It is Mardi Gras. While many Americans forget their sorrows in the gutters of New Orleans tonight, President Joe Biden will deliver the State of the Union address. Showing how much he has lost control of his own party, he will be followed by two separate responses from Democrats. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) will deliver one on behalf of the Working Families Party, a far-left socialist-oriented party. Rep Colin Allred (D-TX) will deliver a response on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus. Republicans will just have the traditional response to the State of the Union delivered by Gov. Reynolds of Iowa. Like every other person who has delivered a State of the Union response, this will be the end of Gov. Reynolds’ career in politics and we thank her for her service.
In 2011, then Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) delivered the Republican response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) delivered a “tea party” response organized by Tea Party Express. Major media outlets including CNN, where I was a commentator at the time, focused on how divided the Republican Party was given that there were two separate addresses from two wings of the GOP, the establishment and the tea party.
Tonight, Joe Biden’s address will receive two separate responses from Democrats. It is one thing for two wings of an out-of-power party to give responses to an incumbent President’s address, which doest truthfully highlight divisions in that party. It should be major news that the incumbent Democratic President will have two separate Democrat responses to his speech and no Democrats intervened to shut down the competing messages to their leader. It highlights both how divided the Democrats actually are and how the media so often downplays divisions within the Democratic Party. On top of that, Tlaib, who has tied herself to the “defund the police” movement is, from what we are told, going to try to tie Biden to the progressives and attack the moderate Democrats, many of whom are already fleeing to the GOP.
Beyond that, Biden will give his speech inside a United States Capitol Building that is surrounded by National Guard troops and a temporary wall. It is a stunning contrast to the Ukrainian President who fights for his life in a Russian invasion while the American President and the Congress hide from truck drivers and protestors behind a wall and troops. It is weakness on display and political posturing designed to hopefully resurrect rumblings about January 6th to incite Democrat voters who are otherwise growing disenchanted with their leaders.
As for the speech, if President Biden were honest, he’d have to admit the state of the union is not good.
Our institutions have sown distrust and their credibility is in tatters by their own making, not that of outsiders. No one trusts the CDC. The FDA approval process seems politicized. The FBI seems out of control and irresponsible. Even the Secret Service has not fully recovered from its scandals. The postal service is bankrupt. The bureaucracy of Rome saved its Empire during its imperial turmoil and the bureaucracy of the United States seems intent on sabotaging our republic.
Journalists have taken sides, most often with the left. American corporations have thrown in with the left, live in fear of the wokes, and are in the pocket of China.
Americans do not trust their institutions, their leaders, their news, or their neighbors. It predates both Trump and Biden, but has gotten worse.
Compounding these problems are empty store shelves, high gas prices, inflation, kids who are behind in school, frustrated parents, businesses struggling, and both a general malaise and a fear of global instability.
Not only does the Biden Administration seem tone-deaf to it all, but more and more Americans find Biden responsible for it all. In fact, from what we know of Biden’s speech, he is going to double down on the Green New Deal policies that Vladimir Putin has turned against the West. Instead of increasing our energy independence from Russia, the President will demand we add more solar power and wind power to our energy grid without also adding more domestic oil to lessen our dependence on Russia. Biden will just make us more dependent on Russia so Russia can invade more countries.
Over the last week, the media ran a pile of stories designed to hit Republicans for their supposed pro-Putin sympathies. But the media’s own polling shows Republicans and Democrats both hate Putin, but Republicans want a far stronger response to Russia than what Biden has offered. The pro-Putin Republicans are either on television or Twitter, but not in the real world...
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Russian-British businessman Lebedev pleads with Putin to end Ukraine war
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From Hoover Daily
| What Does Ukraine Really Mean For Taiwan? |
| by Michael R. Auslin via The Spectator World There has been no serious American debate over whether Taiwan, a rapidly aging society, can defend itself +++++++++++++++++++ Some false reporting has come from Ukraine, perhaps to buck spirits. I am not suggesting the Ukrainians are not brave, love their country and have been remarkable but facts are facts so caveat emptor! Apparently, this is true! If so, this is one bad ass fighter pilot and I want him on my team. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DUH! The West’s Green Delusions Empowered PutinWhile we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.And: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Putin Must Go By I&I Editorial Board Word has come tumbling out that Russian Vladimir Putin is descending into madness. Is it too much to ask true Russian patriots to rid the world of this tyrant before he does further damage? Putin apparently thought Ukraine would be a summer’s evening stroll, that within days, if not hours, his forces could overrun the country with minimal resistance. Instead, his campaign met stiff and heroic resistance from the Ukrainians and President Volodymyr Zelensky, who inspired a nation and a world watching when he declined the Biden White House’s offer to pull him out. He didn’t need a ride, he said, he needs ammunition. Now we have angry citizens from a number of nations who want to join the Ukrainians in their fight and they’re getting the blessings from their governments – even the regime of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who went to war last week on his own soil against truckers weary of his petty-but-growing tyranny, won’t stop Canadians who wish to fight. With the world lining up against him, and his expected romp turning sour, it seems that events have broken Putin. But then he was apparently broken before the invasion. The West just wasn’t seeing the cracks. “I always thought that we were dealing with somebody who was actually very logical,” British journalist Nigel Farage said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference conference in Florida. “But I now begin to wonder whether he is. “And if something’s gone wrong with Putin and he’s lost logic and reason, it’s quite possible to think that he’ll want to go back to the days of Catherine the Great’s and Tsarist empire, and that Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are under threat.” London’s Daily Mail reported also last week that “questions are being asked about the Russian leader’s state of mind after he announced the invasion of Ukraine in ‘rambling, terrifying, apocalyptic’ fashion.” The Mail continued; Rumors surrounding the Russian leader’s health have been swirling for years, with repeated reports suggesting that he is suffering from cancer and Parkinson’s disease. On top of that, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both the president’s physical and mental health can’t be underestimated, and it’s been suggested that brain fog as a result of long COVID could be impairing his cognitive function. On the same day, Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, tweeted that “it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with Putin. “He has always been a killer, but his problem now is different and significant. “It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have five years ago.” The U.S. media, more concerned with global warming, diversity, equity, framing every issue with racial contours, and mask and vaccine mandates than they are with Putin’s crimes, is late but now on the case. The New York Times’ Sunday coverage said “Putin’s grasp on reality may be loosening.” Based on the Times story, MSN reported that “U.S. intel agencies are debating whether Putin has lost mental faculties or is bluffing to unnerve the West.” A USA Today headline questions his stability. The world should be concerned that Putin, in our eyes a war criminal, is growing paranoid, given the nearly broad countering of his aggression. His decision to declare a nuclear weapons alert might be an indication that his mental hinges have come off. If he feels he’s being ganged up on, that he isn’t being allowed to take what he believes is rightfully his, he could become a global rather than regional threat, even if he isn’t suffering from cancer, or Parkinson’s, or long COVID. A cornered rat is dangerous, especially when he’s megalomaniac. As is a deranged man so obsessed with a woman that he declares that if he can’t have her, then no one else will, even if it means his own end, too. And in his deteriorated state, he’s happy to take as many innocents along with him as possible. In similar fashion, Putin is desperate to annex a country that he’s fixated on, and has been told no. He needs to be removed before he expands his list of enemies, and promptly tried for the crimes he’s committed against a sovereign nation. This shouldn’t be too hard for a country that for the last 105 years has routinely purged rulers and other officials who fell out of favor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dov hits the ball out of the park once again. On Apartheid, Antisemitism, and the Death of the "Two-State Solution"This is apartheid? A system of governance that sees Arab Muslims serving as judges on consequential judicial benches as high as the supreme court? By Rabbi Dov Fischer Conservatives throughout the world already had given up on Amnesty International ("AI"), but many on the Left continued harboring a belief that AI is a fair broker with a focus on advocating impartially for justice, refugees' and immigrants' rights, and against capital punishment. Few saw it as anti-Semitic. By calling Israel "apartheid" for inclining towards a Jewishly ethnic, Judaically religious, and Hebraically phonic society in the Land of the Bible, Amnesty International has laid out its cards. It no longer can pose as a fair broker. That helps Israel. It defamed the only Western democracy in the Middle East, even as Ra'am, an all-Arab Muslim political party, sits in the governing coalition, advocates successfully and vigorously for Arab Muslims' interests in expanding their footprint in the Negev, and even wins for Israel's Arab Muslim population unprecedented millions of shekels in budgetary set-asides. Ra'am even controls the four deciding votes that determine every critical national policy the Knesset decides from economic priorities to confronting COVID-19 to defining the role of the Chief Rabbinate in conversions to Judaism. This is apartheid? A system of governance that sees Arab Muslims serving as judges on consequential judicial benches as high as the supreme court? Where monthly stipends are sent to Jews to encourage more babies and the same also are sent to Arab Muslims to foster their procreation? Where street displays invariably include Arabic signage? Where Arab Muslim graduate students receive stipends and fellowships to attend graduate programs at Israeli universities and where Arab Muslims also are faculty? It is perfectly reasonable, amid the comity of nations, that Israel was conceived to harbor a Jewish identity and majority. Countries have national identities, often with racial overlays. No European country has had a black head of government or state. Japan and China are manifestly Japanese-majority and Chinese-majority respectively. Article 2 of France's Constitution sets French as the country's official language. Germany's Administrative Procedure Act §23 establishes German as their official administrative language. French language laws predominate in Quebec. Turkey bans Kurdish as a language of instruction in schools. The United Kingdom officially declares Christianity its official religion and the Church of England its state church. Sunni Islam is the only permitted religion in Saudi Arabia. So why pick on Israel? If Amnesty International's end game is to eradicate the one Jewish country, whose 1948 birth they deem to have been conceived in Original Sin, they have arrived too late. If their goal is to advance a "two-state solution," even that train has left the station. The future of Judea and Samaria is determined irreversibly, even though European diplomats, the Biden administration, and even Israel's partly governing Meretz and Labor parties have not received the memo. With 800,000 Jews now staked and deeply rooted in East Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, there will be no "two-state" anything. Israel barely managed to uproot and resettle 8,600 Jews she evicted from Gush Katif in 2005. A hundred times that many tomorrow? No amount of diplomacy, strategizing, media bullying, or negotiating can dislocate nearly a million Jewish homeowners and long-term lessees and find new homes for them in a country the size of New Jersey, the size Israel would be without Judea and Samaria. Amid Israel's present severe massive housing shortage, she barely can accommodate those hunting for residences. Perhaps if the apartheid Palestinian Authority would allow Jews to buy homes there? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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