If you look up “failure” in the dictionary, it’s probably only a matter of time until you start seeing images of Katie Hobbs’ time as Governor of Arizona. Hobbs kicked off her reign back in January and immediately got off to a rocky start. After being in office for just over a month, Hobbs had her inauguration fund called into question, had her pick to lead the Arizona Democratic Party rejected, and was booed at the 16th Hole of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
If that wasn’t enough, Hobbs’ nominations for agency directors have been a complete disaster. Her pick to lead the Department of Health Services, Dr. Theresa Cullen, was rejected for her COVID imperialism. Her nominee for Housing Director was rejected due to a history of plagiarism. And she was forced to withdraw her nominee for Arizona Registrar of Contractors, former Democratic State Senator Martín Quezada, over his alliance with antisemitic extremism. It’s no wonder why Hobbs was listed as one of the least popular governors in the nation.
That’s probably why Hobbs is willing to do anything she can to get some good publicity, but her latest stunt was another misfire…and broke the law…
It seems that any meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping inevitably presents another opportunity to render the U.S. increasingly reliant on China for its energy security.
This week’s meetings at the APEC conference in a suddenly cleaned-up San Francisco were no exception.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the bilateral meetings between the U.S. and China was the looming presence of John Kerry at the table. Kerry serves as Biden’s “climate envoy,” a made-up job that is not even a confirmed position and does not merit a seat at such meetings. But there he was, making sure the President and other U.S. officials toe the line on climate commitments.
Fox News reports that Kerry’s efforts resulted in more security compromising fruit, as State Department officials agreed with their Chinese counterparts to triple down on commitments to further inhibit American energy and national security in the name of climate change. The two governments agreed to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” with renewables and electric vehicles in the coming years, a pledge that China has already undermined with its implementation of a new round of subsidies for the acceleration of its already-massive expansion of coal-fired power plants in the coming years.
It is the sort of deal China has routinely violated in recent years as it continues to prioritize its own energy security at the expense of stated climate goals. It is also the sort of deal that Kerry, Biden and other Democrats have systematically used over recent decades to render the U.S. increasingly reliant on China for its own energy future.
“The agreement speaks heavily about advancing — doubling down and tripling down on renewables, wind and solar. The majority of them are made in China,” Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, told Fox News Digital. “It is basically guaranteeing China decades of wealth, guaranteeing America is going to buy their products.”
Turner isn’t wrong, and the effects on climate change from the latest Kerry-led deal will be negligible, if not actually negative given China’s far lower environmental regulations and standards. Even worse, China’s control of the supply chains for most of the parts and metals that go into the making and deployment of renewables and EVs leaves the U.S. and other western nations with a steadily diminishing sphere of geopolitical leverage.
But Americans did receive a bit of positive news in the green energy realm this past week from a seemingly unlikely source: Oil major ExxonMobil. The biggest U.S.-based oil company announced the kickoff of a new project to produce lithium from a deep underground saltwater formation in southern Arkansas called the Smackover.
Somewhat ironically, ExxonMobil will deploy standard oil and gas drilling, production and reinjection technologies and processes to produce, extract and process the lithium. If successful, the project will turn America’s biggest major oil company into one of the country’s biggest lithium companies, too.
This is probably not exactly the model Biden’s regulators, many of whom are alumni of leftist anti-fossil fuel lobby groups, envisioned when they began launching their myriad efforts to subsidize and regulate this artificial energy transition into being, but they should be glad to take the help where they can get it.
Given that the ExxonMobil project will qualify for the tax incentives contained in the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden officials will even be able to point to it as a success story related to that costly legislation.
Given that the administration’s own efforts to source domestic supplies of critical energy metals and free their supply chains from Chinese dominance have to this point borne little fruit, the project being mounted by ExxonMobil amounts to a great leap forward.
What it all demonstrates is that all the handshake deals between government Mandarins like Kerry in the world cannot match the power of innovation and ingenuity from America’s private sector. It also demonstrates the absolute necessity of maintaining a healthy and robust domestic oil and gas industry, without which none of this is remotely possible.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Democrats claim election fraud is a myth. But videos don’t lie.
Roll the tapes:
On Nov. 1, Connecticut Judge William Clark overturned the results of the Bridgeport mayoral primary, calling video evidence of potential fraud “shocking.” Wanda Geter-Pataky, the vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee, appears to have been caught on video stuffing handfuls of ballots into a drop box outside City Hall.
On Oct. 25, in Paterson, New Jersey, the sitting president of the City Council, Alex Mendez, was charged with personally collecting large numbers of mail-in ballots in his district, destroying ballots that did not favor him and replacing them with ballots that falsely chose him. New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin states that Mendez “personally observed from his wife’s vehicle as a large, heavy bag, completely filled with ballots, was emptied into the Haledon postal box prior to the election.”
On Nov. 2, in Springfield, Massachusetts, mayoral candidate Justin Hurst was nailed by city election officials for allegedly buying votes during early voting. Videotape shows individuals being dropped off in black Suburbans and Expeditions, and entering City Hall to vote. When they exited, a man “takes out what appears to be a large bundle of cash” and peels off a bill for each individual, according to an affidavit by election commissioner Gladys Oyola-Lopez.
In one week, election fraudsters were busted in three major Northeastern cities.
Leftist organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters claim voter fraud is a “phantom” and “extremely rare.” Don’t buy it. The evidence is all around us.
Cheating is a cakewalk because of accommodations pushed by Democrats, including universal mail-in voting and unmanned drop boxes.
Now is the time to scrutinize the 2023 races and plug the obvious gaps. Cheating should not determine the outcome in the highly consequential 2024 national election.
In Bridgeport’s 2023 mayoral primary, Democratic candidate John Gomes was ahead, until he got crushed late in the process when absentee votes favoring incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim were counted.
One Bridgeport poll described the use of absentee ballots there as “an art form.” That “art form” may partially explain how Ganim, who was Bridgeport’s mayor from 1991 to 2003 — before serving seven years in federal prison for racketeering, extortion, filing false tax returns, and other crimes — was able to stage a comeback upon his release from prison and win election in 2015 and 2019.
In Connecticut, Democrats are singing one song: Fraud is “unique to Bridgeport” and isn’t a problem elsewhere. Wrong.
Last year, John Mallozzi, then chairman of the Democratic Party in Stamford, was convicted of forgery and making false statements related to absentee ballots. His ruse was uncovered when a voter named on a fraudulent absentee ballot actually showed up at the polls.
Connecticut Republican legislators are pushing to improve voting security. Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican, says “this exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state.” But Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature and all statewide offices refuse to tighten voting procedures.
That’s not hard to explain. In statewide races, including for governor or president, Republicans historically have been ahead until the absentee ballots in the Democrat-controlled cities in Connecticut are tallied.
Across the nation, Republicans are pressing state legislatures to eliminate drop boxes and bar third parties from collecting huge numbers of completed ballots — a practice called “harvesting.” Republicans also want to use software to match the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on the voter registration form.
Democrats almost universally oppose these safeguards, calling them “voter suppression.” “Cheating suppression” is more like it.
Perceptions of unfairness are corrosive. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing in June, polls were cited showing 37% of Democratic-leaning voters and 71% of Republican-leaning voters doubt the honesty of elections.
Most European countries require voters to show up in person, unless they are out of the country or disabled. These countries tried mail-in voting and eliminated it in the face of widespread fraud.
Americans need to get smart. Convenience shouldn’t take priority over security. Before you board a plane, you have to wait in line while your carry-ons are inspected. It’s inconvenient but worth it.
Same is true for voting. When you turn on the TV on election night to watch the returns, you want to know the results are honest, whether your candidate wins or not.
Betsy McCaughey is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Ozone levels in Maricopa County are lower today than they were 20 years ago. And the reality is that most of the ozone currently in the region is either due to natural events or coming from China. But you won’t hear facts like that from the Left. Instead, they’d rather hatch a scheme to enforce their climate change agenda on the American people, and one of their biggest targets in the past year has been Arizona. Now, after failing to convince our state to ban gas cars and gas stoves, the Sierra Club is attempting to use the courts to force this agenda upon us.
An Impossible Standard
Much of this began in September 2022 when the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reclassified Maricopa County as a moderate nonattainment area of ozone limits under the Clean Air Act. This basically means that, according to the EPA, Maricopa County’s ozone levels are too high and therefore our state—including its citizens, motorists, and businesses—must be forced to adopt ozone control measures. Failure to comply with these measures could mean fines, penalties, or the withholding of federal transportation dollars for Arizona.
Of course, what they won’t tell you is that the main reason our ozone levels are too high isn’t because there are more cars on the road or Arizonans like trying new recipes on their gas stoves. The main reason our ozone levels are too high is because the federal government moved the goal posts back in 2015 when the EPA dropped its acceptable ozone levels from 75ppb to 70ppb…
In a speech following 9/11, President Bush assured us that in spite of this terrorist attack, all humans deep in their hearts long for freedom and brotherhood. It’s a comforting sentiment, but it’s not true.
Radical Islamists openly proclaim their disdain for freedom as another decadent Western value. Iranian street crowds commonly chant “Death to America.” They are deadly serious. Radicalized Muslims think and behave so radically different than we do that we keep dangerously misjudging them and making massive blunders in our adversarial dealings with them (think Iran nuclear deal).
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a leading Muslim reformer, recently explained in the pages of the Arizona Republic that not all Muslims are Islamists. Some are moderate, even members of secular political movements such as the Iranian Women’s Revolution. But Islamists are the dominant side of the House of Islam, in part due to their massive financing by oil-rich Persian Gulf tribes. This allows them to control Islamic propaganda and education.
For Islamists, the sole purpose of life is complete submission to the will of Allah, as interpreted by their imams and scholars. Unfortunately for the world, what Allah wants is nothing short of complete domination, the establishment of a hegemonic caliphate and the subjugation of all non-Muslims.
Thus, the life of an Islamist is an unceasing war or “jihad” in pursuit of this ultimate goal. No boundaries are acknowledged in this quest. Kidnapping, beheading, rape, murder of innocent civilians, including their own, torture and atrocities of all kinds are not even deemed regrettable but are applauded.
These Islamists don’t fight wars for traditional reasons. They don’t battle for independence, territory, resources, or national pride. Their single goal is annihilation or subjugation of their enemies, which the Quran defines as all non-believers, especially Jews.
The problematic response of America and the West to this religion-based violence is appeasement and accommodation. We can solve our differences with talks! Surely if they understood how much we are willing to concede to bring matters to a peaceful conclusion, they would work with us.
Bad idea. To the Islamist warlords, appeasement is merely a sign of weakness. It’s a green light to ramp up the aggression.
Anthony Blinken’s trip to the Middle East to beg for a cease-fire was a telling fool’s errand. It undercut our ally Israel, which is in a bilateral existential war with radical Islamists. It gives Hamas a chance to rest, recruit, and rearm. Moreover, it has zero chance of bringing about a more immediate or favorable resolution of hostilities.
Our current American leadership appears incapable of comprehending the potential mortal danger we are in. They want to believe the “bad” Muslims are only a tiny minority. They think that if we can only defeat Hamas or Al-Qaeda or whatever terrorist organization is currently rampaging, they will surrender and all will be well.
It’s not just Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran we are fighting, but an entire global mindset, a medieval anti-western ideology of evil. For each specific foe we defeat, there are always others to replace them. Jihadists actually welcome martyrdom because it assures hero status and a better afterlife.
Americans need to understand also that an important part of jihad – the imperative to eventually kill or convert – is subversion from within. Millions of immigrant Muslims worldwide have no intention of assimilating. They are taught that their duty is not to learn the ways of their new country but to infiltrate their culture and demand accommodation.
They are seeing some success. Young Americans who are the product of our inept educational system deny that Israel has the right to defend itself. Nearly half agree that the horrific war crimes of Hamas were justified. Tens of thousands fill the streets chanting for the elimination of the Jewish state. The students weren’t born with this mindset. They learned it from radicalized authority figures.
We Americans deserve to be proud of our history as a fair, compassionate member of the international community. But being a good neighbor shouldn’t require suicide.
We may not wish to be at war with Islamism, but they’re waging deadly war against us. Meanwhile, Americans fret about climate change and Islamophobia. Time to wake up.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
For several years, Arizonans have faced a threat of radical renewable energy mandates being imposed on our grid. In 2018, the voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have required utilities to generate 50% of their energy with “renewables” by 2030. Then, in 2021, the Arizona Corporation Commission considered, and rejected, a 100% renewable mandate completely banning fossil fuel generation by 2050. But now, the utilities have voluntarily committed themselves to these goals, known as “Net Zero by 2050”, under the broader requirements of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments.
