FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Temple Mount travesty and poor US policy  By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on April 21st, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-704745

After Israel’s ambassador to Amman was summoned on Monday for reprimand over the riots on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh praised “every Palestinian who throws rocks and every Islamic Wakf worker who stands tall against the pro-Zionists defiling the Aqsa Mosque under the auspices of the Israeli occupation government.”

Rather than call Al-Khasawneh to task for openly inciting violence in an official address to the Jordanian Parliament – especially during Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to focus on faith, spiritual contemplation and self-discipline – King Abdullah II complained to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Israel was committing “provocative acts [that] violated the legal and historic status quo” on the compound.

The falsehood that Israel is storming and trying to take over the Aqsa Mosque is an ongoing antisemitic propaganda ploy with multiple aims. One involves the rejection of ancient Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Another is to obfuscate the fact that Israeli security forces were, as they always are, dispatched to the area solely to prevent the very deadly activities that Jordan’s premier is unabashedly encouraging.

A third is to fan Muslim flames within and beyond Israel’s borders whenever it suits the Hashemite Kingdom to do so. Finally, the fabrication is aimed at minimizing the enthusiasm of the Sunni states that signed or tacitly back the 2020 Abraham Accords with Israel, brokered by former US president Donald Trump.

Theoretically, this makes no sense. Jordan inked a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has greatly benefited from it.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Two Respected Political Sites Make Massive House Predictions By Rick Moran

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/20/two-respected-political-sites-make-massive-house-predictions-shift-toward-gop-n1591357

Two of the most respected political prognostication sites — Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report — announced massive shifts in their partisan ratings for House races.

Sabato’s latest estimate shifted an astonishing 11 races toward the GOP. Five of those races shifted from “Safe Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.” It should be noted that in 2010 a dozen or more Democratic races that started in the “Safe” column ended up with a GOP victory. This is another clear indication of an increased chance for a “wave” election where 50 or more seats switch parties.

The Cook Political Report is behind a paywall, but the Hill has a summary of the eight changes made by that site.

The changes include moving three previously “likely” Democratic districts — Indiana’s 1st, New York’s 19th and North Carolina’s 1st — into “lean” Democratic territory. Meanwhile, three districts that previously leaned toward Democrats — Nevada’s 3rd and 4th, as well as Virginia’s 7th district — are now toss-ups, according to the election handicapper.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Here’s the Tweet Clinton’s Lawyer Doesn’t Want Admitted as Evidence in Durham Case By Matt Margolis

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/04/20/heres-the-tweet-clintons-lawyer-doesnt-want-admitted-as-evidence-in-durham-case-n1591425

Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with lying to the FBI, has filed a motion requesting that special counsel John Durham not be able to use a tweet by Hillary Clinton in his upcoming trial.

Sussmann’s lawyers have repeatedly tried to get the charges against him dismissed, but those efforts have been unsuccessful. His trial is set to begin next month.

Here’s the tweet Sussmann and his lawyers are trying to prevent from being admitted into his trial:

Why is this tweet important, and why do Sussmann’s lawyers want to keep it out of his trial?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who’s In Charge Of America Right Now? Because It Isn’t The Man Getting Wrangled By A Giant Easter Bunny By: Kylee Zempel

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/19/whos-in-charge-of-america-right-now-because-it-isnt-the-man-getting-wrangled-by-a-giant-easter-bunny/

Given the state of our grocery shelves, southern border, gas prices, job openings, foreign policy, public schools, inflation, and health care, it would be awfully nice to know who’s really running the greatest country on earth.

The White House celebrated Easter on Monday with its traditional egg roll, but the Resurrection Day festivities turned into a national embarrassment thanks to the president. His handlers, including his wife, did their best to walk him around like a pet, telling him when to sit, speak, and stay.

This all raises the obvious and alarming question: Who is in charge of the greatest country on Earth right now? Because it sure as heck isn’t Joe Biden.

If you haven’t seen any of the footage, you might think this is an exaggeration, but it isn’t. Here’s Jill Biden monopolizing a children’s book reading, with her husband announcing, “And they’re not going to let me read at all.”

“I’ll let you— here, you can start us off,” the first lady said patronizingly, letting the president read only the first page.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

4 Takeaways From Spygate Colluders’ Mad Rush To Hide Their Tracks In Court By: Margot Cleveland

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/20/4-takeaways-from-spygate-colluders-mad-rush-to-hide-their-tracks-in-court/

They hope to prevent prosecutors from accessing a few dozen documents that might further reveal their role in peddling the massive Russia collusion hoax.

On April 19, a bunch of panicked participants in the Spygate scandal rushed the courthouse to intervene in the special counsel’s criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. They hope to prevent prosecutors from accessing a few dozen documents that might further reveal their role in peddling the Alfa Bank hoax.

The motions to intervene came just one day after Sussmann also sought to keep the documents away from prosecutors. The special counsel has requested the trial court review the documents in camera to assess whether they are in fact protected by attorney-client privilege.

Here are the top takeaways from these filings.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Offshore Headwinds By Jonathan Lesser

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/05/02/offshore-headwinds/

Biden’s 18th-century solution to a 21st-century energy problem

Green-energy dogma is like an ocean liner — slow to change course and difficult to halt. In Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has magnified the folly of Europe’s energy policies: Massive subsidies for wind and solar power coupled with bans on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), widespread shuttering of nuclear plants, and increased dependence on Russian natural gas have created a perfect energy-supply storm.

In the U.S., the Biden administration is using the Ukraine invasion as an excuse to double down on green-energy and electric-vehicle policies, while simultaneously conspiring to keep gasoline prices high and berating oil companies for not producing more. Only last fall, Democrats were berating oil companies to make them produce less.

To recount the full extent of the Biden administration’s ongoing energy follies would require a long and depressing book. But one particular facet typical of the administration’s green-energy fantasies warrants special attention: its proposal to install 30,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind turbines by 2030, and 110,000 MW by 2050. That’s equivalent to installing one 850-foot-tall, 14-megawatt turbine, the largest available, every 30 hours for the next 28 years.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Patients Beware: Washington Is Pushing Woke Health Care Kristina Rasmussen

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/patients-beware-washington-is-pushing-woke-health-care/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The sooner Americans recognize that Washington is introducing the disease of ideology into health care, the sooner we can cure it.

There’s a new front in the woke campaign to control our national institutions: health care. Largely out of sight of the American people, the federal government is pushing to fundamentally corrupt the principles and practice of medicine. Physicians and patients alike are set to suffer from woke health care. In many cases, they already are.

Every American needs to know what Washington is doing. It’s using taxpayer money and unaccountable regulation to embed “critical race theory” and “anti-racism” into every level of health care. The secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently made this clear when he declared that “health equity pervades everything” his department does. In making this declaration, he was following the lead of the president he serves. It sounds nice. But ensuring health equity requires taking a divisive and discriminatory approach to treating patients and providing care.

Which is exactly what’s happening. Since the start of this year, Washington has effectively bribed physicians to embrace discrimination on a day-to-day basis by offering higher Medicare- reimbursement rates to physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” That’s code for recasting everything that happens at the doctor’s office in light of race, including patients’ access to care and specific treatments. Ninety-three percent of primary-care physicians accept Medicare.

MEDIA Comments turned off

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Compares DeSantis, Youngkin Parental Choice Bills to ‘Russian War Tactics’By Caroline Downey

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/msnbcs-nicolle-wallace-compares-desantis-youngkin-parental-choice-bills-to-russian-war-tactics/

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, reacting to the fury in Florida over the recently codified Parental Rights in Education bill prohibiting sexuality instruction for kindergartners through third graders, compared such legislation to “Russian war tactics” of “dehumanization.”

Referring to the Republican governors who’ve spearheaded these measures, namely Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis, Wallace lamented how effective their rhetoric and “politics of ‘parental choice’,” she said using scare quotes, have been at winning the ideological issue.

“The truth is dehumanization as a tactic for politics is from war. Russians get the soldiers to rape children by dehumanizing them,” she said.

Some conservatives have resorted to labeling those who oppose the Florida law, which empowers parents to decide when and how to teach their children about sexual orientation and gender identity, as “groomers,” an allegation of priming kids for pedophilia or sexual abuse. While the phrase has packed a lot of punch and sent many progressive proponents of sexualized K-12 curricula retreating, some conservatives argue that it’s counterproductive to the debate.

“It’s being deployed in our politics, and people like you and I sometimes lose the plot and admire its effectiveness, not its substance, but even the analysis of these tactics loses sight of what this speech brings us back to which is that dehumanization has a cost right now,” Wallace added.

“Kids will die,” she said, harkening back to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim from February that Florida’s new law, dubbed ‘Don’t Say Gay’ by progressives,” will drive up LGBT youth suicides.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Worry about illegal immigration holds at near two-decade high: Gallup

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://news.yahoo.com/worry-illegal-immigration-holds-near-130349755.html

The public’s worry over illegal immigration is close to a two-decade high ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

In a poll conducted March 1-18, 41 percent said they worry a great deal about illegal immigration, the highest total since 2007, when 45 percent of respondents said they were concerned a great deal about the issue.

Overall, around 60 percent of adults said they worry at least a fair amount about illegal immigration.

Only 17 percent of those surveyed said they worry about immigration a little while 23 percent said they don’t worry at all about the issue.

The poll was conducted before the Biden administration announced it was dropping Title 42, which allowed Border Patrol to deny asylum claims from migrants due to the pandemic and allowed migrants to be deported easier.

Gallup’s polling found the issue has become more partisan throughout the years, with Democrats and Republicans now heading in opposite directions in their concerns on the issue.

Democrats have shifted toward less concern about illegal immigration, with only 18 percent saying they are concerned a great deal about the issue while 44 percent say they don’t worry at all.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Whiteness in Physics? The Latest Front in the Woke Wars | Alex Small

Posted By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/whiteness-physics-latest-front-woke-wars-opinion-1696124

Science education is no stranger to America’s culture wars, but traditionally the battle involved right-wingers attacking biology textbooks. Fields like physics—which I teach—largely escaped this fate, probably thanks to being less directly connected to matters of evolution, sex or the origin of life. Nonetheless, education in any field is a social activity; physics instruction cannot forever stay aloof from social controversies. Thus the reported excesses of K-12 education—including claims that right answers or acronyms are white supremacy—now seep into college-level science education.

The latest salvo on the science front involves an article titled “Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study.” Physics professor Amy Robertson and her collaborator Tali Hairston use critical whiteness studies (CWS) and critical race theory (CRT) to interpret a case study of three students working on a mundane physics problem. The article has—unsurprisingly—drawn harsh criticism online.

However, the high-profile publication venue (one of the most prestigious education journals in the physics community) and the public resources underwriting the work (a $495,847 grant from the National Science Foundation) indicate that the intrusion of CRT into physics has become mainstream. Those who value rigorous science and rational analysis cannot afford to merely mock this work. We must instead shine light on it, demonstrate how stifling and unproductive CRT and CWS can be when applied to science classrooms, and highlight missed opportunities for insight.

Robertson and Hairston recorded and analyzed a six-and-a-half minute video of three students (identified as Hispanic, Middle Eastern and white) working on a problem involving heat, energy and temperature change, with occasional input from an instructor (identified as biracial). The students were asked to solve the problem using a particular technique that the instructor had previously outlined for them. Robertson and Hairston also conducted follow-up interviews with the instructor and two students.