By James Jay Carafano The threat of sanctions is meant to deter a full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine. But history shows that sanctions are no more of a deterrent to Putin than a speed bump to a monster truck. …read more

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By Rand Paul Once again, we find ourselves in a situation in which we have a new COVID variant. Rather than making rational, scientific decisions, Dr. Fauci and the Biden administration have jumped to assume the worst, and have begun implementing restrictions with the ever-looming threat of mandates. …read more

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By Greg Gutfeld A biased writer at a biased paper commissioned a biased firm to study media bias, and surprise, he thinks media’s biased against Joe. How convenient. …read more

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By Tucker Carlson ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host examines the consequences of sparking a military confrontation with Russia. …read more

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By Katya Sedgwick

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, by Michael Shellenberger (Harper, 2021), 416 pages.

Michael’s Shellenberger’s San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities is both the most captivating and the most depressing book of 2021, a year ripe for depressing books. It’s the definitive account of the crisis of West Coast cities, a crisis that was decades in the making, with no end in sight.

The now normalized spectacle of syringes in the gutter, bodies across the sidewalk, and cat-size rats darting from one encampment to another fanning out through our cities is not, as progressive pundits and politicians assert, an expected manifestation of income inequality, but the civilization-destroying outcome of their own policies. It’s best exemplified by the dead end that is the normalization of recreational drug use, which left San Francisco with the 2021 record of two drug poisoning deaths every three days, and the highest rate of drug poisonings in the nation. Shellenberger, who once identified as an anarchist and supported the liberal agenda on drugs, has amassed all kinds of receipts to show why the San Francisco approach doesn’t work.

Contrary to the cherished progressive myth, Ronald Reagan did not create homelessness in America. He did not singlehandedly throw the mentally ill onto the streets, or defund the housing programs for the indigent. In reality, Shellenberger explains, the 40th president of the United States simply moved the funds from government-constructed properties into Section 8 vouchers that gave families the flexibility to choose their own dwellings. As for closing publicly operated mental health facilities, that was done in the context of the nationwide midcentury deinstitutionalization movement. Shellenberger spotlights the French postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault, whose 1961 work Madness and Civilization was one of the foundational texts of the movement, which saw psychiatric treatment as a form of social control and all but put an end to involuntary confinement of the mentally ill in the United States.

That the “homelessness” problem that California is facing today is much larger than merely untreated mental illness is obvious to anyone who still dares to walk in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The drug addiction component of the crisis is undeniable, and Shellenberger explains how and why the situation in the Democrat supermajority state deteriorated sharply after the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014. Prop 47 reduced criminal penalties across the board, including turning drug possession crimes into misdemeanors, punishable by only a fine. As a result, law enforcement no longer had a mechanism to force addicts into treatments.

The crisis was a long time coming, and there is a reason San Francisco was hit the hardest. Over the last half a century, the local enforcement of drug laws has been spotty, and the attitude towards substance abuse took the shape of enabling. If addicts themselves, Shellenberger observes, want tough love, or at least are honest about their own corrupt motives, local politicians and non-profits think of them as victims who deserve only sympathy. What the city offers to them is “harm reduction,” or attempts to …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Jim Risch This year has been a record-breaking one in many ways, and, according to Freedom House, the world is at a 15-year low for “Free countries” and a 15-year high of “Not Free countries.” …read more

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By Karol Markowicz It’s with some sadness and a lot of anger that I feel our family now needs to leave the city we’ve loved for so long. We’re going to Florida, a state we’ve come to regard as the beacon of freedom in this country. …read more

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By Rand Paul

Saudi Arabia’s air and naval blockade of Yemen is an abomination. For years now, ships that would otherwise carry food, fuel, and medicine to the country have been turned away by the Saudi-led coalition, depriving the Yemeni people of the necessities to sustain civilization. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in the Yemeni civil war is a chilling example of the cruelty of warfare by starvation. According to the United Nations, five million people are one step away from succumbing to famine and disease, and ten million more are right behind them.

But, this week, the Senate can start the process of ending this crisis by passing my legislation to cancel an American arms sale to Saudi Arabia that aids and abets the subjugation of the Yemeni people.

The children of Yemen who survive Saudi Arabia’s barbaric blockade will inevitably tell their sons and daughters of the horrors of their youth. And those sons and daughters will tell their sons and daughters. Through oral tradition, a thousand generations of Yemenis will know of the crown prince’s ruthlessness. And they will also know that it was the Americans that sold him the weapons to wage his murderous campaign.

The reports from Yemen describe a nightmare. The Washington Post reported of a three-year-old boy who could not walk or speak; the Post described his face as “skeletal” and arms and legs as “thin as twigs.” He weighed ten pounds, and his father said that he sometimes goes two days without eating because Saudi import restrictions have made food prohibitively expensive, as if mere sustenance was a luxury. The New York Times told the story of a mother who, after three days of failing to find a ride, carried her 8-month-old son while walking two hours to reach medics to treat acute malnutrition. Even after a week of treatment with enriched formula, the boy still lay motionless on his hospital bed.

Tens of thousands of children have already died from disease, malnutrition, or starvation. International aid agencies, who also have to fight the Saudi blockade to provide humanitarian assistance, put it succinctly: “the people of Yemen are not starving. They are being starved.”

The Saudi siege of Yemen is made possible because of American weaponry. The arsenal provided by the United States includes billions of dollars’ worth of military aircraft and thousands of air-to-ground munitions. Only weeks ago, the Biden administration approved a new $650 million sale of 280 advanced medium range air-to-air missiles and 596 missile launchers to the Saudis. As painful as it is to admit, the United States is an accessory to Saudi savagery.

President Biden says the latest sale is merely to help defend Saudi territorial integrity, but the commander-in-chief’s words do not match Saudi actions. According to William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy, “the air blockade is enforced by a threat to shoot …read more

Via:: American Conservative

By Rebecca Grant Here’s what Biden must understand. Putin’s tactics come straight from Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin who said in 1917: “Probe with a bayonet; if you meet steel, stop! If you meet mush, then push.” …read more

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By Walter R. Borneman The attack on the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, 80 years ago today, remains one of the most traumatic events in American history. America changed overnight. …read more

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