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One of my most favorite Op Ed authors expresses her concerned views regarding Iran. Her concerns equal mine.The Iran nightmare
The Biden administration has no plan B. Who knew?
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More to go:
Biden Is Far from Hitting Bottom
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Not by Webster's definition but by Democrat demagogues who have an agenda::
Was Jan. 6 an 'Armed Insurrection'?
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Walgreens Closes 5 More San Francisco Locations Amid Ongoing Retail Theft
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Blackburn On Her Visit to the Border: The Biden Administration Won’t Let Border Patrol Do Their Job
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I will end this memo with some random comments about a variety of Op Eds and Editorial topics that, I believe, are very pertinent.
The first validates what most are afraid to state. The election process was manipulated legislatively to make a Biden election more likely and there were instances of downright fraudulent behaviour to further the process
Two States Find Ballot Mischief
These cases don’t fit Trump’s narrative, but they’re not a myth.
By The Editorial Board
In the eyes of many Democrats, any push to ensure ballot integrity amounts to voter suppression, while Georgia’s inquiry into Atlanta’s elections is nothing more than a prelude to a power grab. Yet last week two Georgia election workers were fired for shredding voter registration forms, and this week three Michigan women were charged with fraud.
Georgia’s performance review of elections in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, has largely been painted as a GOP plot to take over the handling of ballots in a blue area. Yes, the state’s new voting law theoretically gives it the power to suspend local election boards. But that’s only after a lengthy process, which must include a finding of malfeasance, gross negligence, or the like. And Fulton County has a long record of screw-ups.
Add this to the list: Fulton County said Monday it terminated two employees who “allegedly shredded a number of paper voter registration applications received within the last two weeks.” Fellow workers reported this on Friday, and the perpetrators were fired the same day. According to the state, about 300 applications were destroyed. The context is that early voting in the next local elections began Tuesday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has called on the Justice Department to investigate. “After 20 years of documented failure in Fulton County elections, Georgians are tired of waiting to see what the next embarrassing revelation will be,” he said. Democrats should admit he has a point, but don’t hold your breath.
The Michigan cases are also instructive. One woman, the state Attorney General’s office says, “implemented a plan to obtain and control absentee ballots for legally incapacitated persons under her care by fraudulently submitting 26 absentee ballot applications.” Another woman, who worked at a nursing home, allegedly filled out absentee applications for residents without their knowledge, while forging their signatures.
The fraudulent paperwork was caught when election workers compared the bad signature to the voter’s real one. But the state’s news release is less clear about the third woman, who “admitted to signing her grandson’s absentee ballot because she was concerned he would not have time to vote on Election Day.” The grandson voted in person, so investigators were called in April to look into “a case of double voting.
Democrats say voter fraud is mythical. That isn’t true, and it’s reckless to pretend otherwise. On the other hand, President Trump says fraud is everywhere and the hard evidence is always one more audit away. That isn’t true either, and it’s corrosive to public trust to say it. Between these two positions is plenty of middle ground, and that’s where state Legislatures ought to be as they balance ballot access and security.
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Obviously Biden proved once again he was premature, is without any practical sense and created un-necessary inflation because of his dumb "green" policies.
Wait, We Still Want Fossil Fuels?
A teachable moment arrives for next month’s global climate summiteers.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
The price mechanism is laboring heroically to balance supply and demand and resolve passing energy disruptions caused by the stop-start Covid economy. There are many things politicians do that don’t help, such as blocking pipeline infrastructure or trying to freeze pump prices and electricity rates for end-users. But don’t worry, all will be well because Saudi Arabia, Russia and U.S. wildcatters still like money.
In Glasgow, where world leaders will gather soon for a climate conference, they might use the moment to ask some big-boy questions. Was it ever plausible that human beings might dramatically reduce their use of fossil fuels? Doesn’t it seem especially unlikely in a month when leaders have been throwing their climate promises to the wind in pursuit of lower energy prices for their consumers and voters?
Look at any graph of emissions. When the LBJ White House issued a report warning about global warming in 1965, total emission were 11.28 billion tons. In 1979, when the National Research Council issued its landmark Charney Report, emissions were 19.48 billion tons. When the U.N. issued the first assessment report of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, emissions were 22.7 billion tons. With the sixth report this year, emissions are 36 billion tons.
If humanity were going to do anything about the accumulation of atmospheric CO2, it would have done so by now, by taxing carbon. For reasons manifest in the present crisis, the alternative of piling up subsidies and mandates to encourage “green” energy doesn’t actually have any pronounced effect on the incentive to use fossil fuels. Economists by now have developed a large literature testifying to a “rebound effect.” If a Tesla driver uses less, lithium miners use more. If a customer is required by regulation to spring for a more efficient car, she will likely drive more miles.
Make any climate-policy assumption you want: It is mathematically certain now that adaptation, not emissions control, will constitute the lion’s share of the human response.
Carbon emitted into the atmosphere may have a half-life of 150 years. The full equilibrium effect of a given change in the absolute level of atmospheric CO2 takes a century or more to unfold. It’s not just the median voter, under these circumstances, who has more to gain from burning fossil fuels than from restricting their use to slow climate change. It is every single person. And this is not myopia. By the most reasonable assumptions, it will be cheaper for the person 100 years from now to cope with a warmer climate than it would be for a person today to prevent that warming.
Climate advocates were once loath to use words like adaptation and mitigation because it smacked of surrender, though they lately unfurled the white flag. But there are good reasons too for these words to go unsaid—because they are redundant, because all creatures adapt to their environment. Not only are commands from on high unnecessary: they are likely to misjudge and misconstrue what constitutes adaptation.
Let me give you a heavy-handed example. When Teddy Roosevelt settled on Long Island’s Oyster Bay he built on a hilltop whereas his neighbors today build practically on the beach. Yet, in every way his modern neighbors are better informed about risk than he was. Most important, their decisions implicitly internalize the fact that their chance of dying from severe weather is 99% lower than in TR’s time. When a storm comes, they and their families will be safely out of harm’s way thanks to satellite-based weather forecasting. Then, it’s just a financial question: Do they want to pay the insurance cost of their beachfront amenities?
At the other extreme, Bangladesh is waved as a bloody shirt in the climate wars because tens of millions live in low-lying lands subject to seasonal flooding and tropical cyclones. All of us would wish to spend less resources defending against the weather. But using a combination of traditional and modern means, not only have Bangladesh’s people coped with the hazards of their location; since 1990, they’ve increased their population by 60% and their per capita income sixfold, among the best performances in the world.
What would really help is better information about the future climate risks we face—storm frequency and severity, sea-level rise, etc.—so we can all make better decisions. Alas, much of the climate community is still geared to producing worst-case scenarios to win voter acquiescence in boondoggles. The insurance industry at least has a stake in realistic estimates.
Let’s understand: Nobody builds any kind of structure without considering the predictable risks it will be exposed to. These millions and millions of discrete decisions cannot be stopped—and happily so, because they represent the only real answer humanity will likely offer to a changing climate at least until the major countries get serious about geoengineering, which will open a new can of worms.
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Yesterday I posted my random thoughts about Xi, Taiwan and our unlikely response. Galston has written his views:
Will America Come to Taiwan’s Defense?
Beijing’s growing belligerence coincides with declining U.S. military power.
By William A. Galston
The West won the Cold War without firing a shot, but the intensifying struggle with China may not end so well. The record number of Chinese military aircraft flying near Taiwan last week raised alarm bells—and questions.
For decades China’s leaders bided their time, knowing that a military confrontation with the U.S. would end badly. But during the past quarter-century, China steadily ramped up its investment in the People’s Liberation Army. Between 2010 and 2020, spending rose by 76%, and the PLA’s war-fighting ability has vastly improved. In recent years, the Pentagon has staged multiple war games testing U.S. ability to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The American team has lost nearly all of them.
This increase in China’s capabilities has coincided with shifts in outlook. Statements from President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders characterize the U.S. as a declining power mired in division and dysfunction. They doubt America’s will to use force overseas, a mindset not discouraged by our disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Beijing believes that China is within reach of replacing the U.S. as the world’s dominant power.
In this context, a once-unthinkable event—a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan—has become possible, perhaps even likely. Senior U.S. naval officials have been especially blunt about this. “To us, it’s only a matter of time, not a matter of if,” Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific command, said earlier this year.
Not surprisingly, a multi-front debate has broken out about the future of U.S.-China relations. Optimists believe China has more to lose than to gain from a military conquest of Taiwan—and that Beijing’s leaders understand this. International trade, still their economic lifeblood, would be hurt, and countries who have stayed on the sidelines would take America’s side.
Pessimists retort that Mr. Xi has infused a new sense of urgency into reunifying his country and that it won’t be easy to walk back the nationalism he has spread.
For decades the U.S. has preserved “strategic ambiguity” about its response to a prospective Chinese attack on Taiwan. A public announcement that the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense would blow up the terms of the Shanghai Communiqué that began the process of normalizing the U.S.-China relationship in 1972 and of the Joint Communiqué re-establishing full diplomatic relations in 1979.
On the other hand, stating that America views this issue as an internal matter would encourage China’s leaders to treat Taiwan as a “breakaway province” and to reunify their country through any means necessary.
Many experts argue that the policy of strategic ambiguity has outlived its useful life and should be replaced with a hard guarantee to defend Taiwan from attack. Others reply that ending the policy would inflame nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and encourage Beijing to escalate.
This is a tough call that rests on an assessment of Mr. Xi’s intentions. If he is considering military action in the belief that the U.S. would not come to Taiwan’s aid, an explicit statement of our commitment to Taiwan’s security could act as a deterrent. On the other hand, if Mr. Xi is bluffing by whipping up nationalist sentiment for domestic purposes, an explicit security guarantee could make him lose control of the sentiments he has roused.
The disquieting outcome of the Pentagon’s war games has sparked another debate: If the U.S. lacks the military wherewithal to deter China from invading Taiwan, what should we do about it? If current trends continue, China’s navy will be more modern and significantly larger than America’s by 2030.
The Hudson Institute’s Seth Cropsey has characterized the U.S. Navy’s current “divest to invest” strategy as misguided: Reducing the fleet of older, larger vessels to build smaller, more numerous ones will leave us dangerously exposed in the middle of this decade, the moment when many analysts believe the danger to Taiwan will be at its peak.
Instead, Mr. Cropsey argues, we should retain most of the current surface fleet and supplement it with items we can build—or buy from allies—fast enough to make a difference, a strategy that would require an annual increase of about 30% in the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies can improve Taiwan’s defense capabilities, and Taiwan can do more to defend itself.
No sane person wants war between China and the U.S., but a combination of clashing ambitions, strategic miscalculations and mutual misperceptions could land us in one, particularly if America doesn’t take the necessary steps to persuade Mr. Xi that we are not what he believes us to be—a declining power lacking the means and the will to defend our friends.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sensenbrenner was appropriately named. He generally was balanced in his judgement and made sense when he spoke.
In this article he points out the misuse of the intent of The Patriot Act by this administration in order to weaponize government agencies against it's citizens and their constitutional rights.
Biden is proving to be as, if not more, dangerous than Obama whose "holdover's" exercise the real power behind this administration.
The Patriot Act Wasn’t Meant to Target Parents
The Biden administration is abusing federal laws and agencies as instruments of political repression.
By F. James Sensenbrenner
As principal author of the Patriot Act and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee during its consideration, I find it necessary to remind the Biden administration that the Patriot Act doesn’t apply to parents’ behavior at school-board meetings.
In recent months, parents across the country have expressed their views on issues ranging from pronoun selection and Critical Race Theory to the medical basis of certain Covid restrictions and age-inappropriate, sexually explicit curricular materials. Parents have a right—indeed an obligation—to participate actively at school-board meetings to ensure the safety and well-being of their children. In Virginia’s Loudoun and Fairfax counties, moms, dads, and teachers shocked by X-rated reading lists, race-based indoctrination, and anti-Christian instruction have made their voices heard.
Rather than embracing a renaissance of spirited and nonviolent civic engagement, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe recently said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Democrats’ hostility toward parents seeking a voice in their children’s education is not new. Of greater concern is the recent attempt to weaponize our criminal laws to eliminate these voices.
When asked this week whether the Patriot Act should be used to monitor parents at school-board meetings, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded: “The attorney general has put out a letter. They will take actions they take, and I would point you to them for more information.” Ms. Psaki’s nonresponse—and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum directing federal counterterrorism agents to monitor parents at local school-board meetings—is emblematic of the Biden administration’s unparalleled effort to transform federal laws and agencies into instruments of domestic political repression.
The Patriot Act was enacted into law following the mass terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its central purpose was to prevent additional foreign terrorist attacks on American soil by enhancing the collection and sharing of foreign intelligence information, restricting terrorist financing, and enhancing border security. The legislation defined terrorism as unlawful acts of violence or acts dangerous to human life intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to affect the conduct of government by “mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” Some provisions, particularly Section 215 and the issuance of National Security Letters, occasioned spirited and necessary debate to ensure against their misuse by federal agencies.
When considering the Patriot Act, I sought a bipartisan consensus that was reflected in its unanimous committee approval. Aware of potential abuse—and over the objection of the Bush administration—I ensured the legislation contained sunset provisions and wrote a bill to amend and reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2005. In 2015, I was the author of the USA Freedom Act, which restored the original intent of the Patriot Act by reforming key federal surveillance authorities.
Freedom of expression is a touchstone of self-government. Our laws and jurisprudence draw a clear distinction between acts of terrorism calculated to influence a civilian population and the robust expression of views that sustains democratic self-government. This awareness has informed legislative consideration of the Patriot Act and subsequent revisions.
When debating the Patriot Act and other federal antiterrorism laws, nobody in either chamber of Congress could have imagined these laws would be turned against concerned parents at local school board meetings. Yet on Oct. 4, Mr. Garland issued the memorandum that will live in infamy. It directs the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. attorneys to develop “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” This memorandum followed a Sept. 29 National School Boards Association letter to President Biden urging the administration to use the Patriot Act to monitor parents at school board meetings.
Federal agencies lack roving jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute noncriminal conduct. They also lack authority to invoke federal antiterrorism laws to chill protected expressive conduct. The Justice Department’s school-board memorandum violates the letter and spirit of federal law approved by bipartisan, bicameral congressional majorities. Unless it is immediately withdrawn, the memorandum will chill free speech, undermine civil liberties, erode public confidence in federal law enforcement, divert resources from actual terrorist threats, and weaken congressional support for key antiterrorism laws. All of these developments would make Americans less free, less secure and less safe.
Ours is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The attorney general is America’s top law-enforcement officer; his words have consequences. The press secretary speaks on behalf of the White House. Mr. Garland’s memorandum and Ms. Psaki’s silence speak volumes about this administration’s approach to the constitutional rights of all Americans. Mr. McAuliffe’s hostility toward Virginia’s parents must not be backed by oppressive and unlawful federal mandates calculated to stifle free speech throughout the country.
Members of Congress have an obligation to ensure laws they write are faithfully applied, not intentionally subverted. Congress should demand the immediate withdrawal of the school-board memorandum, bar the appropriation of funds to implement it, and directly challenge the administration’s efforts to misuse federal laws to silence political opposition. Respect for our laws, Constitution and citizens demands no less.
Mr. Sensenbrenner, a Republican, served as a U.S. representative from Wisconsin, 1979-2021, and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, 2001-07.
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So far I have not been too far off with my market comments and thoughts.
I still believe the market will remain choppy as we enter the earning's period and, after whatever reaction takes place, will stabilize and have an upward tilt for the rest of the year.
Interest rates are less an issue as inflation, supply chain bottle necks and the impact on the upcoming Holiday Season, consumer spending, increased costs and earnings.
I still favor energy, insurance stocks like CB, AFL and the more speculative AIG. I also continue to lean toward health care and selected technology, ie. QCOM , INTC and some defensive income stocks like VZ, VST and WBA.
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