NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pop Goes the DEI Bubble Claudine Gay’s resignation proved we are moving away from this harmful ideology. Andy Kessler

Posted By on January 22nd, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pop-goes-the-dei-bubble-affirmative-action-claudine-gay-harvard-esg-blackrock-39c77d13?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Have we reached peak DEI? The unraveling of “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives had already begun—five states banning DEI programs; Google,Facebook and others cutting DEI staff; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—well before Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted.

Author Christopher Rufo, echoing 1960s student activists, called the rise of DEI a “long march through the institutions”—a 50-plus-year ideology infiltration into universities, K-12 schools, government, media and corporations with the goal of telling us all how to live. That’s why I enjoy that the word “rot” is back in style to describe what is happening inside the walls of academia.

Like everything based on the writings of Karl Marx—seeing oppressors and colonial struggles everywhere—DEI was doomed to fail. The uniformity of thought known as intersectionality, fostered by DEI, meant all oppressed people must support all others who are oppressed. But that idea burst on Oct. 7 when Hamas raped, murdered and kidnapped Israelis. Many liberals, especially Jewish ones, couldn’t support genocidal “colonized” terrorists. Pop! The long march is in retreat.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Traumatic Brain Injuries’ Iranian-backed militias mount another missile attack on U.S. forces.

Posted By on January 22nd, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/traumatic-brain-injuries-iran-militias-ad061562?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Iranian-backed militias launched another missile and rocket barrage at U.S. forces in Iraq on Saturday, and several Americans may have been injured. Will Iran pay any price for this latest assault?

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that “most of the missiles were intercepted by the [al-Assad Airbase] air defense systems while others impacted on the base. Damage assessments are ongoing.” It added that “a number of U.S. personnel are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries. At least one Iraqi service member was wounded.”

This appears to be one of the largest of the 140 or so attacks by Iranian-backed militias since Oct. 7 against the U.S. in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has responded a few times against the militias inside Iraq and Syria, as it has against the Houthi militia targeting commercial ships and U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The attempt to restore deterrence hasn’t worked.

That may be because the instigator of all this is Iran. None of these militias would stage these attacks without knowing they have the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If Iran thinks the U.S. won’t put Tehran’s military or commercial assets at risk, it has no incentive to stop the militias from attacking American targets.

The U.S. Commander in Chief is supposed to protect U.S. troops from having to risk “traumatic brain injuries” from enemy assault. Where is President Biden?

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

They’re Coming After Us by John Podhoretz

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://www.commentary.org/articles/john-podhoretz/antisemites-coming-after-jews/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290858331&_

‘IHAVE NEVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFORE’

I have lost count of the number of times the phrase “I have never felt like this before” has been spoken in my ear, texted to me, or sent to me in an email, in the three months since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

When I talked with Israelis on a trip in November, the phrase described a gut emotion few under the age of 50 said they had ever experienced—the sense that they were personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow. They had lived through years of ineffectual rocket fire that was all but magically extinguished by the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile systems. Those interceptions had provided a feeling of near-divine protection. No longer. Israelis feel raw now, and such vulnerability is never momentary or transitory; one might say the opposite. Once it seizes you, it might take years before you wake up one morning and notice suddenly it’s no longer there.

I experienced that blissful moment once in my life, in New York City in 1998, when I was walking alone late at night across Central Park and realized I was doing something I simply would never have done before in my 37 years as a native Manhattanite. The feeling in the gut of every New Yorker of my age—the need to protect oneself from some sudden onslaught, in part because everyone we knew had been attacked in one way or another—was just no longer there, and I had never felt it disappearing. Because of the crime drop, because of increased police visibility, because of the presence of others like me in exactly the same place at exactly the same time, this new sense of freedom was now my new reality.

I am not saying Israelis ever felt secure in quite that way before October 7. They had, of course, lived through 60 years of terrorist attacks (the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964 as a violence-worshipping gang designed to attack civilians on the model of the anti-colonialists in Algeria) and several short wars over the past half century. But through the 2010s and early 2020s, the sense of immediate danger for Israelis had split in two—and might therefore have seemed, oddly enough, twice as weak.

The threat had either become too geopolitically large to affect their quotidian existences (like the existential risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program) or could have only come so suddenly and unexpectedly that it would have been absurd to disrupt your daily life taking personal countermeasures (Palestinians engaged in a bus-stabbing spree at one point; how do you defend against that?).

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

DeSantis Drops Out of Presidential Race, Endorses Trump

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race Sunday afternoon and endorsed former president Donald Trump, announcing the suspension of an embattled campaign that began with a bungled launch on Twitter Spaces with a video posted to the same platform just two days before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

DeSantis acknowledged in the video announcement Sunday afternoon that he no longer had a “clear path to victory” in 2024, but emphasized that his political career is just beginning. “While this campaign has ended, the mission continues. Down here in Florida, we will continue to show the country how to lead,” the governor said. Coinciding with the video announcement, DeSantis canceled a meet-and-greet event with voters originally scheduled for 5 P.M. in Manchester, New Hampshire.

DeSantis’s departure comes after his allies had spent days making calls to top donors asking whether the candidate should drop out ahead of the New Hampshire primary, as first reported by National Review. The bundler page on the campaign’s finance website was no longer working earlier that day, which signaled the campaign, NR reported earlier Sunday, which signaled that a drop-out announcement was imminent.

DeSantis had put all his eggs in the Iowa basket, which won him some key endorsements from Governor Kim Reynolds and influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. But given that DeSantis and his allied PACs invested heavily in Iowa to the exclusion of New Hampshire, Trump’s roughly 30-point defeat proved a fatal blow to a campaign that was already on life support.

While DeSantis initially publicly claimed he punched his ticket out of Iowa and was staying in the race, the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down was hit by layoffs last week and the campaign had canceled scheduled media appearances in recent days.

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Ramaswamy Defies New York Times Narrative: Suspends Campaign, Backs Trump The New York Times doesn’t get it. That’s one more reason why it is an increasingly parochial publication that speaks only to a shrinking coterie of pampered, irrelevant dittoheads. Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/21/ramaswamy-defies-new-york-times-narrative-suspends-campaign-backs-trump/

No one was surprised that Vivek Ramaswamy decided to suspend his campaign for the presidency after his poor showing in Iowa. Although he was by far the most rhetorically nimble of the GOP candidates, it had long been clear that this was not his moment. His showing in the Iowa Caucus—he came in a distant fourth with about 7 percent—quantified that truth.

Not that Vivek is going anywhere. He will not be the GOP presidential candidate in 2024.  But by immediately suspending his campaign and enthusiastically endorsing Donald Trump after Trump’s stunning, blow-out victory in Iowa, Vivek guaranteed that he would have an important role to play in Trump’s campaign and, should Trump be reelected, in the second Trump administration.

The New York Times did not like that Vivek endorsed Trump. Veteran readers of our former paper of record can already tell from the headline and subhead of the story that reported the news. “Vivek Ramaswamy, Wealthy Political Novice Who Aligned With Trump, Quits Campaign.” “Wealthy,”  eh? “Quits,” you say? Beginning rhetoricians should be set the task of rewriting that headline for some progressive plutocrat.  Then they should try their hand at rewriting the subhead: “A self-funding entrepreneur, Mr. Ramaswamy peaked in late August but deflated under attack from his rivals. He dropped out after the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Donald J. Trump.”

I think it was a writer for Time magazine who, back in the day, illustrated the point by noting the difference in tone between “Truman slunk from the room to huddle with his cronies” and “Ike strode from the chamber to confer with his advisors.” Truman and Ike were doing the same thing, but the description of their activities cast them in very different rhetorical spaces.  The Times obviously had Vivek slated for a Truman-like role.

Consider the first sentence of the story: “Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made a splash with brash policy proposals and an outsize sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican White House nomination after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.” “Newcomer,” “briefly,” “brash,” “outsize,” “disappointing.” You see where this is going.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fani Willis’s romance keeps the ‘Get Trump’ efforts entertaining She hired her boyfriend, Nathan Wade, as chief prosecutor to go after Trump Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://thespectator.com/topic/fani-willis-romance-keeps-get-trump-nathan-wade/

Some enterprising entrepreneur ought to find a way of collecting a cover charge for the entertainments that the Get Trump concession is currently offering the public free and for nothing.

At the moment, the first of my two favorite forays into the twilight zone are the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Trump. Carroll claims that sometime, she cannot remember exactly when, but it was about thirty years ago, Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the swank department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. A New York jury found Trump guilty of defamation and sexual abuse (but not rape) and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million of the crispest. Now she is back asking for more. Who knows whether she will get it. Stand by and pass the popcorn. 

Then down in Georgia, site of one of the four major lawfare assaults to damage Trump and make him radioactive to the electorate, Fani Willis, the district attorney, is after the former president because — it is alleged — he tried to overturn the 2020 election. How did he do this? By telling the secretary of state Brad Raffensperger that “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The conversation was taped and the New York Times went to town with it, claiming that Trump “pressured” Raffensperger to manufacture the votes. 

Vocabulary quiz: what is the difference between the words “find” and “manufacture?” Use each in a sentence. 

That’s not the sort of test the Times is likely to pass. Remember back during the 2016 presidential election campaign when Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s “lost” emails, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” The Times instantly accused him of “essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.” It reminded me of the passage in The Pickwick Papers when Pickwick’s landlady, Mrs Bardell, brings suit for breach of promise because of a couple of letters like this: “Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.” “Gentlemen,” said the lawyer for the plantiff Bardell, “what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! and tomato sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these?” Ha, ha, ha. 

The anti-Trump legal fraternity needs lawyers like that chap.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Rolling Blackouts Crushed Canada during a Winter Storm By Andrew Follett

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/green-rolling-blackouts-crushed-canada-during-a-winter-storm/?utm_source=

When Albertans most needed their energy, wind and solar ensured there wasn’t enough to go around.

Centrally planned “green” solar and wind power are simply not reliable when they’re needed the most. A recent wave of blackouts and brownouts in the Canadian province of Alberta proves it.

“With temperatures near minus 45 [Celsius, minus 49 Fahrenheit] over the weekend even colder in some parts of Alberta and virtually no wind or solar showing up on the grid, Alberta issued an electricity advisory asking its residents to conserve electricity to avoid brownouts,” Ontario energy minister Todd Smith said in a Facebook video. Smith happened to be in Edmonton, Alberta, to announce a deal between the provinces to construct a small modular nuclear reactor.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which manages the province’s grid, began a series of declared states of emergency last Friday. The grid fluctuated throughout the crisis until this past Monday. Energy supply repeatedly collapsed and residents were repeatedly asked to conserve electricity by shutting off essential services.

The province has massively invested in green energy. Three quarters of Canada’s new wind and solar generation is based there. But fewer than 1 percent of both Alberta’s 4,481 potential megawatts of wind power and 1,650 of solar power could operate when the province most needed electricity. Essentially all of the province’s solar- and wind-power plants were offline. Greatly increased energy demand for electric heat pumps, cars, and even phone batteries, which work far less efficiently in cold weather, ensured disaster.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Grammy-Nominated Artist Releases 10/7 Protest Song ‘We Are Not Ok’by Ari Blaff

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/grammy-nominated-artist-releases-10-7-protest-song-we-are-not-ok/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Grammy-nominated recording artist John Ondrasik, known by the stage name “Five for Fighting,” released a protest song condemning skyrocketing antisemitism across America and the glorification of Hamas and its atrocities committed on October 7.

“We are not all right,” the song opens, “When we see young girls pulled from their homes, and dragged to the streets; when we see grandmothers being pulled away to children shot in front of the family.”

“We are not all right when right here in the city of New York you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place,” the music video continues showing footage of violent pro-Palestinian protesters spliced with Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.

“This is a time for choosing,” Ondrasik sings against bodycam footage of Hamas terrorists committing atrocities on October 7. “This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing,” the song continues.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Moshe Dann: Can Israel win the war against terrorism? As long as Palestinian Arabs engage in terrorism and advocate murder and genocide, their demands for a state are immoral and irrelevant, and those who ignore this are complicit.

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383932

Most (if not all) countries go to war to win; Israel, however, is different. First, neither Israel nor the PLO conceives of the conflict as a war, since they have mutual ongoing political, security, and economic interests; terrorism, therefore, is seen as part of an ongoing relationship.

Until Oct 7, Israeli leaders assumed that this was also true for Hamas.

This leads to the second reason: Before October 7, Israel was not fighting Hamas to destroy terrorism, but to prevent attacks, neutralize or arrest terrorists, and then, temporarily, return to a “status quo.” That’s why warnings about what Hamas was doing were ignored by Israel’s political, military and security leaders; they duped themselves.

Hope-doped, drugged by self-assurance, and seeking to appease the Obama/Biden administrations, the EU, the UN and the international community, some of them accepted “the two-state-solution” (2SS) . They failed to understand that the conflict is not over territory, but is – as Hamas proclaims – a religious war to eliminate Israel. That explains why Palestinian Arab leaders consistently reject offers of statehood in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and why they continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. They are engaged in a “holy war” against Jews and Zionists as “invaders” and “occupiers of Palestine” – all of it.

That is a call for genocide.

Attempts to reduce, or “manage the conflict” by making concessions, therefore, failed because of an unwillingness to understand what the PLO, Hamas and other terrorist organizations want. Despite ongoing terrorism during the 1990’s, Israeli, European, and American leaders promoted a “peace process,” the Oslo Accords.

As Yasser Arafat admitted, it was only a step towards his goal of destroying Israel.

Although the Abraham Accords were a sign of hope, they had no effect on the terrorist war against Israel. Meanwhile, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and other Muslim countries poured billions into Hamas’ war efforts. Distracted, Israeli leaders ignored what was going on in Gaza. Self-assured, they refused to accept reality

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘We Have to Kill Those Who Preach Christianity’: The Persecution of Christians, December 2023 (Christmas Edition) by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on January 21st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20322/persecution-of-christians-december

“About 37 [Christian] individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes…. ” — christianpost.com, December 30, 2023, Nigeria.

“Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in the Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam….” — morningstarnews.org, December 26, 2023, Nigeria.

“[I]t is also the existence of disbelief itself that is a ‘grievance’,” — Aymenn Jawad al Tamimi, December , 2023, Philippines.

[I]n Austria, on Dec. 9, Heiligenkreuz Abbey received a bomb threat by phone. Police later confirmed that it had an “Islamist overtone”. The caller had said “Convert to Islam, or I’ll bomb you away!”…. Father John Paul commented: “[I]t encourages us even more to pray and work for peace, healing and reconciliation.” — puls24.at, December 11, 2023.

“Reports include statements like, ‘We have to kill those who preach Christianity, and these Christians have no place in Mauritania.'” — persecution.org, December 13, 2023.

Two Christian evangelists, Joseph and Isaac, after Muslims beat them for quoting the Koran, spent Christmas Day in jail for “blasphemy.” The report does not indicate which verses were deemed so objectionable, or why. — morningstarnews.org, December 22, 2023, Uganda.

According to a January 2 report: “Three migrants who allegedly planned an attack on Cologne Cathedral are free again. A judge let them go after just one night in custody.” Pictured: Police conduct security checks on visitors at Cologne Cathedral on December 24, 2023 in Cologne, Germany, after indications of an Islamist terror threat. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December 2023.