News of the Week for Aug. 15th<\/sup>, 2021<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Farrakhan Roots Feed Black Lives Matter Movement Anti-Semitism<\/a> Dem Official Says Burning Police Station Was “Act of Pure Righteousness”<\/a> Fall of Kabul Imminent: Taliban Could Take Over Afghanistan Within Weeks<\/a> North Korea Defector Yeonmi Park Details Horrors of Life in Communist Dystopia<\/a> After shooting in broad daylight, Oakland’s Chinatown asks Gov. Newsom to send in the CHP<\/a> Indictments in Secoriea Turner case reveal Rayshard Brooks was a member of the Bloods gang<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Federal judge: Cruise lines can require proof of vaccination — even in Florida<\/a> US investigates latest case of a rare tropical disease<\/a> California Becomes First State to Require Vaccine or Regular COVID Testing for Teachers<\/a> China Allegedly Faked “Swiss Biologist” Who Blamed the U.S. for WHO’s Wuhan Lab Investigation<\/a> WHO scientist: China pressured us not to mention lab leak in the report and maybe there’s a reason for that<\/a> White House considering vaccine mandates for … interstate travel?<\/a> Biden Admin: Gender Identity More Valuable to Pandemic Response Than Economic Anxiety<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n NC Democrats, Activists Defend Jim Crow-Era Gun Control Law<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Get Ready for Peak Climate Porn Today<\/a> The next great climate threat? Ganja<\/a> Wild Rice Sues to Stop Repair of Oil Pipeline<\/a> The Sunrise Movement’s Members Of Color Say The Group “Tokenized” And “Used” Them For Years<\/a> Peak Oil\u2014Facts and Fictions<\/a> The Disaster of Green Energy<\/a> Dutch Don’t Care Much for Climate Agenda<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why Is the NHS \u2014 and the High Court \u2014 Determined for Alta Fixsler to Die?<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n China Moves Its New Armored Tactical Vehicle to Mass Production<\/a> Three Tibetans Arrested in Qinghai For Sharing Photos Outside the Region<\/a> Report: Biden had hoped for a “better behaved Taliban”<\/a> U.S. Intelligence: Kabul Could Fall to Taliban “Within 90 Days” <\/a> Biden admin asks Taliban to spare the embassy when they sack Kabul<\/a> Kabul to Taliban: How about we share power?<\/a> Leverage Lost: U.S. Dangles Aid to Prevent Taliban Attack on Embassy in Kabul<\/a> Exodus from Afghanistan: Hundreds of thousands flee their homes as Taliban take over country with people smuggler revealing thousands are already crossing the border PER DAY on their way to Europe and the UK<\/a> Taliban going door to door for girls as young as 12 to make them “sex slaves”<\/a> Navy Refines and Integrates Weapons on Its New Frigate<\/a> CNN: Afghanistan’s Fall Is a Neville Chamberlain-esque Failure and It’s Joe Biden’s Fault<\/a> 2,500 + 3,000 = 0<\/a> That 70s Show, Getting Darker<\/a> Taliban capture key northern city, approach Afghan capital<\/a> Seeking Change, Anti-Lukashenka Hackers Seize Senior Belarusian Officials\u2019 Personal Data<\/a> Biden’s folly<\/a> Afghan president flees the country as Taliban move on Kabul<\/a> Afghan president flees country as U.S. rushes to exit with Taliban on brink of power<\/a> Afghanistan and Chicago<\/a> Biden Looks a Lot Like Jimmy Carter<\/a> Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Census Mystery<\/a> Time’s Up Chairwoman Resigns Due to Cuomo Ties, Allegedly Tried to Discredit Accuser<\/a> Memo reveals UNC plan to sideline ‘diversity of thought’ ahead of Nikole Hannah-Jones appointment<\/a> Mass Murder in Texas: Can You Guess Why National Media Have Ignored This?<\/a> The Wild, Wacky, Wonderful California Recall Election<\/a> Oregon Proposal Would Redefine Breeding as a “Sexual Assault” on Animals<\/a> GOP megadonors flock to Tim Scott, building 2024 buzz<\/a> Alleged Epstein victim sues Prince Andrew for sexual abuse<\/a> Sue the B******s!<\/a> Frontiers in linguistic sensitivity<\/a> Breaking: Cuomo Resigns<\/a> Cuomo Resigning: “The Best Way I Can Help is if I Step Aside”<\/a> Gov. Kate Brown signed a law to allow Oregon students to graduate without proving they can write or do math. She doesn’t want to talk about it.<\/a> The Colorado Rockies Dinger Affair and the Racism Deficit<\/a> Court Victory for Medical Conscience Because of RFRA<\/a> Shock: Cuomo resigns<\/a> Academia’s hostility to intellectual diversity suffers a courtroom setback<\/a> Gavin Newsom allows parole of Clovis killer who buried developmentally disabled man alive<\/a> Glenn Youngkin’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad July<\/a> Party of the Century<\/a> Robin Comes Out as Bisexual!!!<\/a> A Far-Fetched Scenario<\/a> One Governor Down\u2026<\/a> Gavin Newsom Goes Captain Queeg<\/a> Henry Kissinger & Eric Schmidt’s Big Treatise on Artificial Intelligence Panned in Early, Important Book Review<\/a> Loudoun County Teacher Resigns: “I Quit Being a Cog in a Machine” That Pushes “Highly Politicized Agendas”<\/a> California Gov. Gavin Newsom Facing “Wall of Apathy” in Recall Voting<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Newsboy.jpg\" "\\"News")
<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n\n
<\/a>Riots & Revolution<\/h1>\n
\nA recent conference panel organized by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University highlighted the influence of classic anti-Semitism in Black Lives Matter’s anti-Zionism.<\/p>\n
\nMinneapolis party chairman says ‘decorum’ is ‘hallmark of white supremacy’<\/p>\n
\nZalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. diplomat who negotiated a withdrawal deal with the Taliban last year, is back in Doha, Qatar, desperately trying to cobble together some kind of face-saving agreement for the Afghan government that would allow them to leave the country alive.<\/p>\n
\n“Seeing bodies on the street is an every day thing”<\/p>\n
\nThere was a shooting in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood last weekend. A man attempted to intercede when two men got out of a car and attempted to steal purses from two women walking along the sidewalk. One of the robbers shot the man twice and then got back into his car and drove away. As you’ll see in this report, one local resident said of Oakland’s streets, “There’s no law and order. We’re going back to the wild, wild west.”<\/p>\n
\nLast year an 8-year-old girl named Secoriea Turner was shot and killed by men who had set up roadblocks in the street near the Wendy’s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks was killed. When Ed first wrote about this case on July 6, 2020 he noticed that reports didn’t seem to identify exactly who was behind the shooting<\/p>\n<\/a>Corona Virus<\/h1>\n
\nIt’s an injunction and not a final ruling, but it’s still a loss for Ron DeSantis. In April, the Florida governor issued an executive order, later passed as a statute, that prohibited businesses from imposing requirements to show COVID-19 vaccination status as a condition of entry. That may have proven popular in some circles, but not among cruise line operators, who wanted to reassure passengers that they would be safe from COVID-19 \u2014 or at least as safe as possible.<\/p>\n
\nU.S. health officials are investigating the latest fatal case of a rare tropical disease typically found in South Asia.<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia will become the first state in the country to require all teachers and school staff to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo weekly testing, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\nThe Swiss response to the situation shows they have clearly mastered the art of neutrality.<\/p>\n
\nThere are really two stories significant stories here both of which come from an interview which Peter Ben Embarek gave to Danish documentary makers. Embarek is the person who led the WHO investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, including a visit to Wuhan. He had some interesting things to say about the lab leak theory. The first bit of news is that the Chinese scientists involved in the investigation did their best not to have the theory mentioned at all in the final report.<\/p>\n
\nThere’s a minor freakout happening on social media about this passage in a new AP story, understandably so given how it’s phrased. Are the feds so consumed with limiting the spread of Delta that they’re considering requiring proof of vaccination for all interstate travel?<\/p>\n
\nCensus replaces income loss inquiry to make room for gender identity in COVID questionnaire<\/p>\n<\/a>Gun Rights<\/h1>\n
\nThe fight over North Carolina’s pistol purchase permit laws is seeing new life, with Republicans in the state Senate picking up legislation that would repeal the Jim Crow-era gun control law that requires would-be handgun owners to first obtain the approval of their local sheriff before being legally allowed to buy a pistol. The North Carolina House of Representatives approved the measure earlier this year, and Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to follow suit, though the bill needs at least one more committee vote before being discharged to the Senate floor.<\/p>\n<\/a>Hide the Decline<\/h1>\n
Environment &
\n“Green Energy”<\/h2>\n
\nThe new UN IPCC report on climate change dropped this morning, and guess what? The world is going to boil if we don’t end cheap energy right away. Bet you didn’t see that coming.<\/p>\n
\nIn the end, everything will succumb to the Gaia emergency \u2026 even the bounties of Gaia. After having pushed for legalized marijuana for decades and promoting the industrialization of the industry, progressives have suddenly discovered that adding a massive cash crop to America’s ag sector has an impact on the environment. <\/p>\n
\nThis is the peril posed by the “nature rights” movement. Whenever any human activity interferes with what environmentalists believe should be done, such laws permit them to sue and stop the enterprise.<\/p>\n
\nInternal memos show that activists of color within the Sunrise Movement have privately alleged mistreatment for years \u2014 as the climate group publicly fought for racial justice.<\/p>\n
\nI decided to draft this possible guest post, based on my three ebooks, (all available very affordably on iBooks and Amazon Kindle) because newbie poster MI will not go away on WUWT, and keeps posting OT false peak oil stuff partly directed to his blog, all the while not responding to my several comments to him. I for sure cannot direct any one anywhere, even to my published eBooks. So, here is a simple WUWT “peak oil” fact summary gratis drawn from those. May Dave Middleton forgive my geological layman’s possible detail errors in the big picture portrayed here, for which he certainly has better SME knowledge than I. Plus, I know from previous comments that there are those reading here since years who think no such peak oil thingy exists. Sort of like no GHE, or no ECS. This post is mainly aimed at those who still don’t, in addition to MI.<\/p>\n
\nI didn’t write anything yesterday because my day was taken up with two anti-Green Energy events here in Minnesota. The first was a lunch in Albert Lea, which anti-wind activists drove up to four hours to attend. The second was a cocktail hour program in a Minneapolis suburb attended by more than 250. The speakers were Isaac Orr of Center of the American Experiment and Robert Bryce, one of the country’s top energy experts. The title of the program was “The Environmental Catastrophe of Wind and Solar Power,” although the program’s content was somewhat broader than that. What follows are a few of the slides from yesterday’s presentation that illustrate the foolishness of trying to power our electric grid\u2013let alone our whole economy!\u2013with wind and solar energy.<\/p>\n
\nAnd that’s not tulips: It’s mainly meat, dairy, and eggs \u2014 which means a lot of<\/p>\n<\/a>Obamacare<\/h1>\n
Government in Healthcare<\/h2>\n
\nBill McGurn writes about the ongoing fight to get two-year-old Alta Fixsler out of her U.K.-NHS prison, explaining that this isn’t even a cost-saving measure (as bad as that would be), but something “more monstrous”<\/p>\n<\/a>War & Terror<\/h1>\n
\nThe new vehicle would need to be substantially fortified with new protections to rival the combat performance of an up-armored Humvees.<\/p>\n
\nChina has imposed communication clampdowns in Tibet and Tibetan areas of Chinese provinces to stop information from reaching Tibetans living in exile and other outside contacts.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to some White House sources speaking with the Associated Press this week, there’s a pressing question on the minds of many analysts observing the American bug-out from Afghanistan. Who could have foreseen how rapidly and brutally the Taliban would retake nearly the entire country? Apparently not President Biden or his military advisers. They had been banking on a “better behaved Taliban” that would conform more closely to international norms in the hopes of gaining international respect and aid. Looking at the reports coming out of the few news outlets still able to safely operate inside the country, those plans simply aren\u2019t panning out at all. Given their behavior over the past twenty years, how could anyone not see this coming?<\/p>\n
\nThe AP: “Taliban could gain full control of the country within a few months.”<\/p>\n
\nKandahar, Herat, Ghazni fall?<\/p>\n
\nThus far, this seems to be more rumor than confirmed \u2026 and in more ways than one. The Taliban has conducted a psy-ops campaign to demoralize the Afghanistan military that includes suggestions that the central government has already cut a deal to cede large swaths of the country to the insurgents. Now, Al Jazeera and other outlets report that a “top government source” claims that Kabul has offered a power-sharing arrangement to end the civil war<\/p>\n
\nThe Biden administration is dangling the possibility of U.S. aid to a potential future Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan, in a last-ditch bid to prevent an assault on its embassy in Kabul.<\/p>\n
\n400,000 Afghans have fled their homes since the start of the year, including almost 300,000 since May <\/p>\n
\nTaliban fighters are “going to door to door” to round up young girls to be “sex slaves” for fighters in the terror group, reports claim.<\/p>\n
\nThe new seventy-four-thousand-pound ship will be armed with thirty-two missile-firing Vertical Launch Systems able to fire SM-3 missiles, SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk missiles.<\/p>\n
\nCNN national security analyst Peter Bergen greeted Joe Biden’s vacation with a harsh but factual assessment of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan: It is Biden’s fault.<\/p>\n
\nJust 2,500 troops. That’s all we have had the past few years in Afghanistan. You would not know that from press coverage. The Biden Administration, with the announcement of its withdrawal, has now had to send in 3,000 troops to help evacuate people. In other words, to reduce to zero, we have increased by 3,000.<\/p>\n
\nSay this much for Jimmy Carter: it took him more than three years for his presidency to implode completely. By the end of 1979, we had high inflation, an energy crisis, American hostages in Iran, a geopolitical rival that held us in contempt and thought it has the wind of history at its back, prompting dangerous adventurism (including, ironically, in Afghanistan).<\/p>\n
\nThe Taliban have captured a large, heavily defended city in northern Afghanistan in a major setback for the government, and the insurgents are approaching the capital less than three weeks before the U.S. hopes to complete its troop withdrawal.<\/p>\n
\nThey describe themselves as “apolitical” hackers who want to end Belarus’ “terrorist” regime and ensure equal rights for all. But the actions of Cyberpartisans, a group of Belarusian hackers who claim to have secured access to the passport data of millions of Belarusians, raise questions about how Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s opponents interpret the right to privacy.<\/p>\n
\nNow comes word that Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country. The Taliban might have awaited the twentieth anniversary of 9\/11 to take the capital city and make the humiliation of the United States even deeper. Maybe they have something special saved for that day. Even so, as of this morning, the humiliation appears to be complete and total. I yield the floor to News Items proprietor John Ellis in his post “Biden’s folly.”<\/p>\n
\nAfghanistan’s embattled president left the country Sunday, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\nU.S. forces were evacuating all staff from the American embassy via Kabul’s airport after Biden authorized the deployment of 5,000 troops to the country.<\/p>\n
\n“I don’t know what everybody thought would happen. It’s literally history repeating itself. . . . No foresight in what enemy was being fought. Conventional war doesn’t beat an insurgency, period.”<\/p>\n
\nThe utterly nauseating and unnecessary abandonment of Afghanistan to its fate recalls a similar humiliation at the hands of Islamist radicals in the Jimmy Carter administration. President Biden\u2019s profligate spending policies are unleashing inflation that is sparking voter distrust so noticeable that even NPR is sounding the alarm. He is begging OPEC to come up with more oil while interfering with U.S. production. He announced barely a month ago, with great confidence, “The Taliban is not the south \u2014 the North Vietnamese army. They’re not \u2014 they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the \u2014 of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”<\/p>\n
\nOur abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, and staked their lives on us is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided.<\/p>\n<\/a>National<\/h1>\n
\nHeadline of the week: “Census Bureau statisticians and outside experts are trying to unravel a mystery: Why were so many questions about households in the 2020 census left unanswered?”<\/p>\n
\nKaplan’s firm represented a top Cuomo aide named in the AG’s report as the one who led the effort against the accuser.<\/p>\n
\nIn a memo to the chancellor, Dean King wrote that the school should ‘revisit ‘diversity of viewpoint’ in [its] definition of diversity.’<\/p>\n
\nJeffrey Jack “Jeff” Gerla was a 47-year-old psychologist who had taught at Kilgore College and more recently worked as a mental health specialist at Rusk State Hospital, which is about 15 miles from where Jeff lived in a trailer behind his mother’s house in New Summerfield<\/p>\n
\nWhere would the United States be without California? There would be 40 million fewer people, that’s for sure. In fact, emptying the state of people might be a great idea. The natural beauty of the state \u2014 its majestic mountains, picturesque lakes, and raging rivers \u2014 is the envy of the lower 48. Only Alaska outdoes California in scenic wonders.<\/p>\n
\nPeople wrongly think of the animal-rights movement as a more energetic form of animal-welfare advocacy. It is not. Rather, animal-rights activists intend to eventually outlaw all ownership of animals, a project they recognize as multi-generational.<\/p>\n
\nOracle’s Larry Ellison is the biggest name in a group of major Republican donors sending big money to South Carolina’s Scott.<\/p>\n
\nThe lawsuit comes almost two years to the day that Epstein died in jail.<\/p>\n
\nThe Upper Midwest Law Center, on whose board I serve, got national and even international publicity when it announced a week ago that it was pursuing four cases that generally relate to Critical Race Theory, in both the public and private sectors. On Friday, UMLC filed a complaint against Independent School District 194, which covers Lakeville, Minnesota, and that district’s Superintendent of Schools.<\/p>\n
\nThe death of St. George Floyd has been the occasion of deep thoughts of all kinds. On the assumption that he is taking a typical cut of the action, I note that attorney Ben Crump has come to Minnesota and found his stays lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice. Now he turns his attention to new frontiers in linguistic sensitivity as he salutes abolition \u2014 abolition of references to the master bedroom in Minnesota real estate listings.<\/p>\n
\nApparently the walls have closed in sufficiently that even a mega-narcissist like Andrew Cuomo couldn’t escape.<\/p>\n
\nCuomo still thinks he did nothing wrong: “In my mind I’ve never crossed the line with anyone.”<\/p>\n
\nFor the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level.<\/p>\n
\nWe just got through yet another moral panic about a racist incident that didn\u2019t actually happen. Sports media were ablaze with claims that a fan in Denver was loudly yelling the n-word at Lewis Brinson of the Marlins as he batted; the leather-lunged fan’s voice was picked up on the national TV broadcast. (An ironic location to be held up as an icon of racism, given that MLB had chosen Denver to replace Atlanta as the host of this year’s All-Star Game in a different lie-based moral panic about voting laws in Georgia.) Unfortunately for the people who jumped all over the story with gleeful eagerness, it turned out that (1) the fan was yelling “Dinger,” the name of the Colorado Rockies mascot, and, for good measure, (2) Brinson actually never heard him anyway.<\/p>\n
\nThe secular Left wants to coerce doctors into performing abortions and transgender-transition interventions \u2014 even when doing so violates the doctors’ own religious beliefs. Toward that end, HHS passed a rule under Obamacare that punished refusal to perform abortions and transgender-transition interventions with fines and other penalties for “discrimination.”<\/p>\n
\nOne of the weirdest people to ever hold high office in the United States. Probably one of the worst too, although that competition is stiff. But weirdest? No question.<\/p>\n
\nIt is not surprising when a compound of moral arrogance and political authoritarianism \u2014 e.g., the culture of today’s academia \u2014 produces intolerance of intellectual diversity and disdain for the law. Nevertheless, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit was startled by the behavior of the University of Iowa: “We are hard-pressed to find a clearer example of viewpoint discrimination.”<\/p>\n
\nGov. Gavin Newsom will not block the release of a killer who served four decades in prison for the murder of a developmentally disabled Clovis man he buried alive, officials said Monday.<\/p>\n
\nHope. It’s not a word that young Virginia Republicans have gotten to use for most of their lives. In fact, for my good friends in the College Republican branches, its a word we’ve never really gotten to use. Most of us started to be involved, at earliest, in 2017 \u2013 the year Ralph Northam blew out Ed Gillespie and the party lost nearly all of it’s Northern Virginia-area delegate seats. In 2018, the party nominated Cory Stewart for the Senate election. Stewart, who ran on keeping Confederate monuments up, lost by 17 points. 2019 saw the party lose another six delegate seats and two in the state senate \u2013 that lost us the majority in both bodies. <\/p>\n
\nWhat Barack Obama’s birthday gala shares with a bash from the past<\/p>\n
\nHoly LGBTQ, Caped Crusader!!! Robin’s dropping big personal news in the latest installment of “Batman: Urban Legends” … he’s bisexual.<\/p>\n
\nHere’s the path that the scriptwriters would choose if we were living in a movie. First, New York trashes its hero governor after he turns out not to be a hero after all. Next comes California, which recalls Gavin Newsom and replaces him with a Republican. Soon after the recall, the 88-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein leaves office and a Republican is appointed in her place. This flips the balance of the Senate to 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans, thereby killing the Democrats’ absurd $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, stalling the Biden presidency completely until at least the midterms, and prompting a besieged Justice Breyer to relax into another four years on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
\nLooks like the walls really were closing in on Andrew Cuomo. Score one for Andy McCarthy.<\/p>\n
\nGavin Newsom must have gotten some really bad recall election poll numbers today (or he was shaken by Andrew Cuomo’s rapid fall to political disgrace), because he completely lost it in an interview with editorial board members of the McClatchy newspapers. Keep in mind as you take this in that McClatchy is a liberal newspaper chain, and yet Newsom still lashes out at their totally legitimate questions, and has the body language of a certain Navy ship captain obsessed with some missing strawberries. The only thing missing are some large-gauge ball bearings for him to roll around in one hand.<\/p>\n
\nHenry Kissinger, age 97, has written a new book. One of his two co-authors is former Google chief Eric Schmidt.<\/p>\n
\n“Clearly, you’ve made your point. You no longer value me or many other teachers you\u2019ve employed in this county.”<\/p>\n
\nLive by the ballot harvesting, die by the ballot harvesting: Democrats will mail ballots to the “unsophisticated” voters who most want Newsom gone.<\/p>\n