An attempt to counter US dominance: Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet to ramp up their ‘no limits’ friendship

 

MSN   "This was the first in-person meeting between the two world leaders since the start of the Ukraine war. It is also the return of China’s Xi to the world stage with his first trip abroad since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic almost three years ago.

An attempt to counter US dominance

"The meeting was largely regarded as an attempt to ramp up their ‘no limits’ friendship and deepen economic ties, especially in the realm of energy by announcing new gas pipelines.

"It was also an opportunity for the two to discuss prevalent security issues and counter the U.S. dominance in the world, as President Putin said 'U.S. attempts to create a unipolar world would fail.'

"Seven months into the Ukraine war, Russia’s economy is battered by the multitude of sanctions imposed by the West. Reports suggest that Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen by 4% in the second quarter. Conversely, the growth of the Chinese economy has slowed down over this period, most markedly because of its ‘zero COVID’ policy that is continuing to impose strict lockdown mandates and border controls.

"However, analysts suggest that this is not a meeting of two equals. The latter is a superpower with the world’s fastest-growing economy, while the former is a dwindling superpower that is fighting a draining war in Ukraine and trying to build new export markets away from the West.". . .

Obama’s Doctor Exposes Joe Biden’s Mental Problems

 The Beltway Report  "Do you remember when the Democrats insisted President Trump was not right in the head and he took a cognitive test to prove them wrong? Now, Obama’s former doctor and current member of the House of Representatives, Ronny Jackson says that Biden needs to take the same test. He sent a letter that was co-signed by over a dozen members of congress, demands that he take the test.

"I wonder how the Democrats will react to that demand. Will they shrug it off or will they bribe a doctor to fake the test?  One thing we do know for sure, his handlers will never allow him to be honestly tested. They currently run the country because they control Biden and they won’t want to give that up. They are the leaders of the free world.

"The letter states:

"The American people should have absolute confidence in their President. They deserve to know that he or she can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander in Chief. They deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader. “

“To achieve this, we urge you to submit to a cognitive test immediately. We implore you to then publish the test results, so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President, and to set an example for all Presidents to follow going forward.”

"The letter documents the reason he needs to take the test:

Previously, while on the campaign trail, you agreed to a similar assessment. At first, you “grew testy” and questioned “why the hell would I take a test,” according to an AP report. Later, you relented and said you were “very willing to let the American public judge my physical, mental – my physical, as well as my mental fitness and to, you know, to make a judgment about who I am.”. . .

After Nancy Pelosi: Now What?

Christopher Chantrill  "I don't know about you, but I just feel relieved that Nancy Pelosi has stepped down from leadership of the House Democrats.

But is it true that "Nancy Pelosi Lacked the Most Basic Skill of Great Legislators"? Or that "Nancy Pelosi will rightfully go down as one of the greatest speakers in the history of the U.S. House"?

"The answer to both questions is, of course: Yes.

"Who cares if Nancy Pelosi was not a great legislator? She did not become House Speaker to craft great legislation. She was there to ram through big government spending bills that distributed loot and plunder to Democrat voters and powerful interests and approved activists.

"Her crowning achievement, if you will, was to ram through ObamaCare, forcing moderate Democrats to vote for it, even though many of them lost their seats in the 2010 midterms. And Republicans don't dare repeal it.

"My only question is whether Nancy Pelosi understands this. Does she know that all she ever did was 1) insult Republicans as gun nuts wanting to rob senior citizens of their Social Security and Medicare benefits, and 2) ram through spending bills to distribute loot and plunder to her supporters?

"But then, I doubt whether Michael Corleone ever worried that being a mafia crime boss was not really the highest and best thing an American could be.". . .

Have the Democrats Destroyed Our Election System?

 D. Parker  "Is there any point in voting if we can’t trust the system -- or whether the liberty-denier Democrats will abide by the rule of law or basic decency?

"Do you get the feeling that you’ve been had?

"That terrible sick-in-your-stomach sensation when scam artists laugh and you realize they’ve done it again?  When all of our hopes for the conservation of liberty have been destroyed by the same type of schemes that we all should have seen coming a mile away?

"How does a party trying to destroy our constitutional republic for two years with poll after poll screaming that we are on the wrong track avoid a humiliating defeat at the ballot box?

"How does a party steeped in the worst aspects of fascism and socialism in a collectivist witch’s brew even have a chance after everyone has seen what they are at their core?

"What did they offer?  More of the same only worse, and we were supposed to believe Gen Z and everyone else couldn’t wait to get all their ballots in?

"You get the feeling that the illegitimate Left is verging between trying to hide their malicious merriment at ‘winning’ again and coming out with a ‘what are you going to do about it’ moment.

"The liberty deniers of ‘the nation’ seems to be on the verge of the latter with a screed titled: “Democrats, Time to Go Big.”  Starting out with the fact that even they can’t believe they did so well:". . .

Democrats have made America a role model for silliness.

Democrat government officials

Brazil’s Bolsonaro says that Brazil’s election stolen ‘pretty much the same way’ as America’s [video in English]

Demonization and confiscation of the assets of regime opponents are hallmarks of totalitarian regimes, even when given a patina of legality through executive orders and the like.

In the United States, hundreds of political prisoners languish in DC jails, with 20 months of pretrial confinement (many in solitary), an outrageous abuse of the judicial system that has drawn almost no protest from the powers that be in the Republican Party, fearful, evidently, of being tarred with the brush of an “insurrection” that was the first in history to be unarmed and ushered into the seat of Congress by guards holding open the doors.

What Happened To Campus?

 Legal Insurrection

Listen to me: “I’m not optimistic at all that campuses can be reformed. They certainly cannot be reformed from within…Academia is gone. It is a monoculture. It is a hermetically sealed bubble.”

"On November 9, I appeared on the Merion West podcast with Erich Prince.

The topic was What Happened to Campus?

On November 9th, the day after the 2022 midterm elections were held, William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and the founder of the blog Legal Insurrection, joined Merion West‘s Erich Prince to reflect on the election results and to discuss the state of free expression on college campuses. In addition to overseeing Legal Insurrection, Jacobson recently spearheaded the creation of Critical Race Training in Education, which aims to track the proliferation of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and the extent to which they are manifesting in elite private schools, in higher education, in medical schools, and in military schools. During their conversation, Jacobson narrates some of his own experiences witnessing the impact of these initiatives at Cornell University, the role that financial incentives and accreditation bodies play in agitating for their further adoption, and whether or not he is optimistic that things, at this juncture, could still be reversed.". . .

Comment to this post:   Millenials are beyond stupid. So far gone I doubt we’ll ever see a recovery for this country.

Just had a text spat with one over global warming. As I was explaining the parts of the atmosphere and beating him over the head, he pulls out the qanon card. I never mentioned q and actually know little about it.

Kid just got a new job last year. He’s working “multi media” for some local political electees.

Although I managed to refrain from saying it I really wanted to call the kid the head video propagandist for his boss. No reason for some city to have someone videoing political speeches and ribbon cuttings.

Male Who Got Trounced on Boys' Cross Country Team Switches to Girls' Team, Smokes the Competition

The Western Journal

"The story has become all too familiar: A mediocre male athlete claims he is female, joins the women’s team and all of a sudden dominates his opponents.

"That story is playing out once again, this time in Seattle, where runner Aspen Hoffman is breaking records on a high school cross country team.

"Hoffman, a sophomore, ran on the school’s boys’ team in 2021, never cracking the top 50 in the 5,000 meters.

"But this year, Hoffman announced that he is transgender and joined the girls’ team, according to Libs of TikTok. And suddenly he is at the top of the standings.

"Hoffman went from 72nd place in the boys’ conference finals last year to first place in the girls’ competition this year. He then finished second at the district meet, helping his team qualify for the state championships

"Libs of TikTok noted that Hoffman’s 5,000-meter time would only have been good for 48th place in the boys’ division."

EXCLUSIVE: Biological male who was 72nd place on boys’ track team wins 1st place on girls’ track team in a Seattle High School competition. https://t.co/4qX1KC5VGg

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2022

Biden’s White House literally could not be ‘more political’

He was finally their guy. Gone was the empathy guy. Gone was the unity guy. Gone was the moderate guy. Be mean, Joe. Get them, Joe. Get tough, Joe. Tell them their participation in democracy is a threat to … democracy! 

 NY Post  "Get ready, America: The Biden administration, emboldened by the Democrats’ midterm over-performance, is doubling down on its disastrous strategy to date. Per insiders speaking to Axios, Biden plans to remake “the White House into a more political operation.”

"Impossible! Biden’s already run the most political White House in recent memory, where the larger public good is brutally ignored in favor of the immediate interests of the president and his party. 

"Look at his disastrous border policy. It’s caused untold human misery and has now spread to cities — like New York — nowhere near the southern border, all while pouring money into the pockets of fentanyl-peddling cartels and human traffickers. 

"But it made his base of rich blue-staters happy because it ups the supply of cheap labor on which their lifestyles depend and lets them playact as humanitarians. 

"Or his student-loan abomination. He knew he lacked the authority to unilaterally forgive student debt (with money extracted from the less well-off); Biden and Nancy Pelosi both said as much. But the promise looked likely to help Dems in the midterms, so he “did” it anyway — timing it so the courts wouldn’t consider it before the election.  

"Now the order’s been struck down twice in court, as the president knew it would be. 

"Don’t forget his morally odious attorney general’s crusade against dissenting parents at woke school-board meetings. Merrick Garland wanted to bring the FBI to bear against members of the public objecting to their kids’ indoctrination into gender ideology and CRT.

"For Biden, politics always comes first. Don’t believe us? Look at the carnage he’s caused.". . . 

CBS 'Left' Twitter to Virtue Signal; Now They've Truly Beclowned Themselves by Returning

They may have thought they were going to jump on board a bandwagon to isolate Musk and Twitter, but other media organizations weren’t jumping ship with them. They all need to be on Twitter because there’s no real replacement.

RedState;  "We reported on CBS’s announcement on Friday that they would be “pausing” their stations’ activity on Twitter because of the “uncertainty” on the platform.

"The only “uncertainty” was from leftists flipping out about free speech and melting down about Twitter firing people. But out of an “abundance of caution,” CBS said they were stopping posting on the site.

"What would happen if they posted? Would they go up in flames? Turn into unicorns? Trip over the truth? Oh, no, they wouldn’t recognize that if they tripped over it. They got ratioed for their silliness, and they look even more biased with their actions. But the funny part is: who would truly miss them, with such a virtue-signaling move? No one pays much attention to them, and they need Twitter far more than Twitter needs them.

"But then, when the sun rose Sunday morning, stunningly, Twitter was still here–even if some on the left had run screaming off the platform. So much for the predictions of premature death from the doomsayers on the left.

"CBS woke up this morning with egg on their face. They realized that they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face with that action. So voila, they’re back!". . .

Newt Gingrich: Nancy Pelosi 'set the precedent' for top Dems to be booted from committees

 Fox News

McCarthy has expressed concern with Schiff, Omar and Swalwell

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., would be right to remove Democrats Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from their committee assignments. McCarthy said Sunday he would take the action when he becomes speaker of the GOP-controlled House.

"NEWT GINGRICH: I think Nancy Pelosi set the precedent. She did something that had never been done before and reached into the minority party to decide who could and could not serve on some committees. I think Kevin McCarthy is following her precedent. So the Democrats have nothing to complain about because they started this dance and frankly, the three people he's picked so totally deserve to be kicked off committees. 

"It's unbelievable. Adam Schiff made a career out of lying to the American people while serving as chairman of the Intelligence Committee without any question, just plain, flat-out lying. Swalwell has had a relationship with a Chinese communist. That's unimaginable for somebody who's going to have security clearance. And of course, Omar is a viciously anti-Israel, antisemitic orator who has consistently violated the norms of civilized behavior. So I think those are three pretty good targets. And I commend Speaker-designate McCarthy for taking them head-on.". . . 

McCarthy: Omar, Swalwell, and Schiff to Lose Committee Assignments – PJ Media

The Climate Cons

Social media censors are likely to judge these truths, just a few of many, as hate speech. And maybe they’d be right. We hate that the lie has become the truth in the West, regarding the climate and so much more. It’s gone on for far too long. The game needs to end.

Issues & Insights   "The world’s climate criminals aren’t the energy companies selling the fossil fuels needed to power a modern economy, nor those that make the products that burn those fuels. The real offenders are the global warming alarmists who have once again revealed what the game is, and it has nothing to do with protecting the environment.

This year’s United Nations climate hootenanny, the 27th Congress of Parties, produced an agreement in which rich nations will pay reparations to poorer ones for the damage that their energy consumption has supposedly caused. Our own country, at the insistence of its increasingly impaired, ever-pandering-to-eco-cranks president, will even participate in the scam. The amount is not much relative to our economy – $1 billion – but it sets a precedent and tells the world that we’re willing dupes.". . .

. . .There is zero evidence that this is the case, yet we are inundated daily, if not hourly, by irresponsible speculation, wild claims, breathless warnings. It’s disinformation in its purist form. Reliable facts, though, do exist, and they tell a much different story:

• “Contrary to the notion that global warming is causing some massive disappearance of snow, data show that wintertime Northern Hemisphere snow cover has been increasing since the 1960s.” — Steve Milloy, Junk Science
• The U.N.’s “​​1990 predictions were even worse than we thought.” ​​— Christopher Monckton, policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Watts Up With That
• “​​Fifty-year (1973-2022) summer (June/July/August) temperature trends for the contiguous 48 U.S. states from 36 CMIP-6 climate model experiments average nearly twice the warming rate as observed by the NOAA climate division dataset.” — Roy Spencer, climate researcher, University of Alabama in Huntsville.
• “​​The linear warming trend since January 1979 now stands at +0.13 C/decade.” — Spencer
• “We are fixated on the minutiae of greenhouse gas emissions levels and the abstract and impossible problem of constraining atmospheric CO2 concentration – while ignoring natural climate variability and drastically simplifying the human side.” — Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
• “Data from the United States government and international sources show the frequency of hurricanes has slightly declined in recent years, and they have not become more severe. Data also shows wildfires have decreased over the past century. Instances of extreme drought and tornadoes also remained unchanged or slightly declined.” — Linnea Luekin, Heartland Institute
• “Extreme temperatures have not increased. In the U.S. where we have the best data, heat waves have declined in frequency and intensity over the past 100 years, per the most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment.” — Milloy

An Irreligious Culture of Virtue Signaling Without Virtue

 For decades, America’s “adults” have denigrated the teachings of traditional morality and religion, and now the costs of that heedless repudiation are coming due.

The American Spectator

The costs of this moral fraudulence, evident in the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal, are coming due.

"In traditional cultures, elders feel a duty to introduce the young to an education in virtue. In nontraditional modern cultures, adults feel no such duty. They expose children to vice — look at all the moral rot in public schools across the country in which teachers, among other practices, dispense condoms to students and encourage them to mutilate themselves in the name of “gender identity” — and they routinely replace virtuous education with virtue-signaling propaganda.

"The graduates of this sham education know nothing about the Ten Commandments — public school principals live in dread fear of ACLU lawsuits against even the slightest educational nods to theism — but these students know much about environmentalism, feminism, gender politics, racial politics, and the sexual revolution. The worst sins, according to this warped education, do not entail violating the teachings of Christianity but contradicting the supposedly proper attitudes the ruling class expects the citizenry to hold. No public school principal would dare condemn a high schooler for getting an abortion or engaging in premarital sex, but many principals wouldn’t hesitate to condemn students for donning Trump-related attire or participating in high-profile conservative marches and protests.

"Out of this godless culture of virtue signaling without virtue, which pervades high schools and colleges, has come an astonishing generation of snots and miscreants, long on progressive conceits but short on basic decency. The creepy Sam Bankman-Fried is a poster boy for this culture. He is the crooked founder of FTX, a now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange that he formed in his 20s. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried practiced virtue signaling but not virtue. It emerged recently that he secretly shuffled billions of dollars from his customers to his trading firm.

"Before bilking his clients at FTX, Bankman-Fried spent time in Berkeley, California, working at an outfit called the “Centre for Effective Altruism.” He was its development director. There and at MIT he apparently learned that the key to success in liberal America is not ethics but projecting views and attitudes pleasing to the elite. . . ."

Trump Vows to ‘Abolish’ Every Biden COVID Mandate, Rehire Every Patriot Fired from Military with Back Pay

 Breitbart

"Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed that his administration would root “Biden’s radical left ideology out of our military” and “abolish” every coronavirus mandate, rehiring members of the military who lost their jobs due to the rules.

“ 'As Commander in Chief, I will get Biden’s radical left ideology out of our military,” Trump said during his 2024 announcement speech Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago, where he unveiled his “National Greatness Agenda.”

“ 'And I did. I did, and in the first day they put it back. They signed the executive order and they put it back. It was gone,” Trump continued, vowing to “abolish every Biden COVID mandate and rehire every patriot who was fired from our military with an apology and full back pay.”