Submitted by: P McMillan
A Human Wrecking-Ball In The White House -
Maybe you didn’t believe me earlier this month when I issued a warning that the U.S. was “getting ready to go full Venezuela” on economic policy. After Biden’s speech a couple of nights ago, are you starting to get the picture?
All constraints are now lifted. All limits no longer apply. The federal government is now fully unleashed to solve all human problems and bring about perfect fairness and equity in human affairs. And to do so immediately if not sooner. All through the magic of a few trillion additional dollars (per year!) of federal spending. And while we’re at it, we’ll also solve the “climate emergency.” That will cost just another few incremental annual trillion. In the context of our new superpowers, that’s a rounding error.
The flood of proposed new programs and spending is so enormous as to make critiques of any individual items completely pointless. Is there a single one of these proposals that makes sense, or that actually might enhance the well-being of the American people? If so it’s such a small portion as to be insignificant.
Instead, I’ll address what I consider to be the elephant in the room, the obvious thing that somehow never gets mentioned. That is, why haven’t the vast numbers of already-existing federal social service programs and spending already succeeded in solving the problems they were created and funded to solve? - Francis Menton
Race Demagogues Are Poisoning Our Politics.
Our racial problem is getting worse, even as we strive as a nation to marginalize racism. Senator Tim Scott is entirely right: “America is not a racist country.”
But America has a serious racial problem. Not a racism problem, a racial problem. We have a party in power whose strategy for remaining in power is to divide the country along racial lines. Democrats calculate that urban-centered racialist tribalism, amplified by media and pop-culture allies and underwritten by cowed corporations, can cast mainstream America as a deplorable bastion of white supremacism.
The Republicans, the party out of power, generally lack Senator Scott’s confidence and tact in making the counter-case.
The Department of Justice is a key to the Democrats’ strategy. The Obama-Biden administration politicized the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of our government, peddling with relish the progressive portrayal of an indelibly racist America. They’re ba-ack. - Andrew C. McCarthy
The contemporary obsession with identity has made its way into elementary school policy, curricula, and standards approved by state boards. While we continue to see poor reading and math scores, schools spend money and time confusing and shaming other people’s children. Many educators and elected leaders have good intentions; they believe deeply that they are part of a necessary and long-overdue movement to teach racial literacy, social justice, equity, and antiracism.
But as virtuous as these terms may sound on their face, they mean something else in far too many classrooms. American schools are teaching young children race essentialism: reducing them to identity groups, putting them in boxes labeled “oppressor” and “oppressed,” and often inflicting emotional and psychological harm.
If this sounds extreme, that’s because it is. It is not happening everywhere—but it is happening enough to have juiced a multibillion-dollar, nationwide industry. Sometimes the source is a rogue teacher whom the principal and superintendent admit they are trying to rein in; but increasingly, it is simply public officials implementing approved policies. - Erika Sanzi
Fake News: New York Times, WaPo, NBC forced to retract false claims about Giuliani.
The Times appended their correction to a story about the role Giuliani may have played in the 2019 recall of ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch and whether he received a warning from the FBI about Russian disinformation.“An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing,” The Times wrote Saturday in a note attached to the piece.
The Washington Post’s correction, on a story about prominent Americans being targeted by Russian disinformation, was similar.“An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation,” the paper said. - Kathianne Boniello
Biden’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan Undermines His Own Global Strategy by Richard Kemp
https://www.
· Far worse than failing to intervene is intervening to fail. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is just that.
· US allies who have themselves invested huge military and economic resources in Afghanistan fear a Taliban return to power and the blood-bath that would likely accompany it. Their concerns are shared by General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US CENTCOM, responsible for Afghanistan, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that Afghanistan's forces might well collapse following US withdrawal.
· Jihadists everywhere would be encouraged and empowered by a perceived US defeat at the hands of the Taliban, which was being trumpeted by Al Qaida within days of Biden's announcement.
· Biden justified his withdrawal with the need to counter challenges from China and Russia and strengthen democratic allies and partners against autocracy. His actions are likely to have the reverse effect.
· The abandonment of Afghanistan will long be remembered by countries around the world as they weigh their choices between the US and authoritarian regimes. Already Saudi Arabia has recognized that Biden will not protect them from Iran....
· Chinese President Xi Jinping says Taiwan must and will be "unified" with China, by force if necessary.... Xi will be... count[ing] the potential cost of moving against the country that he considers his own.
· As Russian forces massed along the border with Ukraine last month, Xi will also have noticed that Biden cancelled a planned transit of the Black Sea by two US warships after Russia told Washington to stay away....
· Like a kettle of vultures, Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia will all be circling the Afghan carcass following US withdrawal. Iran, which has long provided weapons, funding and safe haven to the Taliban, has been building its influence with them in recent months. Russia has also helped fund and arm the Taliban — sometimes in collaboration with Iran — to kill Afghan, US and NATO forces in order to challenge the US and increase its own influence in the country.
· China too has been cooperating with the Taliban... It also sees influence in Afghanistan as a means to confront New Delhi. Beijing knows that India, as a US ally and democracy, is the only regional power that could play a genuinely constructive role in a future Afghanistan. Xi is not willing to see that happen.
· Pakistan, in cahoots with China, is also determined to keep India out of Afghanistan. Its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate created the Taliban and today remains by far the greatest external backer of its campaign against Afghan and international forces. Islamabad sees the country as vital strategic depth in a future conflict with India and intends to hold sway over a future Taliban regime in Kabul.
A Palestinian State: What Would Ben Gurion Have Said? by Amir Taheri
https://www.
· When the decision to hold the elections was first declared, some of us hoped that it would provide an opportunity for Palestinians to attempt three changes in their political trajectory: to organize a change of generations at the top levels of political decision-making, to forge a minimum of understanding among long rival political groups on the basic rules of the game, and, more importantly, to transform their various versions of "the cause" into a state-building project rooted in reality.
· In its current form, Palestinian politics remains atrophied in a lost cause that, in zombie style, bars the route to positive energies.
· He [the late Palestinian "negotiator" Saeb Erekat] ignored the fact that ceasefire lines exist in the context of a truce, not of peace and that, if achieving peace is the aim, there is no point in choosing them as a sine qua non in a negotiated deal.
· The third "condition" concerned the status of Jerusalem as the capital of a putative Palestinian state. Here, too, the Palestinian position suited those for whom Palestine is a cause not a project for state building.
· When the British mandate ended in 1948, there was no Palestinian nation, in the universally accepted sense of the term at least in the Westphalian treaties, to claim a state of its own. In fact, all mandate and subsequent United Nations documents refer to "inhabitants" of mandate Palestine presented as Arabs, Jews, Druzes, Armenians, Bahais, Turks and numerous Christian denominations, including Assyrians and Chaldeans.
Another missed opportunity?
Race Demagogues Are Poisoning Our Politics By Andrew C. McCarthy
Our racial problem is getting worse, even as we strive as a nation to marginalize racism.
Senator Tim Scott is entirely right: “America is not a racist country.” But America has a serious racial problem. Not a racism problem, a racial problem.
We have a party in power whose strategy for remaining in power is to divide the country along racial lines. Democrats calculate that urban-centered racialist tribalism, amplified by media and pop-culture allies and underwritten by cowed corporations, can cast mainstream America as a deplorable bastion of white supremacism.
The Republicans, the party out of power, generally lack Senator Scott’s confidence and tact in making the counter-case.
The Department of Justice is a key to the Democrats’ strategy. The Obama-Biden administration politicized the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of our government, peddling with relish the progressive portrayal of an indelibly racist America. They’re ba-ack.
Any good agitprop scheme needs a villain. In the Left’s scheme, the nation’s police fit the bill. The scheme also has an abracadabra element: “disparate impact” theory, which conjures proof of “systemic racism” out of thin air.
The Justice Department is critical because the scheme needs the might of the federal government to impose the non-enforcement approach of progressive “policing” on the whole country. This is exactly the opposite of the way the system is supposed to work.
According to our founding framework, the states are responsible for governing their internal affairs. The Constitution would never have been adopted were it not for the principles of federalism. Nothing is more internal, more close to home, than ensuring law and order so that our neighborhoods can enjoy community, security, and prosperity.
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS USA & OPINION
1.The Real Reasons Behind the Rudy Giuliani Raid Lee Smith
Expectations that the FBI was investigating possible crimes documented on Hunter Biden’s laptop were laid to rest earlier this week when agents raided the home and office of Rudolph Giuliani, the man who made news of the laptop public.
According to reports, federal investigators are looking for evidence that the former Mayor of New York City violated the foreign agents registration act (FARA) by illegally lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian officials. But that’s just a pretext to search his communications and records to find something with which to take revenge against a man who helped uncover the corruption of America’s first family. The compromising photos, emails, and texts found on Hunter’s laptop include accounts of financial arrangements with a Chinese businessman he called the “spy chief of China.” The documents, confirmed by a former Biden associate, implicate other members of the Biden clan, including it seems the president.
And so to hunt Giuliani, the commander-in-chief has deployed federal law enforcement authorities, which have their own reason to retaliate against one of the Department of Justice’s most famous former prosecutors. Giuliani helped thwart the FBI and DOJ’s plot to topple an American president.
He joined Donald Trump’s legal team in April 2018 to defend the president during former FBI director Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. “I wanted to make us a lot tougher against them,” Giuliani told me in an interview for my 2020 book “The Permanent Coup.” “We needed to get out front publicly because I believed it was not just a legal case. It was a political case.”
Indeed, Justice Department officials sanctioned the Mueller probe as a continuation, and coverup, of the illegal espionage operation targeting Trump and his associates that the FBI called Crossfire Hurricane. The investigation of Giuliani is yet a further extension of Crossfire Hurricane, even employing the same instrument it used to go after Trump aides—FARA.
The New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News all issued retractions Saturday for their coverage of Rudy Giuliani following a raid of his Manhattan apartment by the FBI.
The Times appended their correction to a story about the role Giuliani may have played in the 2019 recall of ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch and whether he received a warning from the FBI about Russian disinformation.
“An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing,” The Times wrote Saturday in a note attached to the piece.
The Washington Post’s correction, on a story about prominent Americans being targeted by Russian disinformation, was similar.
“An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation,” the paper said.
Dershowitz: FBI’s Raid of Giuliani ‘Unconstitutional’ By Zachary Stieber
The FBI’s recent raid on an apartment owned by Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, violated the Constitution, according to constitutional expert Alan Dershowitz.
“This was just a misuse of the search and seizure power. Initially, it was turned down; now it was approved, both by a judge and by the attorney general of the United States, so it wasn’t lawless action, but I believe that they acted inconsistently with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and that there should be remedies for it,” Dershowitz said on Newsmax on Saturday.
“It should be done through subpoena, and that is the constitutional route to getting evidence,” he added.
A search warrant being executed points to officials believing the subject would destroy evidence if the search was not carried out. But the lawyer knew that he was being investigated for months, so there’s no basis for a search unless a subpoena was obtained, Dershowitz argued.
“The 4th Amendment demands a subpoena in these situations, not a search warrant. What they did in this case was unconstitutional,” he said.
Agents obtaining information that is covered by attorney-client privilege would taint prosecutors who may try to prosecute Giuliani, Dershowitz added, saying that he has advised Giuliani’s lawyers on a pro-bono basis to move to get the material back, have the government subjected to subpoena analysis, and force anybody who goes over the material to be from outside the prosecutor’s office, such as a judge.
A Human Wrecking-Ball In The White House Francis Menton
Maybe you didn’t believe me earlier this month when I issued a warning that the U.S. was “getting ready to go full Venezuela” on economic policy. After Biden’s speech a couple of nights ago, are you starting to get the picture?
All constraints are now lifted. All limits no longer apply. The federal government is now fully unleashed to solve all human problems and bring about perfect fairness and equity in human affairs. And to do so immediately if not sooner. All through the magic of a few trillion additional dollars (per year!) of federal spending. And while we’re at it, we’ll also solve the “climate emergency.” That will cost just another few incremental annual trillion. In the context of our new superpowers, that’s a rounding error.
The flood of proposed new programs and spending is so enormous as to make critiques of any individual items completely pointless. Is there a single one of these proposals that makes sense, or that actually might enhance the well-being of the American people? If so it’s such a small portion as to be insignificant.
Instead, I’ll address what I consider to be the elephant in the room, the obvious thing that somehow never gets mentioned. That is, why haven’t the vast numbers of already-existing federal social service programs and spending already succeeded in solving the problems they were created and funded to solve?
At the end of this post I have included a list of some 83 categories of federal “need based” spending programs. The list comes from a 2018 report by John Early written for the Cato Institute, but he took it from a document put together by the Congressional Research Service in 2013. In other words, I’m sure that there are plenty more of these things since this list was compiled. Note also that this is far, far, far from a complete list of federal income and in-kind distribution and benefit programs, since it specifically only includes those that are “need based.” Thus the list doesn’t even include the single largest federal income distribution program of all, which is Social Security. Aficionados of this subject will also recognize that large numbers of food and nutrition programs and job training programs are also missing, undoubtedly because they are not “need based.” (In this post back in 2014 I found a study that identified some 47 federal job training programs alone.).
The leading progressive Democratic candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, has had his chances for victory along with his reputation utterly destroyed over the last week. That happened due to allegations from a political consultant, Jean Kim, that Stringer groped her eighteen years ago, in 2003.
Despite no evidence presented that any of this happened, and despite this being the only assault accusation ever voiced about Stringer during his decades in public life, and despite Kim never having once claimed any of this even when she was working for a rival candidate who was ultimately defeated in 2013 by Stringer, and despite the sudden emergence of this accusation as Stringer’s mayoral campaign was surging, and despite evidence showing that Kim was highly misleading in several of her statements, and despite Stringer’s claims that Kim had been his girlfriend for several months accompanied by vehement denials of wrongdoing, numerous leftist groups and politicians who had endorsed him repudiated his candidacy within days of the emergence of these, issuing statements which treat Kim’s claims as proven truth and depict Stringer as a vile sexual predator.
That is because, as has been seen repeatedly, the prevailing mentality in left-liberal politics is that even grave life-destroying accusations are to be treated as true without the need for any evidence. They casually and with apparent glee ruin people’s reputations and lives without batting an eye the second someone utters an allegation of sexual misconduct. And one is required to mindlessly accept such accusations as truth — never ask for evidence if it is true — if one wishes to remain in good standing in those circles and to avoid being smeared oneself as an apologist for sexual misconduct.
To understand what is being done to Stringer, look at the identical smear campaign that Democrats launched in Massachusetts in August, 2020. Congressman Richie Neal (D-MA) is a walking embodiment of everything sleazy and slimy in U.S. politics. First elected to the House back when Ronald Reagan was still President, the Massachusetts Democrat, 72, is now in his 16th House term, and occupies the all-powerful position of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which controls legislation governing revenue, taxes, social programs, and tariffs.
Neal’s entire career has been funded by large corporations, insurance companies and banks, and that is who he dutifully serves. He has used his immense power to block virtually every piece of legislation that his corporatist funders oppose but which left-wing populists favor. If you’re on the left, and you actually think the political goals you claim are important, there would be few priorities more pressing than removing Congressman Neal from power.
In 2020, the left was presented with precisely that opportunity. Over the past sixteen years, Neal has had no credible challengers in his Democrat-heavy district. But last year, 31-year-old Alex Morse — a dynamic and gay five-term Mayor of Holyoke — announced he would challenge Neal in the Democratic primary. Progressive groups lined up behind Morse with endorsements and donations, and polls began showing him closing in on Neal. This appeared to be one of the best opportunities in years to remove one of the sleaziest corporatists from power.
Many American parents may assume that culture-war battles over critical race theory and “wokeness” are fought on legitimate terrain, involving such matters as how high school students can best grapple with our nation’s complex past. Perhaps they think that the suddenly ubiquitous topics of gender identity and preferred pronouns rankle only those parents who are old-fashioned in their thinking. If only. America’s youngest students are being bombarded with classroom activism and indoctrination that is inappropriate not only developmentally but for public school systems in general.
The contemporary obsession with identity has made its way into elementary school policy, curricula, and standards approved by state boards. While we continue to see poor reading and math scores, schools spend money and time confusing and shaming other people’s children. Many educators and elected leaders have good intentions; they believe deeply that they are part of a necessary and long-overdue movement to teach racial literacy, social justice, equity, and antiracism. But as virtuous as these terms may sound on their face, they mean something else in far too many classrooms. American schools are teaching young children race essentialism: reducing them to identity groups, putting them in boxes labeled “oppressor” and “oppressed,” and often inflicting emotional and psychological harm.
If this sounds extreme, that’s because it is. It is not happening everywhere—but it is happening enough to have juiced a multibillion-dollar, nationwide industry. Sometimes the source is a rogue teacher whom the principal and superintendent admit they are trying to rein in; but increasingly, it is simply public officials implementing approved policies.
In a 1935 radio play, a man dies in a car accident and finds himself in a palatial home where a butler fulfills his every wish for wealth, women and so forth. The man (acted by Colin Clive, the first movie Dr. Frankenstein) cannot bear what he takes for Heaven, and tells his butler, “I want to suffer…I’m sick of Heaven…I can’t stand this confounded everlasting bliss…Well, whatever the devils do to me can’t be as bad as this. I want to go to Hell!”
The butler replies, “Why sir— wherever do you think you are? This is Hell, sir!”
America has turned into Hell — not the Hell of Christian theology, to be sure, but the real Hell in which the satisfaction of narcissistic desire drives the damned into ever more intense misery.
The playwright, John Balderston, wrote the 1931 film “Dracula” and other scripts in the horror genre. In 1960 Charles Beaumont, another genre writer, adapted Balderston’s playlet as an episode of The Twilight Zone. The theme derives from Goethe’s “Faust,” which in turn borrows from the biblical Book of Job.
The biblical Satan tormented Job by taking away what he needed, while the modern devil torments Faust by offering him whatever he wants.
Goethe’s protagonist rejects the devil’s blandishments, eschewing the “gold that runs through my fingers like quicksilver, a game that no-one wins, a girl who ogles my neighbor while I embrace her, honor that disappears like a falling star.”
Today’s Americans have taken the devil’s deal. As Faust told Mephistopheles, he is damned once he tries to hang on to the devil’s passing moment of pleasure. The Americans make a lifestyle out of it, and are just as miserable as the Colin Clive character in Balderston’s fantasy.
Balderston and Beaumont wrote horror fiction, but not in their darkest imaginings could they have invented the tortures that the devil inflicts on the young people of the West today.
GENERAL NEWS -PHILOSOPHY
Granting Value to the World Roger Kimball
By making happiness incompatible with man’s essence, Schopenhauer found himself deaf to Goethe’s wisdom: “If you want to delight in life, then you must grant value to the world.”
In the great contest to be the world’s gloomiest philosopher, there are many high-ranking competitors.
I won’t say that philosophers have cornered the market on gloominess. There are other walks of life that have always been abundantly supplied with people who can find a cloud in any silver lining.
But as a group, philosophers can give anyone a run for his money.
It is true that the sage Zarathustra is said to have been born laughing. And Aristotle seems to have been a happy, well-adjusted family man.
There are other cheerful chaps (interestingly, all great philosophers in history have been male) scattered here and there.
Some people will find it odd to find Thomas Aquinas on the list of those with a sunny disposition. But anyone who was so plump that he had to have a semi-circle cut out of the refectory table cannot have been too gloomy.
Then there was the great Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th century German cardinal, statesman, scientist, philosopher. He was a world-affirming fellow, as was proved by his having endowed a monastery with a vineyard for its perpetual support. Someone told me it is still going strong, 500 years later, though I haven’t checked up on that.
That Gloomy Philosophy
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