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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

A Cabinency of Dunces The common denominator to these Biden appointees is ideological rigidity, nonchalance, and sheer incompetence.   By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/25/a-cabinency-of-dunces/

As the nation sinks inexplicably into self-created crisis after crisis, debate rages whether Joe Biden is incompetent, mean-spirited, or an ideologue who feels the country’s mess is his success. 

A second national discussion revolves around who actually is overseeing the current national catastrophe, given Joe Biden’s frequent bewilderment and cognitive challenges. 

But one area of agreement is the sheer craziness of Biden’s cabinet appointments, who have translated his incoherent ideology into catastrophic governance. 

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has essentially nullified federal immigration law. Over 2 million foreign nationals have illegally crossed the southern border without audit—and without COVID vaccinations and tests during a pandemic. 

Mayorkas either cannot or will not follow federal law. 

But he did create a new Disinformation Governance Board. To head his new Orwellian Ministry of Truth, he appointed Nina Jankowicz—an arch disinformationist who helped peddle the Russian collusion, Steele dossier, and Alfa Bank hoaxes. 

While Jankowicz’s adolescent videos and past tweets finally forced her resignation, Mayorkas promises that his board will carry on.

In the days before the recent Virginia election, grassroots parent groups challenged critical race theory taught in the schools. 

In reaction and under prompts from teachers’ unions, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed both the FBI and the Justice Department to establish a special task force apparently to “investigate threats” from parents against school board members. 

Beto O’Rourke Goes for Broke The Texas Democrat makes a show of politicizing the mass shooting in Uvalde.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beto-orourke-goes-for-broke-texas-greg-abbott-gubernatorial-race-uvalde-shooting-robb-elementary-11653516141?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

It isn’t easy for a Democrat to win statewide in Texas these days, and Beto O’Rourke already lost once to Sen. Ted Cruz. Now he’s running for Governor against incumbent Greg Abbott, and on Wednesday he gambled on a stunt that could make or break his campaign.

Gov. Abbott and a variety of state and local officials were holding a press conference to update the public on the Uvalde massacre at Robb Elementary School. It was a governing, not a campaign, event.

After Mr. Abbott had spoken for several minutes, Mr. O’Rourke interrupted to point a finger at the Governor and declare, “This is on you,” referring to the murder of 19 children and two teachers by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. “You said this was not predictable. This is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything,” Mr. O’Rourke added. The Democrat was then asked to leave by other officials on the stage, with at least one uttering an epithet.

Trailing in the polls, Mr. O’Rourke must figure he had to take a risk on politicizing the murders even as emotions are raw and officials are still trying to figure out Ramos’s motivation. Mr. O’Rourke famously said during his short-lived 2020 presidential campaign that he wanted to ban AR-15 rifles. On Wednesday he got his sound bite. We’ll see if Texans agree that this mass murder was all about gun control.

Beto O’Rourke and Barack Obama remind us that Dem politicians are awful By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/beto_orourke_and_barack_obama_remind_us_that_dem_politicians_are_awful.html

On Tuesday, an evil man slaughtered 21 people, 19 of whom were children under ten. On Wednesday, two morally bereft Democrats—Beto O’Rourke and Barack Obama—used those deaths to score political points. Decent people were outraged. Indecent ones cheered them on.

Beto O’Rourke is an inconsequential man with few accomplishments who is determined to force people to recognize his non-existent greatness. Having failed both in his runs for U.S. Senator and U.S. President, his latest effort is to become the governor of Texas.

Somewhere along the way in his quixotic political journey, the beta man heard that there’s no such thing as bad press. If you can get the public’s attention, you’re gold. This swinish man then decided that he should crash Gov. Greg Abbott’s press briefing, which grieving parents might attend, to score political points. You can see his indecent grandstanding here, as well as the tongue-lashing he received from Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, and from a member of the audience:

Mourn Justice on the Anniversary of George Floyd’s Death, Too By Arjun Singh

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/mourn-justice-on-the-anniversary-of-george-floyds-death-too/

Among the casualties of the tragedy was equal justice under the law.

Today marks two years since George Floyd died in Minneapolis. His death might’ve just passed through the news cycle, were it not for that video captured by a bystander. It became a “day that will live in infamy” to all sides, for the harrowing circumstances of his death. To progressives, it was the pinnacle of “police brutality.” Conservatives mark the day as the beginning of the unchecked nationwide riots that erupted in the name of “racial justice.”

There is much to mourn on May 25. Floyd’s unnecessary death tops that list — but also the loss of law and order that followed and the erosion of impartial justice.

In the days after May 25, 2020, the four officers involved were fired. Mobs led by Democratic politicians such as Maxine Waters and Black Lives Matter formed early on and demanded that Derek Chauvin, the lead accused, and others be judged guilty, as prosecutors including Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison announced their intent to bring charges.

The egregious act was, after all, caught on camera, so the swift and harsh actions were hardly a surprise. But the Chauvin case that followed was a mess in many regards. The disgraced officer did stand before a jury, but one that wasn’t sequestered during the trial — i.e., quarantined from public knowledge about the case — and that was bombarded with the anti-Chauvin messaging in the corporate media that all of us received. The media released long polemics against his innocence every day.

As Chauvin was the most hated man in America, the presiding judge should have taken extra steps to maintain the jury’s constitutionally guaranteed impartiality. Yet jurors were free to hear protest leaders threaten violence, were they to return a verdict of not guilty.

Warning: Biden Is Already Plotting To Restart His ‘Disinformation Board’

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/25/warning-biden-is-already-plotting-to-restart-his-disinformation-board/

No bad idea ever dies in Washington. Once it takes root, it will reemerge in another form. So, all the huzzahs about the demise of the Biden administration’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” are premature.

As we note in our I&I/TIPP Poll, the board attracted widespread hatred among the public, with 55% saying that they wouldn’t trust it to decide what is disinformation fairly. Among independents, 75% didn’t trust it, which is close to the 81% of Republicans who said they couldn’t trust such a government board. Among “free speech” Democrats, in stark contrast to Republicans and independents, 73% said they trusted the board to be fair.

“No doubt, both White House and congressional Democrat internal polling showed similar results,” Terry Jones notes.

But don’t declare victory just yet.

For starters, team Biden said it would only put a “pause” on the board in the wake of a furious backlash from the public and revelations that the woman chosen to head it had herself peddled disinformation on numerous occasions.

During this 75-day “pause,” the Homeland Security Advisory Council will review the board and make “recommendations on how the department can garner public trust surrounding its disinformation efforts.” (Note statement says “how” not “if.”)

Terror in the Tunnels Violent crime is surging on New York subways because the justice system switched its focus from enlightened prevention to post-mayhem mop-up. Nicole Gelinas

https://www.city-journal.org/terror-in-new-york-subway-tunnels

On Sunday, Daniel Enriquez became the New York City subway’s latest “random” crime victim, shot in the chest at close range and killed as he traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan for midmorning brunch. Enriquez was the fourth person to die by violence on the subway this year, and the third to be killed by a stranger. Each of the four subway killings has something in common with the others: justified intervention by police, prosecution, or incarceration could have prevented it. A few years ago, it likely would have. New York is suffering soaring crime because it has abruptly switched its justice system from enlightened prevention to gruesome mop-up.

The city’s justice system is still good at solving the most serious crimes. Just hours after Enriquez’s murder, police identified a suspect: 25-year-old Andrew Abdullah. But Abdullah’s background points up the fact that there shouldn’t have been a serious crime to solve in the first place. He has a criminal history that stretches back to his teen years. He has 19 arrests and served a state sentence for a previous gun crime. Just six months after winning parole on that conviction, the Daily News reports, Abdullah was “quickly busted again in January 2020” for carrying a loaded gun. His two most recent outstanding cases are for domestic violence and possession of a stolen vehicle. In the car-theft case, just last month, a Brooklyn judge, following guidelines set by New York State’s bail “reform” law, released him without bail.

Like many offenders who ratchet up their lower-level violence to homicide, Abdullah, who has now been apprehended, isn’t the kind of criminal who just made a mistake in the heat of passion and deserves a second chance. When he was 16, he allegedly accosted and sexually assaulted three women in Central Park, all strangers to him, within moments. But New York State’s criminal justice system allowed this antisocial behavior to escalate until, allegedly, he killed Daniel Enriquez on the train.

What COVID Hath Wrought Joel Kotkin

https://americanmind.org/features/what-trump-and-covid-revealed/what-covid-hath-wrought/

The hard facts—and hopeful opportunities—of a post-pandemic world.

Glenn Ellmers’s analysis of COVID and Trump represents a classic, and effective, account of the situation from the perspective of declining liberty and adherence to traditional values. But though it is important and necessary to hold onto our highest ideals, I would like to emphasize what is actually taking place on the ground and its likely long-term implication.

Statistics show that COVID accelerated economic, demographic, and geographic trends which were already existent, but rarely acknowledged. These trends include large-scale migration to the south, the west, and the suburbs. COVID also, as Ellmers suggests, sharpened the conflict between many Americans and the ruling “expert” class, who, unlike most Americans, actually flourished under COVID.

I am less sure that Trump was a force for good in all this, given his profound personal failings and mixed messaging during the pandemic. Yet he did stir up dissent against the overweening policies of some governors. In this sense the health crisis intensified an already existing political one. Looking forward, post-COVID reality has seen the emergence of powerful populist politics in both parties, and a marked drop in public esteem for the nation’s once-revered institutions.

Funding the New Elites

In the short run the pandemic strengthened the position of the ruling metropolitan elites centered in Puget Sound, the Bay Area, and New York City. Financial and technology moguls’ net worth has surged during the pandemic, while many businesses in the analog economy suffered devastatingly. Overall, poor and minority communities endured fatalities at twice the average rate of other areas. Minorities and the poor also often lost their jobs, which usually could not be done remotely. Their housing, health needs, and reliance on transit made them all the more vulnerable.

Using Tragedy for Racial Propaganda Heather MacDonald

https://www.city-journal.org/using-the-buffalo-tragedy-for-racial-propaganda

President Joe Biden has been lecturing white Americans about hate again. On May 15, the day after an 18-year-old white supremacist massacred ten black shoppers in a Buffalo supermarket, Biden called on Americans to “address the hate that remains a stain” on the country’s soul. Those stained by hate were not named by race, but the reference was clear.

Two days later, Biden gave a longer speech in Buffalo about the attack. In Biden’s telling, white Americans are at best indifferent to the racist slaughter of their fellow black citizens. “We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None,” Biden insisted.

Biden’s exhortations and moral clarity were the only forces impeding a slide back toward Jim Crow and the reign of the KKK: “I promise you. Hate will not prevail. And white supremacy will not have the last word. . . . We can’t allow . . . these hate-filled attacks . . . to destroy the soul of the nation.” We can’t allow this violence, the president intoned, to “be the story of our time.” To “confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people”—something that whites, in their silent complicity with racist rampages, apparently fail to do.

Last week’s remonstrances were not new. In an August 2019 press briefing, then-presidential candidate Biden claimed that racism was a “white man’s problem visited on people of color.” “White folks are the reason we have institutional racism,” he said. On November 6, 2019, the day before the press declared Biden the president-elect, he claimed a “mandate” to eliminate “systemic racism.”

Biden carried over the conceit into his presidential victory speech—the same speech hailed across the political spectrum as “unifying.” Among the “great battles of our time” was the still-unaccomplished goal of “root[ing] out systemic racism in this country.” Millions of Americans represent what Biden called “our darkest impulses.”

The Buffalo rampage is indeed a horrifying reminder of this nation’s white supremacist past, a past that took far too long to move beyond. Because of that history, white acts of terror have an elevated significance over other racist assaults. It is appropriate to be vigilant against any revival of such racial cruelty. Blacks’ anger is understandable—as is their feeling, following any such assault, that they remain under racial siege.

Don’t Surrender To Do-Somethingism On Guns By: David Harsanyi

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/25/dont-surrender-to-do-somethingism-on-guns/

Law-abiding Americans have no obligation to take ownership of a madman’s actions.

Before we even knew how the killer of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, had obtained his guns, Chris Murphy was engaging in his customary performative emotionalism on the Senate floor, literally begging Republicans to “compromise.”

Compromise on what exactly? Murphy has never once offered a single proposal that would have deterred any of these mass shooters. Literally minutes after his routine, Murphy was asked about the obvious mental illness prevalent among most of these shooters. “Spare me the bullsh-t about mental illness,” the Connecticut senator responded, “ripping” the GOP. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world.” That’s how serious he is about compromise.

Whether America is more prone to mental illness or not, these incidents are almost exclusively perpetrated by young men who have exhibited serious anti-social behavior.

Does leftist ideology create tangible psychiatric issues? By Olivia Murray

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/does_leftist_ideology_create_tangible_psychiatric_issues.html
Even outspoken Democrat Bill Maher is asking questions of the delusional narrative propagated through transgender activism. In a comedic segment posted to Twitter, Maher touched on compelling evidence, suggesting the possibility that “California is creating” trans children. Well, California is notorious for their radical trans agenda like ‘drag queen story hour’ and schools promoting transgenderism unbeknownst to parents – so in light of additional scientific evidence, it seems like Maher could be right.

A study published on PubMed compared two sets of mothers. The first set was mothers of boys with gender identity disorder, and the second set – the control group – was mothers of normal boys. Researchers found:

….mothers of boys with GID had more symptoms of depression and more often met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder than the controls. Fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with GID compared with only 6% of controls met the diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder….

The data showed that boys struggling with their biological sex are almost nine times more likely to have a mother who suffers from a severe personality disorder. So are they really born into the wrong body, as the transgender lobby and their activists would tell us? Or are they casualties of external factors, like a parent’s mental illness, perhaps caused by leftist ideology? The study mentioned above makes no connections between mental illness and “progessive” ideology, but other studies do.