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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, May 29, 2023

Thought For the Day

 

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AEI Section 230 Spring Summit, Part III: Highlights from an Expert Panel Discussion Evaluating Section 230 Reform

By Shane Tews | Mark Jamison AEIdeas May 25, 2023

Below is an edited and abridged transcript of key highlights from that panel. You can watch the full event on AEI.org and read the full transcript here.

Shane Tews: How should we be thinking about Section 230, and what happens if we change the statute?

Lateef Mtima: We place a lot of emphasis on the positive impact that Section 230 has had on marginalized voices. But it’s not just marginalized voices, it’s everybody. Every citizen in America now has the opportunity to opine on just about anything. And it has brought the benefits of the First Amendment into reality. So when we think about what Section 230 has done, it’s beneficial to think about its impact on “marginalized communities” and outsider voices. And remember, this includes not what you would traditionally think about as outsider. Rural communities, artistic communities, and virtually anyone outside the mainstream. And if we break Section 230, all of that goes away. And we go back to a situation in which you basically have a very tiny portion of mainstream America that controls the public conversation..........To Read More..

Landmark Supreme Court Rulings Safeguard the Internet’s Liability Shield - By Shane Tews | Clay Calvert AEIdeas May 22, 2023 - Internet users and platforms alike can breathe a sigh of relief. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube all emerged victorious on May 18 when the US Supreme Court issued dual decisions in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google, LCC. The core tension centered on Section 230, the federal statute that shields websites from being held liable for user-generated content, on top of protections provided by the First Amendment. The Court, in preserving a robust internet, rebuffed the plaintiffs’ efforts in both cases to hold the platforms civilly liable for allegedly aiding and abetting terrorist attacks by hosting and algorithmically recommending ISIS-supportive content.

In ruling in favor of the platforms, however, the Court declined to take on a key issue in Gonzalez: Whether Section 230 provides immunity for platforms when they use algorithms to suggest or recommend third-party content—not just host it. Reflecting the Court’s penchant for minimalism under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court didn’t need to address the Section 230 issue because it found that the underlying substantive theories of the plaintiffs in both cases were deficient................. 

Missouri v. Biden Lawsuit Discovery: Biden Regime Designates YOUR THOUGHTS as Part of Government Infrastructure – They Call It “Cognitive Infrastructure” and They Believe It Is Their Right to Control It  - n Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, along with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry,  filed a lawsuit (Missouri v. Biden) against the Biden Administration, including Biden himself, Anthony Fauci, the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly a dozen federal agencies and Secretaries.  Schmitt has moved on to represent Missouri in the US Senate. The suit alleges a massive coordinated effort by the Deep State (permanent administrative state) to work with Big Tech to censor and manipulate Americans – from average citizens to news outlets – on issues including the Hunter Biden Laptop from Hell, 2020 Election Integrity, COVID-19 origin and extent skepticism, COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, among other issues................

The Mind Virus of the Affluent Woke Left

Noise-making radicals who live in mind-boggling affluence occupy a particularly conspicuous space on the woke Left and spew an especially noxious sort of invective.

By May 25, 2023 

Those who belong to the woke Left are held together by overlapping interests and shared passions. Not all wokesters support the same causes and certainly not with equal intensity. Thus, warriors against climate change like Karl Schwab and Bill Gates don’t often speak up for the sexual transitioning of children or call for allowing biological males claiming to be women to compete in female sports events. One can likewise read the racialist diatribes of Corey Bush, Ibram X. Kendi, or Al Sharpton without likely running into attacks on fossil fuels or gas stoves. The point is not that these allies never agree on anything. It is that their alliance is looser than some might imagine.

It also seems their collaboration is based mostly on what they loathe rather than what they like. Above all, these collaborators share a chief villain, whom all woke leftists can be counted on to hate, namely, a white male Christian, perhaps living in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s postal district and spewing politically incorrect speech, when he’s not reading the Bible or driving his gas-guzzling car.

It also seems necessary for all wokesters to have a large, intrusive state and ubiquitous surveillance agencies for keeping opposition in line. Equally useful, from their perspective, is a centralized educational system that requires compulsory attendance, except perhaps for designated victim groups, who may do as they like. We also supposedly need properly indoctrinated public educators to deal with all the “neo-Nazis,” or, as the Biden Administration classifies such types, “white nationalist terrorists.” While all elements of the woke Left seek to marginalize their shared enemies, some may also be eager to inflict violence on them. And they can do so while the media turn their collective back on the Left’s “peaceful protests.”

Miranda Devine provides us with a particularly revealing case study of a growing subspecies within this woke genus, the socially radical corporate capitalist. Devine focuses on Daniel Goldman, the usually nattily dressed and unfailingly politically correct representative of New York’s 10th Congressional District. According to his critic at the New York Post, Goldman is a “loathsome” example of “‘elite privilege,’ a blue-eyed son of Sidwell Friends, Stanford and Yale” with “entitlement oozing from every pore.”....................To Read More....

Left Wing Extremism Linked to Narcissism and Psychopathy

The study also showed that many of the subjects did not personally practice the beliefs they fervently push onto everyone else...

Commentary: The Left Has Pushed the Envelope

by Victor Davis Hanson

The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.

Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice.

The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath. They misled Congress. They altered court documents and deceived federal judges.

The FBI hired a foreign national to gather dirt on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign—while he was being paid by the rival Hillary Clinton campaign.

The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories. It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely “Russian disinformation.” That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.

The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multiyear audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden’s purported tax irregularities.

The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden’s appointee Merrick Garland.

California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit. Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar “reparations” payout to the state’s black residents.

No one has any idea where the money for that would come from. No one can define who would qualify. No one can explain why a state that never allowed slavery eight generations ago now owes selected Californians billions of dollars it does not have.

One of the reparations board leaders asserts blacks might be willing to accept an “installment” plan of payments.

The NAACP just issued a “travel alert” advising blacks not to visit Florida. The announcement was timed to draw negative attention to conservative Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ announcement of a presidential bid.

Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis—all outside Florida—have the highest black murder rates in the nation.

Florida in contrast, with a black population of 3.3 million, has the second largest number of black businesses in the nation. The chairman of the NAACP’s board of directors is himself a Florida resident!

Black Lives Matter has just announced it lost millions of dollars in investments and ran up huge deficits.

The culprit was its former corrupt leadership.

Its extravagant spending, plush homes, and family hangers-on have nearly bankrupted the advocacy group. It cannot account for the millions of dollars in corporate guilt and protection money it leveraged following the George Floyd riots in 2020.

In New York, a threatening subway career criminal with 42 prior arrests was subdued by a bystander and died during the confrontation. The criminal is now deified. The would-be Samaritan is charged with felony manslaughter.

The deceased’s uncle is vocal about his late nephew’s confrontation. But he himself was just arrested with stolen property and armed with a knife. He was mysteriously still roaming the streets despite 70 prior arrests and current active arrest warrants.

In almost every American city and town, biological males, with enormous advantages in size and musculoskeletal mass, routinely win women’s sporting competitions.

They are systematically destroying decades of progress that sought to ensure parity between men and women’s sports. Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Under pressure from the LGBTQ activists, the Los Angeles Dodgers reinvited the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to celebrate Pride night at Dodger Stadium.

Catholics and Christians had objected to the invitation because the group’s notoriety hinges on its sexualized and often pornographic mockery of Catholic ritual, the Holy Trinity, and Christian faith.

The supposedly courageous group would never dare extend its street-theater blasphemy to other religious groups such as Muslims or Hindus.

The Dodgers apparently do not care that Greater Los Angeles may be home to 6 million Mexican American citizens and resident Hispanic immigrants. Most are Catholic and many were avid Dodger fans.

Anheuser-Busch has nearly destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand by hiring transgender performance-art activist Dylan Mulvaney to hawk the brand—and his own transitioning—to America’s working classes.

The Disney corporation, for decades, has enjoyed multibillion-dollar concessions and a veritable 40-square mile private fiefdom gifted from the taxpayers of Florida.

No matter. Disney has rebranded its films, amusement parks, and television offerings to reflect radical transgendered, gay, and race advocacies.

The results so far are billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers.

A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.

All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide—to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?

– – –

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the recently released The Dying Citizen.

 

The Absurdities of Our Age

May 22, 2023

A sign of a civilization in headlong decline is its embrace of absurdities. Unfortunately for the United States, we are witnessing an epidemic of nihilist nonsense. Here are a few examples:

Reparations 

How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?

The state currently faces a $31 billion annual deficit—and it’s climbing. The state’s $100 billion high-speed rail project is inert, a veritable Stonehenge of concrete monoliths without a foot of track laid down.

California’s income tax rates are already the highest in the nation. Its sales taxes, electricity rates, and gas taxes and prices are among the steepest in the country. And for what?

Crime, homelessness, and medieval decay characterize the once great downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is now not safe to walk alone in any major California city after dark.

Shoplifting and smash-and-grab theft are no longer treated as real crimes. The result is the mass flight of brand stores from our downtowns and inner cities, with all the accustomed cries of “racism,” even as racist public prosecutors pick and choose whether to indict the arrested on the basis of race.

California infrastructure, once the best in the county, is now among the worst. Decaying and crowded freeways, inadequate water storage, and pot-holed streets are the new norm. Once robust gas, oil, mining, and timber industries are nearly inert.

The state’s public schools are dysfunctional. Once premier public universities are spiraling headlong into decline—junking scholastic tests for admissions, using illegal racial quotas to warp admissions, and institutionalizing racialized dorms and graduation ceremonies.

Even if California enjoyed a huge surplus, even if 300,000 residents were not fleeing the state each year, even if California had a history of being a Confederate slave state, even if whites were the majority of the population, even if the black population was greater than its present 5-6 percent, it would be insane for the state to even contemplate racial reparations.

Twenty-seven percent of the state’s residents were born outside of the United States, and have no American ancestors. The state is the most racially diverse in America, and one in which every group could, in theory, lodge complaints against the dead of the past. Mexican-Americans, Armenians, Asians, and the descendants of the impoverished “Okie” diaspora could all cite legacies of bias—but from whom exactly? The long dead?

For those of increasingly mixed heritage—about a quarter of the state—did their own ancestors oppress their own ancestors? Are all blacks sure that eight generations ago their individual ancestors were slaves outside of California, and therefore they have monetary grievances against those in the state whose ancestors eight generations ago might have owned slaves outside of California? And can such writs be documented?

Do we really wish to go down this path of destroying individuality and insisting that superficial appearance damns us to a collective rooted in the past?

If so, are we to tally up the half-century role of racial quotas to calibrate all the impoverished whites of the last 50 years who were discriminated against in admissions and hiring? Have there not been existing reparations from the decades-long implementations of racial preferences and exemptions—or perhaps in some $20 trillion dollars in reparatory transferences during a half-century of Great Society entitlements?

If we are collectives and not individuals anymore, are all of us to be judged by adding up our group’s historical and current pluses and minuses?

If so, do we add or subtract reparatory charges based on group data? If one race is vastly overrepresented in hate crimes or interracial crime statistics, and other groups vastly underrepresented as perpetrators, is it the role of the state now to intervene and provide reparatory and collective “equity” from one collective for the relatives of the victims of another collective?

Are we really convinced that past institutional racial bias is all-determinative of present opportunity? If so, why do Asians nationally as a collective on average earn $20,000 a year more than non-Hispanic whites—despite past exclusionary immigration laws, forced government relocations, and zoning prohibitions? Was there some unknown university study that postulated that the Japanese-internment or early 20th century Yellow Peril exclusionary immigration statutes were irrelevant to Asian-American upward mobility?

Inequality Under the Laws

Ideology now has made a mockery of the cherished traditions of blind justice and equality under the laws. Whether you are arrested, indicted, and convicted increasingly hinges on your politics.

During the 120 days of 2020 riots, looting, arson, and assault that saw $2 billion in damage, 35-40 killed, hundreds of injured police officers, and 14,000 arrests, were there mass detentions, thousands of convictions, and lengthy sentences handed out to Antifa and BLM members for the violence? After all, the insurrectionary rioters staged iconic attacks on the idea of government, whether defined as torching a police precinct or federal courthouse.

Why then were so many protestors of January 6 demonstrations at the Capitol that saw no violent deaths at the hands of another—except a Trump supporter lethally shot for the misdemeanor of entering a broken window of the Capitol—given lengthy prison sentences?

George Floyd—a 6’4”, 223 pound black career violent felon, arrested while suspected of passing counterfeit money, serially high on dangerous drugs, resisting arrest—was choked into unconsciousness while resisting arrest by a reckless white police officer.

Floyd was canonized as an American hero, often portrayed with halo and angelic wings.

The officer was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving combined state and federal prison sentence of over 40 years.

A white Ashli Babbitt, 5’2”, 113 pounds, a 14-year military veteran, and, like Floyd, unarmed, was lethally shot for the crime of entering a broken window in the Capitol by a black policeman.

Postmortem, her life was smeared and slandered, her shooter canonized. Was Babbitt some sinner, Floyd a saint? The choker officer Chauvin a Satan, the lethal shooter cop Byrd godly? The petite Babbitt a mortal danger stopped only by a bullet, the huge and uncooperative Floyd supposedly easy to arrest with no need of force?

Why were the downtowns of Washington, D.C. and Seattle simply hijacked and expropriated by violent groups with impunity, while federal troops were forbidden to assist overtaxed local law enforcement? Was that not in stark contrast to the barbed wire, 20,000 soldiers and barricades that marked Washington for weeks after the Capitol demonstrations?

Why was there not to be a 2020 riot congressional commission to investigate the deaths and destruction caused by groups who crossed state lines to plan and orchestrate the violence, often weaving their conspiracies with the aid of social media?

Nullification

Did we not fight a Civil War to reestablish that states and locales could not ignore federal laws?

Why did 550 local and state jurisdictions, in old Confederate South Carolina style, declare with impunity that federal immigration law did not apply in their territories? Does the Left now believe in such neo-Confederate principles? Would it applaud counties that rendered federal endangered species, or handgun-control statutes null and void in their jurisdictions?

Or do we now declare some nullifications good and others bad, depending on our own politics?

How did the Biden Administration simply suspend all immigration law to greenlight 6-7 million illegal entries across the southern border since January 2021? Did Biden not take an oath to execute our laws faithfully?

Does any president now have the right to order the executive branch not to execute entire bodies of federal law? Will the next president declare entire sections of EPA statutes inert by de facto nonenforcement to appease a particular political base?

At any time, did Joe Biden send a bill to Congress requesting that anyone can now cross U.S. borders without identification and legal sanction?

So do citizens fly into JFK or LAX from foreign countries and simply announce that they either forgot their passports or never obtained them? And as a reward for lack of an ID or legal permission, are they still allowed into the United States and given a free phone, and a free hotel room? Do we have one set of laws for citizens, and another for non-citizens? And if so, why?

Rogue Agencies

How can a former FBI director under oath claim amnesia or ignorance 245 times during congressional testimony, or leak a classified account of a private conversation with a president with complete impunity, as did James Comey?

How can an FBI director, as did Andrew McCabe, lie on four occasions with impunity to federal investigators? Is it now the case that FBI directors at times must lie and deceive as part of their job descriptions?

How can a former FBI director, as in the case of Robert Mueller, with all seriousness deny under oath any knowledge of Fusion GPS or the Steele dossier, whose controversies prompted his own special counsel appointment? Can citizens tell inquisitive IRS auditors that they have no memory of deductions in question?

Why is there still an FBI after it has been confessed that it paid a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt against a presidential candidate—and paid his source in Washington to provide Steele with false information to impugn a presidential candidate? How did the FBI manage to play a central role in both the 2016 and 2020 elections in efforts to alter the result?

How can a legitimate FBI knowingly submit such information that it knew was false to a federal judge to spy on an American citizen to further a farcical plot to destroy a presidential campaign?

So what will the FBI not do? Forge documents? Offer in vain $1 million to a foreign national to verify just one fact in a fake, bought dossier used to obtain a FISA warrant? Disappear cell phone data under subpoena?

Have high-ranking officials promise that a presidential candidate will never be elected? Infiltrate Latin-Mass Catholic Church services and school board meetings to monitor the activities of church-goers and parents in attendance?

Use armed performance-art SWAT teams to swoop into private homes to arrest suspects accused of mostly misdemeanors? Hire out social media private companies like Twitter to suppress free expression deemed by the FBI unhelpful or problematic?

Suppress information about an FBI-confiscated Hunter Biden laptop, while keeping mum as former intelligence officers lie absurdly before a national election that the computer in FBI hands was likely the work of Russian disinformationists—to aid a presidential candidate in a debate and harm the incumbent?

Destroy the lives of any whistleblowers who expose such miscreant behavior to Congress?

Printing Money

The journalist/historian Paul Johnson famously once wrote that the tripartite duty of any government leadership was “to ensure external security, internal order and maintenance of an honest currency.”

We certainly do not maintain an honest currency by borrowing 130 percent of annual GDP, with a looming debt of $33 trillion, an annual $1.5 trillion-plus budget deficit, and a 2022 annualized 6.5 percent inflation rate.

But statistics mask the real problem, which is a mentality of suicidal spending passed off as juvenile “modern monetary theory.” Unlimited borrowing as a “theory” is the academic idiocy that some socialist hare-brained professors dreamed up to excuse printing money we do not have.

Both parties have run up the debt. Yet the culpability mounts as each successive president adds to the crushing debt, in fear that on his watch the medicine of restraint will be worse than the disease of insolvency.

Note how casually the federal government burns through billions of dollars. We still have no idea how many billions of dollars in arms and equipment the military shrugged away in Kabul. Who cares anyway whether the terrorist Taliban is becoming one of the largest dispensers of U.S. taxpayers’ weaponry?

Currently, Joe Biden lies that by not spending allotted money he somehow is the greatest deficit hawk in memory, as he rams through a $1.5 trillion 2023 budget deficit.

The top federal income tax rate is 37 percent. In California, to take the example of our largest state, the top state bracket is 13.3 percent. Income subject to federal payroll taxes is 15.3 percent for the self-employed—and income subject to that crushing take is a whopping $160,200.

The above taxes are well aside from capital gains taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and fuel taxes, which, along with income taxes, can easily take 50-60 percent of one’s middle-class income. Note that the government not only does not appreciate the crushing extractions but targets for auditing those who pay at that rate. And all this tax revenue leads to what? Multitrillion-dollar budget deficits and unsustainable national debt.

Adding insult to injury, our current White House occupant, Mr. “Ten-Percent”/ “The Big Guy” Joe Biden demagogues as “greedy” anyone who resents the wastage of federal spending after handing over half his income to the government. Yet did the Bidens report all their past foreign income and pay at that rate? Could Joe have ensured that his son first paid all he owed to the IRS before he smeared other Americans as not paying their fair shares?

A sane country would immediately reboot and update the old Simpson-Bowles reduction and simplification of taxes and spending proposals that would gradually work our way toward a balanced budget—and maybe, in a century, pay off what we have borrowed. But we know that is impossible since we would hear ad nauseam that such fiscal integrity was racist, heartless, and cruel.

So we will keep up borrowing and printing bread-and-circus money until, like the late fourth-century polis, or late imperial Rome, there is finally no money for the upkeep of infrastructure, domestic law and order, and deterrence against foreign enemies.

Then what cannot go on, will not go on and all the absurdities of the present will end with a bang not a whimper.

Daniel Greenfield Unleashed

While Biden Embraces China, China Hacks America - If that’s not treason, what is?   The Biden administration tried to hide China’s balloon espionage and then put on a fake show of outrage when it was exposed by a viral video.“How will you manage the diplomatic relationship with China?” a reporter asked in the early morning briefing.  “Well, number one, you’re right. We should have an open line [of communications]. With the Bali conference that’s what President Xi and I agreed that we were going to do and meet on,” Biden responded. “And then this silly balloon that was carrying two free cars worth of spy equipment was flying over the United States, and it got shut down and changed in terms of talking to one another.”  “I think you’re going to see that again though very shortly,” he added.  The open line runs strictly one way. It involves China spying on us................

States Shut Down UN-Insurance Corp Plot to Kill Oil and Gas - Can states make a difference? They absolutely can.  Can states make a difference? They absolutely can. And in the battle against woke corporate tyranny, they’re vital. And they’re winning.  European insurers are pulling out of the UN-convened Net-Zero Insurance Alliance over concerns that red states’ antitrust allegations could hurt their businesses. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the group was holding a meeting to discuss recent departures, a week after 23 Republican attorneys general sent letters to members of the group raising antitrust concerns. Thus far ten major insurance firms have pulled out of the UN conspiracy to kill the oil and gas industries, along with any hope of affordable energy................

Incompetent But Diverse VP Says Military’s Strength Lies in Diversity “Our military is strongest when it fully reflects the people of America”  VP Kamala Harris, whose entire incompetent career has been based on two factors, being the ex-girlfriend of Willie Brown, and her diversity, has a message for West Point cadets. Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday became the first woman to address a graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and used the opportunity to extol the diversity of the American armed forces.   Well, what else was she going to do? Offer serious geopolitical analysis? Promise that we will start winning wars again? Or repeat once more the tiresome liberal catechism of diversity that has since evolved into a totalitarian and dystopian nightmare...............

Taliban and Iran Start Killing Each Other- "We will conquer Iran within 24 hours.”  There’s an upside to leading from behind.When Obama retreated from Iraq, ISIS emerged and ushered in a wave of brutal warfare against Iranian proxies and fellow Sunni Islamists capping off the Arab Spring and the New Middle East with a bang.Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan hasn’t been that spectacular yet, but give it a little time.  Iran and the Taliban, after initially being good friends and swapping abandoned American military equipment back and forth, are killing each other over who gets first dibs on the local water rights.  So far, two Iranian border guards and one Taliban terrorist are dead. The death toll on both sides would be higher, but, like most Islamic armies, neither side is much good at anything except run-and-gun raids. And empty boasts..............But Iran does have an ace in the hole which is Al Qaeda. So expect Iran to try to use Al Qaeda against the Taliban. Can the terrorists be terrorized? Expect some more Shiite mosques in Afghanistan to get bombed as the various elements of the Religion of Peace worship Allah by killing each other...................

DHS: First You Watch FOX News, Then PragerU, Then You Become a Nazi - This is about criminalizing political dissent. Disinformation and counter-extremism programs have become little more than tools for suppressing the political opposition. With DHS handing out grants to study extremism, the Media Research Center has information on what may be the single most explicit attempt at using counter-extremism funding to go after the opposition................
 
Biden’s Antisemitism Strategy Fails to Condemn BDS, Includes CAIR -This is the Biden administration’s betrayal of Jews in a nutshell.  There were many expectations for Biden’s U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism among the usual organizational types, but anyone with common sense could have seen this coming a mile away. The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism fails to address Muslim and leftist antisemitism, it briefly delves into, but does not address where campus antisemitism is coming from, has a single throwaway line about the attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York City, and gives the IHRA pro-Israel definition of antisemitism nearly equal billing with the Nexus anti-Israel one. The strategy claims that “there are several definitions of antisemitism, which serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism”, including the IHRA, but noting that the Biden administration “welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts..................
 
 Biden Admin Anti-Semitism Letter to Colleges Makes No Mention of Israel -  Antisemitism on college campuses is at an all-time high.  In ‘Biden’s Strategy to Fight Anti-Semitism Enables Hatred of Jews and Israel’, I take apart the hype over the antisemitism strategy and what it really means. What it means is that the Biden administration allowed the Left to call half the shots in framing the strategy. And the end result is a complete irrelevance. While the various machers are celebrating, you can find the real bottom line in the Dear Colleague letter generated by the Department of Education............

Supreme Court Takes Away EPA’s Power Over Backyard Puddles  - Sorry, puddle police.  The story of the Clean Waters Act is a perfect example of the administrative state seizing total power that it was never intended to have.The old 70’s legislation protected “navigable waters” also known as “waters of the United States”.  The EPA’s bureaucrats and eco-leftists decided to take the latter definition to mean all the water.  Literally.Got a puddle in your backyard?  The EPA has authority over it.  Or had authority.  The Supreme Court ruled that “waters refers only to “geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as ‘streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes’ ” and to adjacent wetlands that are “indistinguishable” from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”.........

 CBS Shows IRS Whistleblower Exposing Hunter Biden Investigation Abuses - “I immediately saw deviations from the normal process.” Sometimes the medium is as important as the message. This is on CBS News and it’s being reported by Jim Axelrod, the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News. Back in April, Axelrod and CBS had broadcast an interview with the whistleblower’s lawyer. It’s not just the lawyer now. “There were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,” said Gary Shapley, a 14-year veteran of the agency, who spoke exclusively to CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod on Tuesday. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.” Shapley is not just holding down a desk, he’s a high-level figure..............

Area Looted by George Floyd Supporters Remembers His Legacy - George Floyd, who robbed a woman at gunpoint and died of a drug overdose while being restrained by police, is being “remembered” in the place that his supporters looted in the days following his accidental death. The Minneapolis community came together Saturday to remember George Floyd’s life and legacy. The ‘Rise and Remember’ festival attracted hundreds of people to George Floyd Square. “I like the way the community is together,” said Orlando Matthews, visiting from New Orleans with his son. “You see people from all sorts of places.” People from all over the country are here to visit the memorial, including Matthews. George Floyd Square has attracted a lot of people from all over the country. Generally, they came to steal things. But after being trashed, the businesses are just trying to cash in on George Floyd enthusiasts who aren’t burning things............Until a new round of looting and burning properly honors George Floyd’s legacy by setting them on fire.

Environmentalists Are Why We Can’t Have Infrastructure

By May 28, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

California’s high-speed electric train has burned through nearly $10 billion, far more than its original $9 billion bond, without building a single mile of track.

Where did that money go?

$1.3 billion was spent on environmental impact clearances.

After over a decade, Brian Kelly, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, cheerfully announced that, “we’re making true progress on nearing full environmental clearance for the entire Phase 1 high-speed rail project.” By the summer, the high-speed rail which hasn’t even begun construction might finally get its full environmental impact clearance. Perhaps.

California’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere, which began in 2009 and whose budget already tops $100 billion, financed by corrupt environmental cap-and-trade robbery that makes cryptocurrency seem legitimate by comparison, may seem like an outlier, but it’s not.

Every time presidents make a pitch for an infrastructure bill, they visit the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River for a photo op.

“Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” Obama declared with his back to the bridge. “Help us rebuild America.

After Obama, Trump came to the bridge, and more recently Biden claimed that his infrastructure bill, which spent nearly three quarters of a billion on electric cars, and little on infrastructure, would finally fix the bridge. Over $10 million has been spent on environmental impact studies going back 18 years to explain why nothing much was being done about the bridge.

But why spend money on bridges when you can instead spend it on environmental reviews of hypothetical bridges? People can cross the former, but the politically connected get rich off the latter.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $5 million was needed to fund an environmental impact study to build a new bridge, another $5 million to consider building a bridge in Mission, Texas. The current status of that bridge is unclear. After wasting millions and years on environmental impact studies, projects often never move forward due to changing finances or circumstances.

The endless environmental studies drain massive amounts of taxpayer money. For example, the Yeager Airport in Central West Virginia needed a $5.6 million grant for its environmental impact study. And the sheer scale of taxpayer money stolen by the green industry is not being tracked.

A 2003 Government Accountability Task Force suggested that a typical environment impact statement costs between a quarter of a million to 2 million dollars. DOE energy data place it at a median cost of $1.4 million. Industry estimates place the direct cost of environmental studies at between 0.5% to 3% of a project. The smaller the project, the higher the percentage of costs eaten up by environmental reviews.

But the indirect costs are much more severe. By slowing down projects, environmental impact statements kill promising proposals, starving them of resources or wasting money, like California’s high-speed rail, on nothing without actually building anything. Speculative technologies like the Hyperloop have to spend millions on environmental impact studies further sabotaging them. Delays and dead ends end up costing up far more than the review.

The massive green regulatory theft took off with the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969. Federal spending was tethered to environmental reviews. NEPA was a bipartisan disaster, introduced by Democrats, but voted into law with massive support from the liberal Republicans who infested the House and Senate at the time, and then signed into law by Nixon. Opposition was virtually non-existent with unanimous Senate approval and only 15 dissidents in the House.

In the decades since, NEPA was weaponized to virtually shut down development in the country. When Biden implemented a NEPA rule change that baked global warming considerations into every project, Senator Manchin joined Republicans in voting it down in the Senate. But Republicans haven’t even bothered proposing the elimination of the NEPA disaster.

And yet in the 70s, even Democrats were complaining that environmental impact statements were a disaster.

“Ah, precious Environment, how the heavy wheels of government churn in thy name!” a New York Times column jeered. “When the city of New York wanted to use Federal money to build an elevator for the handicapped at City Hall, it naturally had to conduct an environmental review. The result is a dossier half an inch thick, concluding that there will be no environmental impact. None, at least, worthy of the full treatment—an environmental impact statement. This takes, by a conservative estimate, six months to a year to complete, according to a city official.”

Such complaints long ago became politically incorrect. To point out that environmental impact statements took the United States from a first world nation to a third one is heresy. And true.

Other nations, that don’t jam environmental reviews into every screw, still build big things. And American architects, engineers and companies often execute those wonders that we see rising in rich Arab states or even in Asia, but such things cannot be allowed to rise in America.

Environmentalists intended to use environmental impact statements to slow and eventually shut down construction. And they have succeeded all too well. Projects not only cost a lot more, they are poorly thought out with gimmicks meant to serve ‘green’ rather than real world needs.

The tragically misbegotten One World Trade Center project not only failed to build grander and bigger than the fallen World Trade Center, but its obsession with being the ‘greenest’ using unworkable green technology led to disaster when Hurricane Sandy flooded its lower levels.

Every now and then someone asks why we can’t seem to build infrastructure anymore. The answer is that environmental gatekeeping is built to stop the building of new bridges, dams and anything that might interfere with the pristine state of nature.

Even the so-called green energy developments have been blocked by environmental reviews. Environmentalists claim that they need wind and solar to save the planet, but if so it’s environmentalism that is endangering the planet by blocking wind and solar projects.

Environmentalists believe that all human endeavors are bad. Green technology is not their solution, it’s just another obstacle that they have erected in the way of progress, but they have no commitment to it except as a way to stop gas, oil, coal and nuclear from giving us cheap, reliable energy. Given a choice between wind, solar and nothing, they’ll choose nothing.

And make us choose it too.

America’s productive capacity has been crippled by a disastrous regulatory framework from the sixties and seventies that has frozen the nation in time. While China moves forward, our infrastructure rots away, our buildings age and nothing gets done except through bribes.

We’ve become a third world nation because we were told it was the only way to save the world. But the world continues to build things while Americans navigate parasitic regulatory industries of which the environmentalists are only the first who have to be bribed for anything to happen.

The Empire State Building was famously built in a year. Today it would take decades and then wouldn’t be built at all. Years would be spent courting environmentalists, racial shakedown artists and every possible group with political power that could stop the project. The building would need years if not decades of environmental impact statements, and would nonetheless be sued by environmental organizations financed by government grants. Much like in California’s high-speed rail to nowhere, after years of the government financing lawfare against its own projects, there would be nothing but an empty skyline and a hole in the ground.

And that’s how environmentalists want it.  

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

At CHECC, We're Down But Not Out!

May 25, 2023   @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Today, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued its Judgment in the case of Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, et al. v. EPA. I am one of the lawyers for CHECC in this matter, where the Petitioners seek to have the court order EPA to reconsider its ridiculous 2009 Endangerment Finding (EF) that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. To no one’s surprise, the court dismissed our Petition. The sole ground for the dismissal was what they call “standing.” The court did not reach or discuss the merits of the Petition, namely whether data and evidence accumulated since the 2009 EF had rendered the Finding definitively false and in need of reconsideration.

Also today, the Supreme Court decided the case of Sackett v. EPA. The Sackett case involved a different EPA rule, called the Waters of the United States rule. Thus the two cases may seem to be unrelated. But in fact they are closely related in the most important way, which is that both involve wild overreach by EPA, followed by cynical gaming by EPA of court procedural rules in order to avoid ever being held to account for the overreach. In Sackett, EPA finally got its comeuppance today, after almost 20 years of litigation. The Sackett decision increases our confidence that EPA will ultimately also be held to account for the EF and the many destructive rules flowing from it; but exactly how and when that will occur remain to be seen.

As discussed in my prior post of April 14, the oral argument held that day in CHECC v. EPA dealt almost entirely with the issue of standing. EPA focused their argument on seeking dismissal on this procedural ground, thus hoping (successfully, as it turned out) to avoid the merits. They contended that the Endangerment Finding was not itself a rule that affected anyone financially, and that there wasn’t even a pending, let alone final, rule seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power sector. They also contended that the 2009 Endangerment Finding that we were challenging related to the transportation sector (“mobile sources”) rather than the electricity sector (“stationary sources”).

Talk about cynical. The 2009 EF that we challenged in fact contained the only thing passing for the scientific basis of the Obama-era rule, called the Clean Power Plan, that sought to abolish fossil-fuel generated electricity. The CPP was rescinded by the Trump administration, and then ultimately declared an invalid overreach by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA on June 30, 2022. As CHECC v. EPA was getting briefed and argued between late 2022 and April 2023, it was common knowledge that Biden’s EPA had in the works a new and even more onerous rule restricting power plant emissions. That rule was only announced on May 8, and officially appeared in the Federal Register on May 23 — just two days ago. In the newly-published proposed rule relating to stationary sources, EPA acknowledges the 2009 EF as the source of the supposed scientific basis for the rule (at page 33,249):

In the 2009 Endangerment Findings, the Administrator found under section 202(a) of the CAA that elevated atmospheric concentrations of six key well-mixed GHGs—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2 O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—“may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations” (74 FR 66523; December 15, 2009) . . . .

Meanwhile, from today’s DC Circuit opinion:

CHECC draws no connection between the Endangerment Finding (which compels the regulation of motor vehicle emissions under § 202(a) of the Clean Air Act) and the price of residential electricity.

And thus, if you can even follow the convoluted logic here, EPA, with the support of the DC Circuit, has made it such that no consumer of electricity can challenge a rule seeking to eliminate the large majority of all reliable sources of electricity, and to impose on consumers what will almost certainly be hundreds of billions of dollars of additional costs.

We plan to fight on, likely through the en banc DC Circuit and the Supreme Court. Maybe we will see success at one of those levels, and maybe not. Undoubtedly, when the new power plant rule becomes final — later this year or maybe in 2024 — there will be multiple challenges to that on grounds similar to the ones that were ultimately successful in West Virginia v. EPA. Those challenges will likely reach the Supreme Court some time around 2027 or 2028. The question is, will there be anything left of our reliable electricity-generation sector by that time?

In the Sackett matter, the Sacketts began to work on building a house back in 2004. Within a few months, EPA issued an order to the Sacketts demanding that they stop work and restore the property, on the ground that wetness on the property was part of “waters of the United States” that EPA regulated. When the Sacketts attempted to bring a court action to determine that EPA’s order was overreach, EPA contended that the Sacketts had no ability to sue until going through a full administrative process — and incurring fines for non-compliance of some $40,000 per day. The Sacketts took that case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2012 that the Sacketts had the right to sue. So they went back to the District Court, where, after 7 additional years of proceedings, the court ruled against the Sacketts in 2019 and determined that the wetness on the Sackett property was part of the “waters of the United States.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2021. And the Supreme Court reversed today.

Incredibly, the Sacketts saw their case through nearly 20 years of this to achieve their victory. But their saga shows you EPA’s game plan — string things out so far as to exhaust the opposition and, in our case, force the entire reliable capacity for generating electricity out of business before the courts can intervene. We hope to achieve some success before too much destruction has occurred, but as can be seen from the DC Circuit’s decision, even at that prestigious court there is little sense yet of any kind of problem.

The Vote Fraud Monster Is Coming for Ted Cruz

May 28, 2023 By Jay Valentine

On the Memorial Day weekend, while most Americans played near water, the leftists impeached the strongest elected voice in Texas for election integrity — Ken Paxton.  Impeachments were history book items until Clinton, then two more for Trump and some predicting one for Biden.  Everyone kind of gets it.  It's a political thing, with preposterous second-raters giving speeches about honesty, integrity, rule of law as they bend the rules to get their way.

This one is a bit different.  Paxton is the stand-up guy who — but for a very sketchy Supreme Court "standing" ruling — could have seriously upended the fraudulent election in 2020.  He is ballsy, innovative, smart, and colorful.  And he is the attorney general of a very big state — or was, as he now is suspended.  It's now up to the state Senate.

He had one of those mistress events that beguiles Christian conservative types.  Then there was some kind of lawsuit followed by a $3-million settlement.  Republicans do seem to pay more for sex than the leftists who drive their victims off a bridge or bite their lip or just deny that it ever happened.

Paxton apparently did everything above board — as far as the payment goes, even getting the Legislature to fund it.  A group of RINOs and all the leftist Democrats held a secret investigation, leading to a bill sent to the Legislature, days before the holiday — leftists demanding a vote on the holiday Saturday.

It's railroading — done well! .........................To Read More....

Texas AG Ken Paxton  Bob Price The Texas House of Representatives impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday by an overwhelming vote. Attorney General Paxton is immediately suspended from office as he awaits a trial in the Texas Senate. During a hearing on the floor of the Texas House, more than 81 percent of the members voted to impeach Attorney General Paxton on the 20 articles of impeachment filed by the House General Investigations Committee. The final vote was 121 ayes, 23 nays, two present not voting, and three abstentions...........

Trump, Cruz Speak Out - Jordan Dixon-HamiltonFormer President Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) on Saturday spoke out against the Texas House of Representatives’ attempt to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. On Thursday, the Texas House’s General Investigating Committee, composed of three Republicans and two Democrats, voted unanimously to refer 20 articles of impeachment for a vote on the House floor............Trump said:

The RINO Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States, Ken Paxton, who just won re-election with a large number of American Patriots strongly voting for him. You would think that any issue would have been fully adjudicated by the voters of Texas, especially when that vote was so conclusive….

….I love Texas, won it twice in landslides, and watched as many other friends, including Ken Paxton, came along with me. Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed—I will fight you if it does. It is the Radical Left Democrats, RINOS, and Criminals that never stop. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Free Ken Paxton, let them wait for the next election!

Cruz called the attempt to impeach Paxton a “travesty.”...............

Trump and Conservatives Condemn Impeachment of Texas AG Ken Paxton -By Darlene McCormick Sanchez May 27, 2023 - Former President Donald Trump and conservative heavy-hitters took to social media to defend Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even as the GOP-led Texas House voted to impeach him. Republican Speaker Dade Phelan and fellow Republicans joined with Democrats to temporarily remove Paxton, a staunch GOP conservative, from office on accusations of bribery, obstruction of justice, and abuse of public trust. Texas lawmakers voted 123 to 23 to adopt the 20 articles of impeachmen...................“Free Ken Paxton, let them wait for the next elections,” Trump wrote.................“No attorney general has battled the abuses of the Biden admin more ferociously—and more effectively—than has Paxton,”...............“This Texas House-led impeachment is a witch hunt”............Paxton said following the House vote that the impeachment is unfair and politically motivated, adding that he looks forward to resolving the allegations in the Senate............House Republican Brian Harrison called the impeachment a “sham” and “railroading of a political enemy.”..............Mike Schofield, complained the months-long investigation was done under the radar and House members were kept in the dark until this week.............Schofield called the proceedings “unprecedented” and said there was no reason “to sneak up on the public” by fast-tracking the removal of an elected official...............


Friday, May 26, 2023

P&D and the Week That Was

Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

De Omnibus Dubitandum

 This link will take you to My Commentaries

By Rich Kozlovich

Today's edition of P&D Today is structured a bit differently since I have such a large number of commentaries.  I actually had a lot more commentaries than links.  Ten commentaries by me.  So I listed everything by topic, and links dealing with that topic follow the commentaries.  The first commentary is by me and appears here first:

Welcome to The John Boyd Legion of Honor!.  

There have been a great many heroes out there, and I intend to induct them into, The John Boyd Legion of Honor, and the list appearing here will continue to expand.  

Followed by Daniel Greenfield Unleashed and these two Cartoons of the Day, Here, and  Here and another piece by me that I can't properly categorize, Abrasive as a Sandblaster?

Enjoy! 

Border Crisis

Budget

Cancel Culture

Deep State Criminals

Education, Parental Rights, Leftist Hypocrisy and Insanity

Election 2024, Redistricting, Voter Fraud

Environment, EPA, Deep State Out of Control

Gender

Global Warming

Leftism Befouls Everything it Touches, Go Woke, Go Broke

Race

SCOTUS


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