May 1, 2022 05:42 AM
(This post was last modified: May 1, 2022 07:33 PM by C C.)
(UK) Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish ‘broke law’ by watching porn in Commons
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/202...in-commons
Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, who resigned his seat on Saturday after admitting he had twice watched pornography in the House of Commons chamber, appeared to have committed a criminal offence which carried a maximum two-year prison sentence, Labour said.
The West now thinks Ukraine could prevail – but how would Putin react?
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/eu...04427.html
EXCERPTS: ‘The war in Ukraine is our war. It is everyone’s war... because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said last week. “We are doubling down. We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.”
With those words, Truss made it official. Britain may not be directly at war with Russia in Ukraine. But indirectly, it is most certainly in a Cold War, a proxy war. For the first time, the western alliance are publicly committed to Kyiv’s own war aims.
It is a dramatic shift. At the beginning of the war western governments were all but convinced Vladimir Putin would prevail. So little faith did they have in a Ukrainian victory that they pulled their embassies out and refused to send heavy weapons that might fall into Russian hands.
The change of course crystallised in a series of announcements this week. On Wednesday, Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, convened a meeting of counterparts from more than 40 nations to cement an alliance to provide Ukraine with military support, telling reporters that “Ukraine can win”.
[...] If Vladimir Putin formally declares war — a step many expect on May 9 — he could raise conscripts from a population three times the size of Ukraine’s. Even with its new kit, a Ukrainian counter offensive to retake the swathes of Kherson, Zaporizhya, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast would be a tall order.
“The odds are we are not heading for a situation in which either Russia or Ukraine can deliver a knockout blow. So the question is where the lines are: will it freeze or not?” said Galeotti.
The second route to the Truss version of victory is a combination of military and economic attrition that becomes unbearable for Russia. “That is about Russia’s capability to re-arm under sanctions. But it is also to lead to this revolution in the Russian elite’s mindset — that they cannot wage a war against the united West. They have never waged a war against a united West that they have won,” said Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House.
How long it will take for that realisation to dawn in the Kremlin, no one knows. Some western officials speak in terms of years not months. And time can work for both sides. While the West hopes to grind down Russia economically, the Kremlin will be hoping to hold out until cracks appear in the western alliance... (MORE - missing details)
The Democrats have become the party of miserable, whiny grumps
https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/the-democr...d-sulking/
INTRO: When Elon Musk tweeted on Friday, “The far left hates everyone, themselves included!” the only thing he got wrong was his use of the word “far.”
The hatred, anger and resentment of liberals ["leftangelicals" or Neo-Prude Leftism] is not exclusive to the extreme Democrat. It’s now the entire party.
When was the last time anyone encountered a happy Democrat? They don’t exist. They’re perpetually miserable, annoyed that normal people have moved on from COVID, offended that anyone objects to public schools teaching 7-year-olds about sexual identity, and frustrated that their fetish with “critical race theory” (also known as “how to properly hate whites!”) isn’t as widely shared as they thought... (MORE - details)
Minorities are finding a new political home with the Republican Party
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/347...can-party/
INTRO: This week on my podcast “Real America,” I sat down with Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) and Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), the first two Republican Korean American women to serve in Congress, to discuss how Democrats are leaving Asian Americans behind.
On the eve of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Republican National Committee is highlighting our efforts to reach communities Democrats take for granted. As Democrats run further left, their radical agenda has become out of step with voters. Americans of all backgrounds are discovering that there’s never been a better - or more important - time to vote Republican.
The GOP has been making inroads into the Asian American community for years. Under the Trump administration, Republicans saw a 7 percent gain with Asian Americans from 2016 to 2020. The shift was even greater among Vietnamese Americans, who experienced a 14 percent shift toward Republican candidates. And if that news wasn’t bad enough for Democrats, 43 percent of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community see race relations “getting worse” under Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, the RNC is building relationships with Asian Americans by opening Asian Pacific American community centers in California, Georgia, Texas and a brand new one in Nevada, with more to come. These grassroots, local offices are part of how we’re building relationships with Asian Americans and taking our message of law and order, educational opportunity, and economic growth to new voters.
Asian Americans aren’t the only community where the RNC is making inroads. While Democrats push socialism, radical abortion policies and refer to them as “Latinx,” Hispanic Americans are concerned about preserving freedoms, raising strong families and putting food on the table. It’s no wonder a recent Quinnipiac poll found that Biden’s approval rating with Hispanic voters was lower than any other racial or ethnic group: just 12 percent say they “approve strongly” of his time in office.
In fact, polls consistently show Hispanics are moving away from the Democratic Party... (MORE - details)
Americans believe nothing is getting better. Biden feeds that disillusionment
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...lusionment
EXCERPTS: But now things have stalled, and Biden seems intent on accelerating – rather than combating – a rising tide of disillusionment.
Tossing the Republican party a lifeline, he has reverted to his familiar formula:he promises big changes that could help the working class – and then prevents those changes from happening.
He speechifies about the need to address crises he then makes worse.
He blames Congress for gridlock but will not pressure lawmakers or use his executive authority to do things.
He promises policy reforms that his own agencies decline to implement.
The public seems to sense the gaslighting: Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting and anti-government sentiment has spiked as his strategy Joker-pills the country.
As his poll numbers crater, Biden appears to be offering no course correction, and he still hasn’t signed a stack of executive orders on matters ranging from debt cancellation to drug pricing. Caught between the electorate and Democrats’ campaign sponsors, he appears to have decided that he cannot – or does not want to – stop the spread of the Joker pill. So he is now just mainlining its active ingredients into America’s veins with bold promises and even bolder betrayals.
Consider a brief list:
Biden promised a $15 minimum wage, and then he and his party promptly abandoned that initiative.
Biden pledged to halt drilling on federal land and spent the first year of his presidency promising climate action – all while he outpaces Donald Trump’s drill-baby-drill initiatives and deploys his spokespeople to brag about flooding the world with fossil fuels amid the ecological emergency. He has also been using his executive authority to ramp up methane-emitting natural gas exports.
Biden promised an “immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000 of federal student loan debt” – which he has the executive authority to do at any moment. But he’s been refusing to do it and has been trying to overturn bankruptcy court victories for the most beleaguered debtors.
Biden pledged to protect traditional Medicare and “give Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option”. Then he never again mentioned the public option when he became president. Instead, he is helping his healthcare industry donors further privatize Medicare and reap even more subsidies as insurers reduce coverage, rake in record profits and jack up premiums.
Biden continues to insist he wants to lower the predatory cost of medicine and distribute vaccine recipes to halt the global spread of Covid. At the same time, he has refused to invoke his executive authority to reduce the price of medicines that were developed with public funding – he has effectively abandoned his Covid vaccine pledge, and he’s intervening in a primary to endorse a Democratic lawmaker who gutted his own drug pricing bill.
Biden portrays himself as a union supporter and promised to “ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns”. Yet he abandoned his campaign pledge to rein in union-busting federal contractors, he has not implemented his own labor taskforce’s weak recommendations, and his administration gave Amazon a $10bn contract while the company fought labor organizers.
If this pile of Joker pills wasn’t poisonous enough, down-ballot Democrats have mimicked the behavior... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/202...in-commons
Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, who resigned his seat on Saturday after admitting he had twice watched pornography in the House of Commons chamber, appeared to have committed a criminal offence which carried a maximum two-year prison sentence, Labour said.
The West now thinks Ukraine could prevail – but how would Putin react?
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/eu...04427.html
EXCERPTS: ‘The war in Ukraine is our war. It is everyone’s war... because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said last week. “We are doubling down. We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.”
With those words, Truss made it official. Britain may not be directly at war with Russia in Ukraine. But indirectly, it is most certainly in a Cold War, a proxy war. For the first time, the western alliance are publicly committed to Kyiv’s own war aims.
It is a dramatic shift. At the beginning of the war western governments were all but convinced Vladimir Putin would prevail. So little faith did they have in a Ukrainian victory that they pulled their embassies out and refused to send heavy weapons that might fall into Russian hands.
The change of course crystallised in a series of announcements this week. On Wednesday, Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, convened a meeting of counterparts from more than 40 nations to cement an alliance to provide Ukraine with military support, telling reporters that “Ukraine can win”.
[...] If Vladimir Putin formally declares war — a step many expect on May 9 — he could raise conscripts from a population three times the size of Ukraine’s. Even with its new kit, a Ukrainian counter offensive to retake the swathes of Kherson, Zaporizhya, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast would be a tall order.
“The odds are we are not heading for a situation in which either Russia or Ukraine can deliver a knockout blow. So the question is where the lines are: will it freeze or not?” said Galeotti.
The second route to the Truss version of victory is a combination of military and economic attrition that becomes unbearable for Russia. “That is about Russia’s capability to re-arm under sanctions. But it is also to lead to this revolution in the Russian elite’s mindset — that they cannot wage a war against the united West. They have never waged a war against a united West that they have won,” said Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House.
How long it will take for that realisation to dawn in the Kremlin, no one knows. Some western officials speak in terms of years not months. And time can work for both sides. While the West hopes to grind down Russia economically, the Kremlin will be hoping to hold out until cracks appear in the western alliance... (MORE - missing details)
The Democrats have become the party of miserable, whiny grumps
https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/the-democr...d-sulking/
INTRO: When Elon Musk tweeted on Friday, “The far left hates everyone, themselves included!” the only thing he got wrong was his use of the word “far.”
The hatred, anger and resentment of liberals ["leftangelicals" or Neo-Prude Leftism] is not exclusive to the extreme Democrat. It’s now the entire party.
When was the last time anyone encountered a happy Democrat? They don’t exist. They’re perpetually miserable, annoyed that normal people have moved on from COVID, offended that anyone objects to public schools teaching 7-year-olds about sexual identity, and frustrated that their fetish with “critical race theory” (also known as “how to properly hate whites!”) isn’t as widely shared as they thought... (MORE - details)
Minorities are finding a new political home with the Republican Party
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/347...can-party/
INTRO: This week on my podcast “Real America,” I sat down with Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) and Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), the first two Republican Korean American women to serve in Congress, to discuss how Democrats are leaving Asian Americans behind.
On the eve of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Republican National Committee is highlighting our efforts to reach communities Democrats take for granted. As Democrats run further left, their radical agenda has become out of step with voters. Americans of all backgrounds are discovering that there’s never been a better - or more important - time to vote Republican.
The GOP has been making inroads into the Asian American community for years. Under the Trump administration, Republicans saw a 7 percent gain with Asian Americans from 2016 to 2020. The shift was even greater among Vietnamese Americans, who experienced a 14 percent shift toward Republican candidates. And if that news wasn’t bad enough for Democrats, 43 percent of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community see race relations “getting worse” under Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, the RNC is building relationships with Asian Americans by opening Asian Pacific American community centers in California, Georgia, Texas and a brand new one in Nevada, with more to come. These grassroots, local offices are part of how we’re building relationships with Asian Americans and taking our message of law and order, educational opportunity, and economic growth to new voters.
Asian Americans aren’t the only community where the RNC is making inroads. While Democrats push socialism, radical abortion policies and refer to them as “Latinx,” Hispanic Americans are concerned about preserving freedoms, raising strong families and putting food on the table. It’s no wonder a recent Quinnipiac poll found that Biden’s approval rating with Hispanic voters was lower than any other racial or ethnic group: just 12 percent say they “approve strongly” of his time in office.
In fact, polls consistently show Hispanics are moving away from the Democratic Party... (MORE - details)
Americans believe nothing is getting better. Biden feeds that disillusionment
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...lusionment
EXCERPTS: But now things have stalled, and Biden seems intent on accelerating – rather than combating – a rising tide of disillusionment.
Tossing the Republican party a lifeline, he has reverted to his familiar formula:he promises big changes that could help the working class – and then prevents those changes from happening.
He speechifies about the need to address crises he then makes worse.
He blames Congress for gridlock but will not pressure lawmakers or use his executive authority to do things.
He promises policy reforms that his own agencies decline to implement.
The public seems to sense the gaslighting: Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting and anti-government sentiment has spiked as his strategy Joker-pills the country.
As his poll numbers crater, Biden appears to be offering no course correction, and he still hasn’t signed a stack of executive orders on matters ranging from debt cancellation to drug pricing. Caught between the electorate and Democrats’ campaign sponsors, he appears to have decided that he cannot – or does not want to – stop the spread of the Joker pill. So he is now just mainlining its active ingredients into America’s veins with bold promises and even bolder betrayals.
Consider a brief list:
Biden promised a $15 minimum wage, and then he and his party promptly abandoned that initiative.
Biden pledged to halt drilling on federal land and spent the first year of his presidency promising climate action – all while he outpaces Donald Trump’s drill-baby-drill initiatives and deploys his spokespeople to brag about flooding the world with fossil fuels amid the ecological emergency. He has also been using his executive authority to ramp up methane-emitting natural gas exports.
Biden promised an “immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000 of federal student loan debt” – which he has the executive authority to do at any moment. But he’s been refusing to do it and has been trying to overturn bankruptcy court victories for the most beleaguered debtors.
Biden pledged to protect traditional Medicare and “give Americans a new choice, a public health insurance option”. Then he never again mentioned the public option when he became president. Instead, he is helping his healthcare industry donors further privatize Medicare and reap even more subsidies as insurers reduce coverage, rake in record profits and jack up premiums.
Biden continues to insist he wants to lower the predatory cost of medicine and distribute vaccine recipes to halt the global spread of Covid. At the same time, he has refused to invoke his executive authority to reduce the price of medicines that were developed with public funding – he has effectively abandoned his Covid vaccine pledge, and he’s intervening in a primary to endorse a Democratic lawmaker who gutted his own drug pricing bill.
Biden portrays himself as a union supporter and promised to “ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns”. Yet he abandoned his campaign pledge to rein in union-busting federal contractors, he has not implemented his own labor taskforce’s weak recommendations, and his administration gave Amazon a $10bn contract while the company fought labor organizers.
If this pile of Joker pills wasn’t poisonous enough, down-ballot Democrats have mimicked the behavior... (MORE - missing details)