick’s Day speech at the White House by saying: “I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid.”

While some interpreted his remark as a self-deprecating joke, others suggested it could be seen as offensive to Ireland.

Mr Biden began his speech by saying: “Father, before I begin. Bless me, Father, for I’m about to sin. I, well, I just want you to know, I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid. I married Dominic Giacoppa’s daughter.”

The joke was greeted with laughter in the room, and there was no reaction from Irish officials.

The Telegraph also noted:

It was at least the third time Mr Biden has used the phrase.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Energy Crisis and Weakening the West: Rupert Darwall

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/03/17/net-zero_and_esg_are_worsening_the_energy_crisis__and_weakening_the_west_822337.html

The day after President Biden announced that the United States would ban imports of Russian oil and gas, a group of eleven powerful European investment funds that includes Amundi, Europe’s largest asset manager, outlined plans to force Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, to cut its lending to oil and gas companies. The juxtaposition of these two events dramatizes the fundamental disunity of the West. At the same time as the Biden administration is sanctioning Russian oil and gas producers, Western investors are sanctioning Western ones. Under the banner of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing, the West’s capital is being deployed to create an artificial shortage of oil and gas produced by its companies and reward non-Western oil and gas producers such as Russia and Iran with higher prices. In doing so, the West is undermining its own security interests.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy markets were already extremely tight. In the past, high oil and gas prices stimulated a supply-side response leading to increased output and to prices falling back. This relationship has broken down. According to analysts at JP Morgan, capital spending by S&P Global 1200 energy companies peaked in 2015 at just over $400 billion and shrank to around $120 billion last year – less than half its previous trough of $250 billion in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, even though global demand is now around 15% higher than it was then.

Continue reading →
MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

DEI Will Cause People To DIE of Medical Education Wokeness Rod Dreher

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/dei-will-cause-people-to-die-medical-education-wokeness/

In the comments to the crackpot Yale Law students post, my good friend JonF suggests that this is not a big deal, really, that the protesters will grow up to mature into normalcy, and pose no threat to common sense. I pushed back, saying that may have been true in our generation (we’re the same age, Gen X), but that pattern changed with the Millennials, who marched through the institutions and changed them.

Here’s a chilling — seriously, chilling — example from the medical profession. John Sailer, on the National Association of Scholars website, writes:

In October 2021, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the American Medical Association jointly released its 54-page Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narratives and Concepts, which received widespread criticism for its ideologically-charged language and recommendations. The guide suggested physicians update their language using “equity-focused alternatives,” trading terms such as “vulnerable” for “oppressed” and “disadvantaged” for “historically and intentionally excluded.”

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The US Must Reestablish Deterrence by Judith Bergman

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18331/us-reestablish-deterrence

The complacency with which the Biden administration has come to view military threats, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as a thing of the past has led to a misguided prioritization of issues such as climate change as the biggest threat facing the US. This misguided focus has come at the expense of a realistic definition of what the US’s vital national interests are and should be in the face of actual national security threats.

Over the past two decades, US leadership has waned, especially as it has retreated from the Middle East and Europe — where its military presence has been reduced from 400,000 troops in the 1950s to just around 60,000 troops today. US credibility has been compromised, as its reputation for adhering to US commitments — failing to prevent the crossing of red lines in Syria and the Afghanistan debacle, to mention just two examples — has been wrecked.

Rebuilding deterrence will require a massive political and military recommitment to vital national interests. Those will require a policy reorientation that acknowledges that the US is the primary Western force in a world with global military threats from a variety of bad actors — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea primary among them.

“How many times do you have to make this point that if you don’t have more resources, you get political leadership that makes the case to the American people that we face threats on multiple fronts and if we want to defend our way of life as we know it and our interests around the world, protect our allies, not as acts of charity but because it benefits us, then you do it. And if you can’t do it, you can’t be a world power anymore…” — Former National Security Advisor, Ambassador John R. Bolton, Ronald Reagan Institute, February 24, 2022.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proven, sadly, that US deterrence lies in tatters.

While Russia’s invasion represents an absolute low point thus far, US deterrence has been eroding for years. The cause is failed policies and ill-defined national interests, which bad actors such as Russia, China and Iran have clearly been noting.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Critical Mass of My Righteous Fury James Allan

By on March 18th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-critical-mass-of-my-righteous-fury/

The West right now seems absorbed in pushing such idiocies as the finer intricacies of transgender and critical race theories, the claim that defunding the police will help poor blacks (yep, really), a sort of zero-risk, precautionary principle on steroids approach to life and to governing citizens, and the notion that indirect quotas are a good idea as long as you dress them up in the insidiously seductive language of ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’. That means you find some desirable jobs and educational opportunities and then insist there be a near 1:1 correlation between (1) the numbers in the wider society with particular reproductive organs or types of skin pigmentation or preferences in bed, and (2) the numbers from such groups filling these jobs or university places etc – so basically it’s a type of Marxist equality-of-outcome outlook dominating not just universities and the public service but now all big corporations too. 

Moreover, it’s an outlook that indirectly lowers diversity of viewpoint, because conservatives make autonomy and individual choice key. And because they don’t want to play the identity-politics game, they largely don’t get these jobs or places or promotions.  The result over time is a monolithic orthodoxy of outlook, on campus, in the boardroom — heck, even in the Liberal partyroom.  This destructive, navel-gazing wankery in the West is very depressing.  Of course, the rest of the world is busy showing us that the great British philosopher Thomas Hobbes was right.  Humans have, do and always will live in a dangerous world, one chock full of bullies, thugs, religious zealots and hard men who know only the lessons of the schoolyard (by which I mean the schoolyard when I was a kid at a pretty tough state school in Toronto, where bullying meant being beaten up, not today’s schoolyard where ‘bullying’ has been emptied of all content and appears to mean someone has said something that might reduce self-esteem a few points on the ‘might I possibly be offended?’ scale).

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Hundreds of Yale Students Protest Free Speech Event Featuring Progressive and Conservative Speakers By Eric Lendrum

By on March 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/hundreds-of-yale-students-protest-free-speech-event-featuring-progressive-and-conservative-speakers/

A free speech event hosted at Yale University that featured both conservative and progressive speakers was shouted down last week by over 100 far-left radicals from the university’s law school.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the panel was hosted on March 10th by the Yale Federalist Society, and featured Monica Miller of the left-wing American Humanist Association, and Kristen Waggoner of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom. The purpose of the panel was to demonstrate that even two activists with such different political beliefs could agree on several things when it comes to the assault on freedom of speech in America today, as both groups had been involved in at least one Supreme Court case together dealing with violations of the First Amendment, when the Court sided with a Christian student in a Georgia university who was initially forbidden from preaching on campus.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Five People Charged for Being Spies of the Chinese Government Involved in Harassment Campaigns Against U.S. Citizens By Eric Lendrum

By on March 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/five-people-charged-for-being-spies-of-the-chinese-government-involved-in-harassment-campaigns-against-u-s-citizens/

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in New York charged five individuals with acting on behalf of the Chinese government as they attempted to spy on U.S. citizens, and to subsequently harass them for criticism of China.

As reported by the Washington Post, three separate charges were brought against each of the five defendants in Brooklyn, with the charges coming from the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants have been accused of stalking and harassing Chinese nationals living in the country who are now critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In one example, one of the spies tried to interfere with the congressional candidacy of a military veteran who said he had been a leader of the student protesters at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In another instance, the defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a former Chinese national currently living in Los Angeles. In another of the accusations, a defendant is accused of using his position within the Chinese community of New York City to seek information about prominent Chinese dissidents and anti-CCP activists, in order to send such information to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law itself,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. The Department of Justice “will not allow any foreign government” to target American citizens, he added.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will the Next J6 Trial Expose Another Justice Department Lie? Lies related to the whereabouts of Vice President Kamala Harris and former Vice President Mike Pence on January 6 are coming to the fore. By Julie Kelly

By on March 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/will-the-next-j6-trial-expose-another-justice-department-lie/

Federal prosecutors last week scored a big victory after a Washington, D.C., jury took less than three hours to find Guy Reffitt, the first January 6 defendant to stand trial, guilty on all counts.

The Justice Department’s winning streak might be short-lived, however. Prosecutors will have a tougher task with the trial starting Monday for Couy Griffin, the “Cowboys for Trump” leader arrested for his minor and nonviolent involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6.

Griffin was the subject of my very first article over a year ago on the Justice Department’s abusive prosecution of January 6 protesters in which, coincidentally, I asked the rhetorical question, “Where is the outrage over America’s political prisoners?” as official Washington was in a tizzy over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imprisonment of his country’s star dissident.

After the government charged Griffin on January 19, 2021 with two low-level trespassing misdemeanors, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin asked the court to keep Griffin detained pending trial. Sherwin, recall, bragged about a “shock and awe campaign” of January 6 arrests prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

Relying mostly on remarks Griffin made during and after the protest, Sherwin claimed that the New Mexico county commissioner, who never entered the Capitol, was a danger to the community. “[The] defendant is an inflammatory provocateur and fabulist who engages in racist invective and propounds baseless conspiracy theories, including that Communist China stole the 2020 Presidential Election,” Sherwin’s office wrote in a motion seeking Griffin’s imprisonment. “He denies the lawful election of the president and as [sic] stated repeatedly that Biden will never be president.”

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s crash-and-burn foreign policy exposed By Francis P. Sempa

By on March 18th, 2022

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

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Hudson Institute’s Walter Russell Mead pronounces the Biden administration’s great power diplomacy an unmitigated failure.  Mead’s criticism cannot be dismissed as a partisan attack — he is a member in good standing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Mead is also steeped in history and geopolitics — two subjects that appear to have eluded the stalwarts of President Biden’s foreign policy team.

“Most … of the ideas Team Biden brought to the White House,” Mead writes, “failed to work,” and most of the changes that U.S. foreign policy will require today and in the immediate future “will be toxic to much of the Democratic base.”  And while Mead suggests that Team Biden was right about NATO and “democratic values” as necessary elements of U.S. foreign policy, he understands that providing peace and stability in the world requires paying more attention to hard-headed and emotionally unsatisfying geopolitics.

And it is here — on the playing field of geopolitics — where Mead rightly claims that Biden’s approach to great power politics has “comprehensively failed.”

Continue reading →