Article by Ben Shapiro in mrcNewsBusters

The Great Re-Sorting Is Here

This week, the incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams -- the supposed rational corrective to uber-radical outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio -- announced that he would allow legislation to proceed allowing local voting for 800,000 noncitizens. The same week, the legislature in California took up a bill that would establish single-payer health care in the state, paying for the increase in costs by essentially doubling taxes.

Americans have been fleeing the most liberal states in mass numbers. Those numbers are about to increase even more.

Between July 2020 and July 2021, approximately 352,198 residents of New York State embarked for warmer climes. Over that same period, the District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population. California lost 367,299 people via net domestic migration. Illinois, another failing blue state, saw a net domestic out-migration of 122,460 people.

Where did all these blue state refugees go? To red states, of course. Texas picked up 170,307 Americans migrating from other areas. Florida picked up 220,890 people. Arizona picked up 93,026. Idaho had the fastest annual population increase in the nation.

The only region of the country to gain population was the South, which now holds 38.3% of the total population of the country -- and which picked up 657,682 Americans migrating from different areas. The Northeast is now the least populous region in the United States, and saw a net population decrease of 365,795 residents. All net increase in population in the West was due to births and international migration, not domestic moves.

It's not just individuals -- it's companies. Facebook's parent company, Meta, just signed the largest-ever lease in downtown Austin for floors 34 through 66 of the tallest tower in the city. Elon Musk has relocated his company headquarters to Texas. My own Daily Wire relocated in 2020 from California to Nashville, Tennessee.

In other words, red state governance is a magnet; blue state governance is a disaster. Yet blue states cannot change course. They cannot simply jettison their adherence to failed ideas like single-payer health care or voting for illegal immigrants. To do so would be to acknowledge error. And so instead, they are banking on unearned moral superiority -- virtue signaling -- to fill the gap where good governance should be. Thus, red states are grandma-killing hellholes (where blue state legislators vacation); red states are brutal suppressors of voting rights (where Stacey Abrams wants to run for governor again); red states are filled with vicious dog-eat-dog trickle-down capitalists (who must be taxed to pay for national spending programs).

None of this is bound to convince Americans to vote Democrat. It's not designed to do so. Democrats have banked on a consistent electoral strategy since former President Barack Obama's 2012 victory -- the strategy of driving out a base comprised of minority voters and college-educated women. But that strategy is collapsing -- as Ruy Texiera, once the nation's leading proponent of that strategy, admitted in November, “if Hispanic voting trends continue to move steadily against the Democrats, the pro-Democratic effect of nonwhite population growth will be blunted, if not cancelled out entirely, and that very influential Democratic theory of the case falls apart.”

It's falling apart in real time. But Democrats can't pull out of the tailspin. They're too invested in the lie that their programs are popular to notice how many Americans are calling up U-Haul.

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/ben-shapiro/2022/01/13/great-re-sorting-here 

 

Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage

Do You Believe That?

How the Church should respond to pandemic untruths.

by Russel Barger for American Greatness

A recent Washington Post article titled “Thousands who followed the rules are about to get Covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed” tells the story of one “Aline” who is struggling with her feelings of shame and embarrassment after getting COVID despite “doing everything right.” 

One wonders, would this person feel “ashamed” for catching a cold, which is spread by other coronaviruses? Despite following all the local and federal protocols, she committed “wrongdoing” by becoming infected. Infection must be like a sin to such folks. The only logical conclusion I could reach was that this intelligent American believed that our government and media were equipped to “defeat” a highly contagious virus. Seeing how many errors these same leaders have made in this pandemic, it makes me wonder: “Do you believe that?” 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how much pride has seeped into our culture, including in our Christian churches. A significant number of Americans still believe that our public health experts know the correct way to handle this pandemic. Despite being proven wrong again and again, these “experts” continue to spew forth draconian mandates and restrictions to “defeat” a coronavirus. Around December 19, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci recommended that families should not gather in groups unless the hosts were certain that all were vaccinated, or they had a negative PCR test result “recently” (within 15 minutes?). The technocratic experts have yet to identify metrics of success on how this pandemic becomes endemic. Fear is their currency. And social conditioning to determine how much tyranny the population will tolerate is their deliverable. We have come to believe that avoiding death from this virus at all costs is our goal, and these tyrants’ promises of “safety” will return us to comfort.  

The godless technocrats have convinced many Americans that they have the knowledge, ability, and resources to “defeat” a coronavirus. These Gnostic-like experts still keep most of their data secret. Oddly, we have never eradicated influenza, despite its consistent death toll. In early 2020, the risk of COVID-19 was unclear. People understandably agreed to draconian measures to “stop” the spread. But by late summer 2020 it was clear that this virus did not come close to approaching the mortality rates of smallpox, ebola, or polio. The case survival rate has changed little since the summer of 2020, remaining around 99.8 percent for those who are not elderly or “at-risk.” 

Using months of media conditioning to promote fear of serious complications or death, these experts blamed non-adherents for the failure of their own absurd plan to “defeat” the virus. The scapegoat arrived. Looking for any way to reduce the anxiety and stress placed upon them, the populace now was given a target. Tyrants often have a god-complex, and they need a nefarious group to blame when their mistakes become obvious.  

Our arrogance has overridden our humility. How many times do we ignore the examples our forefathers left us? The tower of Babel, the Golden Calf, and the original prideful mistake, eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. Our leaders and elites appear to believe they are near the point that they can control nature. They can become like gods. Of course, this necessarily requires a populace in compliance with their benevolent dictates. Could one dissent from being vaccinated against COVID-19, and still have a well-formed conscience? The National Center for Catholic Bioethics answers this question: “There is no universal moral obligation to accept or refuse [the vaccine], and it should be a voluntary decision of the individual.” But rights of conscience seldom deter quasi-deities.  

The technocrats’ arrogant belief they can control nature has even placed our children at risk. Over 15,000 physicians and medical doctors signed the Global Covid Summit Declaration in December, 2021. It recommends that we do not inject mRNA vaccines into children. The virus seldom harms children, but the vaccine can seriously harm their cardiac, immune, and reproductive systems. Medical ethics used to teach that children were not human shields for the elderly. If polled, how many of our compliant countrymen would mandate children be vaccinated, regardless of their parents’ objections? Sounds positively Marxist. Few church leaders have mentioned the similarities between the sacrifices to Moloch, and this COVID-19 child vaccination cult.  

The Church has a duty to remind the faithful that their desire to be “charitable” can be twisted by clever tyrants to sinful purposes. Pride and greed usually drive the desire to control and subjugate our fellow man. The Church saw the danger of Marxism in the 1800s, and began to fight against its godless ideology. Today we are witnessing a technocratic twist on this prideful belief that brilliant elites should decide what is in our best interest—smart sheep herders that they are. For a people lacking belief in Christ’s kingship, scientism has apparently filled the void in their soul. 

Last, but most important, is the duty of the Church to demand the faithful have access to services and the sacraments, regardless of whether they are “unclean.” As of this writing, Canadian provinces and their dioceses require a vaccine passport to enter the church. Germany warns it will institute a February 2022 deadline mandating that all residents be vaccinated. The clergy must not participate in any passport system. Silence from the Church about a mandatory digital passport is not a way to gain, or even retain, those who normally look to the Church as a beacon of hope, and a bulwark against godless tyranny. Many have already functionally abandoned the faith, resorting sporadically to YouTube church. Clergy must point out how our loss of freedoms occurred alongside our loss of access to the sacraments and their graces. This was not a coincidence if you have a Marxist worldview.

Church leaders who participated in scientism’s lies and omissions should be held to account. The faithful will ask “Did you believe that?” when they realize who were silent or complicit in these cultish beliefs. Church leaders should take steps now to avoid such rightful blame and censure. A reckoning is coming. 

John Paul II’s advice to “be not afraid” should be repeated from their pulpits. Churches should make it clear Christianity is incompatible with Gnostic-like technocracy. Those that try to protect the constitutional freedoms our American founders left may regain some credibility. But for those churches more concerned about being “nice,” only following their actuaries’ risk-adversity matrix, and rendering more to Caesar than he deserves, their flocks will vote with their feet. 

X22, On the Fringe, and more-Jan 16

 

Evening, here's tonight's news:

Joe Biden: Deep State Puppet

Will the country be able to survive three more years of a deep state conspiracy presided over by an angry, incompetent, and increasingly senile puppet?

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

I almost feel sorry for Joe Biden. 

The emphasis, I hasten to add, is on the adverb. Perhaps, if he didn’t make me feel thoroughly sorry for the United States of America, my sympathy for him would be unalloyed. But even many in Biden’s own party are aghast at his performance as president. 

It’s almost a matter of smell, of that sixth sense that alerts sensitive souls to impending disaster. Animals somehow know when an earthquake is coming, even before the ground begins to tremble. The far-left activist Stacey Abrams is well endowed with those antennae, which is why she invented “scheduling issues” and gave the president’s speech in Atlanta a miss last week. The aroma of events like that have a way of clinging to someone, and Abrams had the good sense to know that Joe Biden on “voting rights” and the run-up to Martin Luther King Day was likely to be a redolent affair. 

In the event, it was much worse than she, or anyone else for that matter, could have foreseen. Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff called it the “the worst presidential speech in modern history.” But Paul is a generous man. There was really no need for that qualifying “modern.” Paul mentions Jimmy Carter’s disastrous “malaise speech” of 1979 as a contender for the palm. That speech was indeed horrible. It was one of the things that lost Carter the election the next year. But Biden’s speech was far worse. Carter’s speech was a bizarre combination of cramped, hectoring moralism, much of it lifted from Christopher Lasch, and a repellent, cardigan-clad sentimentality and faux folksiness. 

Carter’s speech, however, was not mendacious. It was simply wrong. Biden’s, on the contrary, was a veritable tissue of incontinent hyperbole, partisan posturing, and outright lies. Even Dick Durbin, Democratic lapdog though he is, acknowledged that Biden “went a little too far in his rhetoric.” You think so, Dick?

Forget about Biden’s description of the January 6 protest at the Capitol as “an attempted coup . . . against the legally expressed will of the American people.” That was insane, granted, but what will be remembered is his over-the-top, shark-jumping hyperbole “I ask every elected official in America,” Biden said in one of the most cringe-making moments of the speech, “How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Oh, dear. It took about 15 seconds for House Republicans to produce a newspaper clipping in which Biden bragged about being praised by George Wallace. That was back when then-Senator Biden was a proud segregationist. 

Mitch McConnell was waiting offstage with the ax: “He shouted that if you disagree with him, you’re George Wallace,” McConnell said. “If you don’t pass the laws he wants, you’re Bull Connor, and if you oppose giving Democrats untrammeled, one-party control of the country, well, you’re Jefferson Davis.” 

But that was just the beginning of what was wrong with Biden’s speech. Miranda Devine provided a succinct demolition in the New York Post. The speech was, she began, “stupid, divisive and full of lies, and it also exposed his impotence.” Then she got down to business. 

Joe Biden’s problem—it’s the thing that makes me feel almost sorry for him—is that so many things are spinning rapidly out of control. It’s the velocity as much as the substance of the collapse that makes it such a vertiginous onslaught. 

Suddenly, his legislative agenda is in tatters. Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), both Democrats, have made sure that Biden’s “Build Back Better” fantasy is being choked down everywhere as “Build Back Bitter.” All at once, inflation, tamed for decades, is coming roaring back. It’s now running at its highest pace in 40 years. How did that happen? And how did it happen so fast? Meanwhile, Biden’s approval rating is in freefall—43 percent, 41 percent, 37 percent, 35 percent, 33 percent. You see why Stacey Abrams is keeping her distance. A president with that sort of cratering approval rating bodes ill for his party’s electoral prospects. 

The stock market is trembling—what do those tremors portend?—and recent jobs reports have been disappointing. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants continue to pour over our southern border, violent crime is soaring, especially in blue states. The authorities seemed paralyzed. In New York, Alvin Bragg, the newly elected Manhattan District Attorney, just announced that he was intending to allow the vast majority of people arrested, even for many felonies, to be released without bail. Philadelphia, stunned by a raft of violent carjackings, issued “guidance” to beware of hotspots:

• Getting in and out of vehicle 
• Residential driveways 
• Parking lots and garages 
• Gas stations 
• ATMs 
• Streets with poor lighting

Have they left anything out? Is there anywhere you aren’t likely to be carjacked? (Far away from Philadelphia seems to be the most likely answer.)

Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin is massing troops on the Ukraine border. Last week, a “massive” cyberattack was directed against Ukraine government websites. No one has yet taken credit for the attacks, but no one has to: everyone knows who is behind them. A prelude to an invasion? Probably. And what will Biden do? What will he do to address the “looming threat” of a nuclear crisis with Iran? How about the multifarious threats posed by China: military, strategic, and economic?

Joe Biden is looking more and more like a chap who comes home to find his house ransacked and on fire. It suddenly dawns on him, though, that it was he who set the goons to work and supplied the gasoline and matches that started the blaze. 

Biden came to office through concerted, non-stop electoral legerdemain. Everyone knows this, and more and more people are coming to admit it. There are still scattered Twitter dwarfs, like Japanese soldiers decades after 1945, skirling about the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. But what’s gradually coming into focus is the awful truth that the real “Big Lie” was that Joe Biden won the election fair and square. That narrative is unraveling strand by strand. The outstanding question is whether the country will be able to survive three more years of a deep state conspiracy presided over by an angry, incompetent, and increasingly senile puppet. 

Liz Cheney’s True Constituents

Someone who can raise hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars with a few phone calls will harbor loyalty to D.C. interests, not to Wyoming voters.

by Dan Brophy for American Greatness

Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) may officially represent the “Cowboy State,” but she is more accurately described as the only voting member on behalf of the Washington DC establishment. 

Cheney has declared that Donald J. Trump tried to overthrow the U.S. government and, under provisions of the 14th Amendment, he must be banned from ever running for public office again. Heck, maybe he should be prosecuted for sedition! She knows all this because she was there in the House chambers on January 6, 2021. You weren’t, so you don’t know. In her elite experience of life inside the Imperial City her accusation equals guilt. Period, end of discussion. 

Madam Attorney Cheney lectures her actual constituents in Wyoming that “it’s the Constitution.” You see, we are all ignorant. President Trump had no right to claim the election was stolen (it was, and he did). He had no right on January 6 of last year to refer a number of disputed state election results to their respective legislatures (he absolutely did).

When the riot occurred, this woman, who for years so energetically encouraged U.S. intervention in overseas conflicts, experienced what was probably the first flicker of fear she’s felt in her entire sheltered life. Eager to send tens of thousands of soldiers into combat, where all experience real fear and some die, her personal exposure to potential violence sure did not sit well with her. How much sympathy did she express for the victims of hundreds of riots throughout the country during 2020? None. She brays that she is the defender of the People’s House, but as for your house, your family’s safety, your business, she could not care less. 

From election day 2020 through the Biden inauguration in January, 2021, Cheney told us courts heard and dismissed election fraud claims. She knows this is false. Numerous courts were presented with claims, and all were turned down for procedural reasons—generally “lack of standing.” No court heard evidence (there are reams of it from numerous states). It’s worse today: 14 months later, to my knowledge, not a single federal court has yet reviewed a single piece of evidence. Strikeout, Liz.

She tells us she “voted her conscience” to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on January 13, seven days before the end of his term. The Constitution she claims to respect sets a due process expectation and standard for any citizen. A House colleague of hers, a friend of mine who sits on the Judiciary committee, confirmed to me that the entire impeachment process took under 7 hours, from the first hearing until the impeachment vote. 7 hours! President Trump had no opportunity to present a defense. For Cheney, once again, the accusation is the conviction, and evidence be damned. Strikeout, Liz. 

Now Cheney sits on Pelosi’s select committee to investigate January 6. Investigation is a deliberate process of pursuing facts. But she and her colleagues will see to it that the committee finds President Trump guilty of “insurrection.” Did I miss the exchanges of gunfire? The artillery barrages of the rebels hitting the Capitol? The takeover of radio and TV stations in DC? Does she care that, among all the accused rioters, not a single firearm was found? No she doesn’t. Strikeout, Liz. 

She accepted an appointment by the House Democratic leadership as vice-chair of the committee. The committee has no Republican appointed representation, meaning it has no authority under the rules of the House to proceed with its work, much less issue subpoenas. Her sense of fair process, including the right of persons under investigation to have advocates among the ranks of the committee, simply does not exist. 

She applauded when Pelosi expelled Representatives Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) as Republican members of the committee. She remained on the committee even when Republican  leadership, realizing the committee’s mission is not an objective inquiry but an inquisition, rightly withdrew all Republican nominations. This violates House rules; nothing of the sort has ever happened in U.S. history. Strikeout, Liz. 

Hundreds of January 6 protestors have been languishing in jail for months, many in conditions befitting Soviet gulags: 23 hours/day locked down in their cells; denial of attorney and family visits; denial of phone calls; retribution for getting these conditions into the public eye. Some are lacking medical care and good nutrition, and even suffering beatings. Most have families, none have criminal records. Biden officials call them “domestic terrorists”, but not a one has been charged with insurrection. Does Cheney ask about their treatment? No. Let them rot. Strikeout Liz. 

Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the committee supported a radical secessionist group responsible in the late 1960s for cop shootings and at least one officer murder. The group was found storing arms and explosives. He has never renounced this association. Cheney has never mentioned it, objected to it, or criticized him. He’s her valued ally because he hates Trump too. Strikeout, Liz 

The committee’s tactics are appalling, dishonest, and vicious. Demanding documents from anyone remotely associated with President Trump (under threat of criminal indictments), it vacuums up private records of hundreds of innocent people. She and her Democratic colleagues know the man, so they “will find the crime.” Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a committee member, was caught altering text messages of Representative Jordan—a felony offense in any jurisdiction other than the sewer that Congress has become. While busy calling January 6 protestors terrorists, Pelosi refuses to release her communication records related to the security arragements for the Capitol for that day. Cheney says nothing. Strikeout, Liz.

When Cheney appeared on the Wyoming scene in 2014, she passed out the book Cowboy Ethics at her early fundraising events. My family still has a copy on our living room table. We assumed the book meant she lived by its principles, the old “Code of the West” that demands strict integrity in one’s life, never betraying trust, and fair play. Now we know the book was a prop for her political theater. She mouthed its principles to get elected, but in fact she lives by the opposite code of corrupt Washington. 

For five years, she deceived us and every Wyoming Republican, including her opponent Harriet Hageman. We all should have understood that someone who can raise hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars with a few phone calls would harbor loyalty to D.C. interests, not to Wyoming voters. 

Research her resume—it couldn’t be more clear that she advanced through D.C. circles using her Daddy’s contacts. Now we find that she accepts funds from the Lincoln Project, a false-front “Republican” organization which has worked for years to undermine the Trump agenda. Stooping even lower, it turns out that our “warrior for the Constitution” accepted an award from a Chinese Communist-affiliated group. 

Washington is not just “the swamp.” It is a putrid cesspool. Dishonor and dishonesty permeate this committee. Dishonor cloaks Liz Cheney. She was elected to bat for us, her constituents. Turns out she bats for the opposite team. She is the worst of Washington. Her dishonorable conduct demands her removal from office, public shaming, and her humiliating defeat. 

Millions under weather alerts as major winter storm hits US and Canada

 

A winter storm is bringing heavy snow and ice to parts of the US and Canada, with millions under weather warnings.

Thousands of flights have been cancelled, and power cuts have been reported in some south-eastern states.

Virginia, Georgia, and North and South Carolina declared states of emergency.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) said the storm would hit much of the eastern third of the country over the next two days, with more than 1ft (30cm) of snow expected in some areas.

The huge storm system is approaching the eastern US from the Midwest.

Snow and ice could result in "dangerous travel, power outages, and tree damage", the NWS warned.  

There were also forecasts of possible coastal flooding in some areas, including New York city and parts of Connecticut, with warnings that roads and infrastructure could be affected.  

In Canada's Ontario province, which shares a border with New York state, Environment Canada issued storm warnings on Sunday morning for much of the south, where the snow is expected to start late on Sunday local time. Toronto, the capital of the province and Canada's largest city, is forecast to get seven inches (20cm) of snow.  

US airlines had cancelled at least 2,400 flights by Sunday morning as a result of the extreme weather, according to flight tracking data.

Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina was among the worst hit, with almost 90% of flights scrapped, and a message on its website urged passengers to check with their airlines before travelling to the airport. 

 

 

 

At a news conference in the neighbouring state on Saturday, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster called on residents to stay off the roads.

"This is going to be a pretty bad storm in the upper part of the state," he said, adding that it was "good news" that the storm was forecast to hit on a weekend and on a public holiday on Monday, when fewer people would need to travel.

"Hopefully, the storm will underdeliver, but it could overdeliver. We just don't know," Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said as he announced preparations for his state.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60017300  

"Imperialist Russia?" Four Western Provocations That Led To The Current US-Russia Crisis

by Tyler Durden for ZeroHedge

A fresh report and analysis at the non-interventionist think tank, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, traces the roots of today's US-Russia deteriorated relations and showdown over Ukraine back to the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990's. 

So much of current "debate" in public and media discourse is woefully lacking in even basic recent historical knowledge and context of the last thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even in daily conversations people might get into with friends, family or neighbors - it's common to hear the charge of Russian "imperialism" and "aggression"... as if the Cold War never ended, or worse it's as if some think Putin represents some kind of resurrected Czarist empire.

But Ted Galen Carpenter of both the Cato Institute and Responsible Statecraft has detailed four specific major Western provocations which has led to the ongoing Ukraine crisis 2.0 - and at a moment the Kremlin is demanding that NATO agree to 'no further eastward expansion' in the form of "security guarantees" to be negotiated starting January 10 in Geneva. 

"The one-sided, self-serving indictments of Russia’s behavior invariably ignore the numerous Western provocations that took place long before Moscow engaged in disruptive measures," Carpenter writes.  "Indeed, the deterioration of the West’s relations with post-communist Russia began during Bill Clinton’s administration."

Below is a section of the Responsible Statecraft report listing and explaining the four Western provocations that led to U.S.-Russia crisis today...

Western provocation number 1: NATO’s first eastward expansion. 

In her memoir "Madame Secretary," former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state Madeleine Albright concedes that Clinton administration officials decided already in 1993 to endorse the wishes of Central and East European countries to join NATO. The Alliance proceeded to add Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1998. Albright admitted that Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his associates were extremely unhappy with that development. The Russian reaction was understandable, since the expansion violated informal promises that President George H. W. Bush’s administration had given Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed not only to accept a unified Germany but a united Germany in NATO.  The implicit quid pro quo was that NATO would not move beyond the eastern border of a united Germany.  

Western provocation number 2: NATO’s military intervention in the Balkans. 

NATO’s 1995 air war against Bosnian Serbs seeking to secede from the newly minted country of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the imposition of the Dayton Peace Accords greatly annoyed Yeltsin’s government and the Russian people. The Balkans had been a region of considerable religious and strategic interest to Moscow for generations, and it was humiliating for Russians to watch impotently as a U.S.-led alliance dictated outcomes there. The Western powers conducted an even greater provocation four years later when they intervened on behalf of a secessionist insurgency in Serbia’s restless Kosovo province. Detaching that province from Serbia and placing it under U.N. control not only set an unhealthy international precedent, but the move also displayed utter contempt for Russia’s interests and preferences in the Balkans.  

The Clinton administration’s decisions to expand NATO and meddle in Bosnia and Kosovo were crucial steps toward creating a new cold war with Russia. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock Jr. cites the negative impact that NATO expansion and the U.S.-led military interventions in the Balkans had on Russian attitudes toward the United States and the West: "The effect on Russians’ trust in the United States was devastating. In 1991, polls indicated that about 80 percent of Russian citizens had a favorable view of the United States; in 1999, nearly the same percentage had an unfavorable view."

Western provocation number 3: NATO’s subsequent waves of expansion.  

Not content with how the Clinton administration antagonized Moscow by moving NATO into Central Europe, George W. Bush’s administration pushed the allies to give membership to the rest of the defunct Warsaw Pact and to the three Baltic republics. Admitting the latter in 2004 dramatically escalated the West’s military encroachment. Those three small countries had not only been part of the Soviet Union, they also had spent most of their recent history as part of Czarist Russia’s empire. Russia was still too weak to do more than present feeble diplomatic protests, but the level of anger at the West’s arrogant disregard of Russia’s security interests rose.

Expanding NATO to Russia’s border was not the only provocation. Increasingly, the United States was engaging in "rotational" deployments of its military forces in the new alliance members. Even George Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, expressed worries that such actions were creating dangerous tensions. Putin’s February 2007 speech to the annual Munich Security Conference made it extremely clear that the Kremlin’s patience with U.S. and NATO arrogance was coming to an end. Bush, tone-deaf as ever, even tried to secure NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a policy that his successors have continued to push, despite resistance from France and Germany.

Western Provocation number 4: treating Russia as an outright enemy in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Western leaders did not take Putin’s warnings seriously enough, however. Instead, the provocations on multiple fronts continued and, in some cases, even accelerated. The United States and key NATO powers bypassed the U.N. Security Council (and a certain Russian veto) in early 2008 to grant Kosovo full independence. Three years later, Barack Obama’s administration misled Russian officials about the purpose of a “humanitarian” U.N. military mission in Libya, convincing Moscow to withhold its veto. The mission promptly turned into a U.S.-led regime-change war to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Shortly thereafter, the United States worked with like-minded Middle East powers in a campaign to oust Russia’s client, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. The egregious U.S.-EU meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics followed.

It is unfair to judge Russia’s aggressive and destabilizing actions, including the annexation of Crimea, the ongoing military intervention in Syria, continuing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, and attempted interference in the political affairs of other countries, without acknowledging the multitude of preceding Western abuses. The West, not Russia, is largely responsible for the onset of the new cold war.

* * *

It's likely that some of the above arguments will be the focus of debate within the coming weeks as Russian and US-NATO officials engage each other in Geneva. While US officials might feign having a short memory over these things, it's clear the Russian side is fully aware, and unwilling to let it go.

And Russia is the one who is blamed of "expansion", "imperialism" and "aggression" by @NATO #warmongers🤦 https://t.co/g3IfI7BuHS

— Elena Plotnikova (@Cosmopolitka) December 30, 2021

For example, in his latest comments Friday, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov underscored precisely that Euro-Atlantic countries have repeatedly contradicted and broken prior commitments. "Our proposals are aimed at creating and legalizing a new system of agreements based on the principle of the indivisibility of security and abandonment of attempts to achieve military superiority, which was approved unanimously by the leaders of all Euro-Atlantic states in the 1990s. I would like to emphasize that what we need is legally binding guarantees since our Western colleagues systematically fail to fulfill political obligations, not to mention voiced assurances and promises given to Soviet and Russian leaders," Lavrov said.

Politico Op-Ed Calls out Conservatives for 'Fake News,' but They Missed the Mark Again

Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

This one will be interesting.

Authors Hemant Kakkar and Asher Lawson, a professor and student at Duke University, respectively, penned a piece for Politico in which they reported on the results of a study they recently conducted that was designed to identify the group that was most likely to share “misinformation” online. Now, we already know that, for these folks, the definition of “misinformation” typically means “opinions with which we disagree.”

But let’s put that to the side for a minute.

The authors claim to have discovered who is most likely to share false information online related to issues like COVID-19, vaccines, the 2020 election, and others. It is not shocking that the authors point to conservatives as being the prime purveyors of fake news. But in a surprising moment of intellectual honesty, they acknowledge that blaming most Republicans or conservatives for the dissemination of misinformation is an “oversimplified” and “misguided” generalization. They write:

In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.

According to the researchers, their “findings suggest it is misguided to assign blame for misinformation to the political right broadly,” and they acknowledge that using these arguments “risks increasing polarization.”

Instead of blaming the conservative movement as a whole, the authors suggest it is more “productive” to focus on what they call “low-conscientiousness conservatives” (LCCs). But then they write:

To be clear, existing research has found that conservatives have a greater tendency toward misinformation than liberals do. For example, during the 2016 election, individuals who leaned conservative were more likely to engage with and share disinformation on Twitter and Facebook. Likewise, in the early months of the pandemic, conservatives were more likely to believe Covid-19 was a hoax, and to downplay the virus’ severity.

After concluding that conservative ideology doesn’t explain why one might spread false news stories, the researchers decided to “investigate the role personality traits might play” and focused more on conscientiousness, which they define as “the tendency to regulate one’s own behavior by being less impulsive and more orderly, diligent, and prudent.” Their working hypothesis was that conservatives “with lower levels of conscientiousness would be more inclined to spread fake news and that there would be no difference between highly conscientious conservatives and their liberal counterparts.”

It appears the authors’ findings were in accordance with their original hypothesis; low-conscientiousness conservatives were far more likely than those who fell into the other groups to share misinformation. “On average, they were  2.5 times more likely to share misinformation than the combined averages of the other three groups,” the authors wrote.

The researchers also sought to discover what motivates LCCs to share fake news stories and realized it had nothing to do with “support for Trump, time spent on social media, distrust of the mainstream media,” or even “endorsement of conservatives social and economic values.”

Instead, they found that the “only reliable explanation was a general desire for chaos – that is, a motivation to disregard, disrupt, and take down existing social and political institutions as a means of asserting the dominance and superiority of one’s own group.”

The article continued:

Participants indicated their appetite for chaos by using a scale to express how much they agreed with statements like, “I think society should be burned to the ground.” For LCCs, we concluded, sharing false information is a vehicle for propagating chaos.

The authors then attempted to determine whether LCCs can be prevented from sharing fake news stories. They noted that fact checks on social media did not tend to deter the behavior. “LCCs continued to share fake news stories at a higher rate compared with liberals and high-conscientiousness conservatives, despite being told the news was inaccurate,” they explained.

In the end, they conclude that the “onus fall primarily on social media companies” to deal with the problem. While the authors do not outright recommend more censorship, it is not difficult to discern where leftists would love to take this, right?

But, as always with articles of this type, there is something important missing. The authors indicate in the article that they conducted this study because misinformation is a serious issue that should be addressed. Indeed, most of us would agree.

However, while they acknowledge that most conservatives are not in the business of sharing fake news, they fail to consider the false news stories perpetuated by our mainstream activist media that are shared on social media on a daily basis. They take it for granted that outlets like CNN – which has repeatedly been caught reporting fake news stories – are not a pernicious force in American society.

Yet, left-wing media activists working at places like MSBNC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, and several others routinely skew their reportage in a way that is clearly designed to favor the left — even if it means deceiving their audience. This behavior is even more egregious than the fake news shared by conservatives because it has a level of credibility behind it.

Fake news stories insisting former President Donald Trump called Nazis “fine people” are dangerous to society. Deceptively telling the public that a group of MAGA hat-wearing high schoolers was bullying an old Native American man is dangerous to society. Reinforcing the notion that white racist police officers are actively hunting down and shooting innocent, unarmed black men every day is dangerous to society. Telling the American public that the 2016 presidential election was stolen for Trump by the Russian government is dangerous to society.

Most of the false narratives distributed by these left-wing propaganda mills are a significant part of the division America is experiencing right now. If the researchers truly wished to mitigate the damage that fake news causes, they would not only focus on low-conscientiousness conservatives. They would also examine how the charlatans disguising themselves as reporters are also harming society.

The fact that mainstream activist media outlets have far more reach than some LCCs sharing conspiracy theories about vaccines on Facebook should motivate folks like these researchers to look at the real fake news culprits. But perhaps performing a study on this matter isn’t quite as lucrative as blaming chaos-loving right-wingers. After all, most academics would prefer to remain employed, wouldn’t they?

 

More Arkancides in the future?

 

Article by Doris O'Brien in The American Thinker

You Have Been Warned: Hillary is Back

Standing in front of livestock at the 2016 Iowa State Fair, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton chortled, “I’m back!”  But she was dead serious.

Now, despite Joe Biden’s unlikely intentions to run for a second term, Hillary is back again – as if ambition would ever let her leave!

Five years younger than Biden, Hillary has no intention of being an old soldier who just fades away.   Ever since her college years at Wellesley, she has harbored political ambitions.  And when her husband landed in the White House, her dream of becoming the first female president of the United States took serious hold.

After her stint as First Lady, Hillary made all the right moves.   She ran for and won the US Senate seat in New York, a state where she had never resided.  After she lost in the 2008 presidential primary to Barack Obama, she served as his Secretary of State., as much to preserve her own public image as anything else.

After the Obama years, the general expectation was that nominee Hillary would win the 2016 election over her once-friend, Donald J. Trump, a political neophyte. Though early on the contest seemed hers to lose, Hillary soon found herself in the crosshairs of her own unpopularity and the mood of the country for change.

Hillary took her presidential defeat badly – but she never really took herself out of contention.   After her defeat five years ago, some presumed she would trudge, if reluctantly, toward   political extinction.  Indeed, four years later in 2020.  there was no groundswell for Hillary, and certainly less when Joe Biden, a Democrat, moved into the White House.   

HRC may be as crooked as the part in Jan Psaki’s red hair, but she has always been straight about what she wants.  And now, by wading into the midst of Biden’s misadventures, she is daring to take Ram Emanuel’s advice to never let a crisis go to waste.

In fact, with all of Biden’s humiliating defeats, it would seem like a promising time for Hillary to dust off the “reset button” she presented thirteen unlucky years ago to then Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavron  -- and hand it to America’s voters.    Of course, back then, after Hillary Clinton embraced the Russians, she maligned them with charges of misinformation and election tampering.

Hillary is still smarting over Trump’s presumed theft of her crown jewel, the American presidency.  And now after a period of relative silence, Her Heinous is reimagining herself as the embodiment of “resilience” -- a cyclically regenerating phoenix rising not from her own ashes, but from those of the current inept administration.  Undoubtedly, Hillary considers herself far more qualified to lead the country than Joe, Kamala, or any of the primary wannabes.  And surely it must rankle her that a lightweight female is a heartbeat away from a president who appears to be fading fast.

So, Hillary has bolstered her comeback by, among other things, promoting herself on Master Class as a “cultural icon … a barrier-smashing leader who can teach others about building a strong sense of resilience.”  But let’s face it, the only thing Hillary wants to help build is a following for her next presidential run.

Along with her survival instincts, Hillary presents herself as a much-needed liberal voice of reason and moderation in these trying times.  She knows that many Americans who pulled the lever for Joe Biden now suffer from buyer’s remorse.  And among them, surely, are some partisans – particularly Democrat women -- who are still upset over her loss to Trump, and who still think she deserves to be America’s first female president.

So while some may view lingering COVID, unprotected borders, crime-ridden cities,  escalating inflation, and  plummeting  Biden poll numbers as worrisome,   Hillary Clinton sees them as a possible way to her happy ending last hurrah.  

Meanwhile, Bidenistas are biting their nails.  Even as they know the score, they manipulate it to reassure their base that Joe will be running again in 2024, even if he can barely walk in 2022, thinks it’s 2020 and already refers to Kamala as “President Harris.”  Troubled by the Veep’s increasing unpopularity, White House handlers feel an even greater urgency to keep up the Biden charade.

Meanwhile, some in the media are taking her challenge seriously, such as pollster Doug Schoen and former NYC Council president, Andrew Stein., who opine that a “leadership vacuum in the party” could be viably filled by Ms. Clinton, and viewing her as what they call a “change candidate,” though this term is not defined.

But other media types seem unimpressed.   For one thing, Hillary has been too glibly giving advice – and even warnings -- to her own party, such as admonishing it against taking a far left turn before  the 2022 midterm. (Has she been watching Bill Maher?)

Hillary has gone so far as to harangue the Democrat-controlled Congress for not getting things done and to criticize a White House that “we cannot count on to be sane and sober and stable and productive.”  Ouch! 

Is this woman who once referred to half of American voters as “deplorables” now taking a page from the GOP playbook? Or is Hillary merely trying to be more of a scold than the present Enforcer-in-chief, who constantly wags a bony finger of blame at anyone other than himself?

But for Clinton, finding fault is a far cry from finding a way forward.  A lot of unlikely things would have to fall into place for her to construct the scenario of her dreams.  But rest assured, “Rule Resilience” will be her theme song in the years ahead.

After all, didn’t her husband Bill snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in New Hampshire during his crucial primary run for the presidency back in 1992?   Facing well-known opponents Senators Paul Tsongas and John Kerry, and plagued by revelations of his long-time affair with Gennifer Flowers and his questionable draft status during the Vietnam War, Clinton realized he had to win the Granite State or it was all over for him.  He had already fallen 20 points in primary polling in a matter of days.   And his campaign was in meltdown.

But a last-minute Dover event proved to be the game changer. Bill was dynamic and contrite, telling the crowd, “I’ll never forget those of you that gave me a second chance, and if you give me that second chance, I’ll be with you till the last dog dies.”

Perhaps Hillary figures she, too, can go down in history as “The Comeback Kid.”  This is, after all, America.  Anything is possible …  at least until the last dog dies. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/you_have_been_warned_hillary_is_back.html 

Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage