President Joe Biden asked U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Don Cochran — a Trump appointee — to resign in February, but nine months later Biden still hasn’t nominated Cochran’s replacement.
David Boling, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee, told The Tennessee Star on Monday that he is not aware if Biden has nominated someone to take the position.
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An internal poll shows former President Donald Trump up in the five states that President Joe Biden flipped as he flirts with a third White House bid in 2024.
Biden flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia in 2020, handing him a decisive 306-232 Electoral College victory over Trump. But Trump’s internal poll shows him up in all five and leading in some by double-digits.
Trump leads Biden by 10 points in Wisconsin, 12 points in Michigan, six points in Pennsylvania, eight points in Arizona and three points in Georgia, according to the poll. Biden won all five states by less than three points in 2020.
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President Joe Biden will renominate Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term leading the central bank.
The president, who was elected as a moderate, has faced pushback on Powell, who progressives feel is not tough enough on bank regulations or climate change policy.
Also in contention for the top job was Lael Brainard, who Biden will nominate to become the vice chair of the central bank’s board of governors.
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On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced in a press release two actions he has taken in order to address and tackle the ongoing supply chain crisis happening across the nation.
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In early November, the Chinese (PRC) tennis star Peng Shuai wrote on her blog that she had been aggressed in 2018 by a Communist Party boss and vice-premier, Zhang Gaoli, who made her his concubine. The blog post, on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, was removed in less time than it takes to play a set, 20 minutes.
Peng’s glory days as an athlete were in the mid-teens, when she was the first Chinese tennis player to reach a no. 1 ranking; hers was in doubles. In that format she won Wimbledon 2013 and Roland-Garros 2014, partnering with the Taiwan (Free China) player Hsieh Su-wei (at a time when the Chicoms were offering Hsieh big bucks to defect to their side); Peng was also strong in singles, ranked no. 14.
Peng has not been seen in public or heard from since her blog was censured.
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U.S. Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10) and U.S. Representative Austin Scott (R-GA-08) told their respective constituents this month that Thanksgiving this year will likely cost them more than any other.
Scott, in an email to constituents, said the following:
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U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) said Saturday that he is in Oxford, England to meet with members of the United Kingdom Parliament to address lingering “raw emotions” over President Joe Biden’s exit from Afghanistan. Green livestreamed himself from Britain on Facebook. He said Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was shameful and hurt America’s longstanding political alliance with Britain. Green also scolded Biden for his “refusal to take [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson’s phone call for 48 hours.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris met with Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador to discuss everything but the border, according to a Thursday press release.
Harris and Obrador didn’t appear to discuss the Biden administration’s pending implementation of former President Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico program or other issues overwhelming U.S. border officials, such as increased migration to the country, according to the statement.
“Vice President Harris and President López Obrador agreed to continue working together to address the root causes of migration from Central America and the need for a regional approach to migration in the Western Hemisphere,” according to the press release.
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Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried (D) is calling on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to suspend Florida’s gas taxes as gas prices increase.
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Just two weeks after his House floor speech on financial fraud in Congress went viral, Arizona Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) delivered another epic speech, this time focusing on COVID-19 and President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill. Schweikert said the country is about at the point to declare the pandemic over, and he slammed Biden’s “social spending plan” for “economic violence” against the working poor and “laced with budget gimmicks.”
Schweikert explained how the combination of several factors now means the pandemic is about over. Pfizer’s new antiviral medication, which is about to be approved by the FDA, is 89% effective and will be available to millions by January. There are at-home COVID-19 tests and multiple vaccines. He will be putting forth legislation shortly to address this developing situation.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio for another edition of Crom’s Commentary.
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President Joe Biden is struggling to win in court as well as the court of public opinion when it comes to his response to COVID-19.
Biden’s approval rating on his handling of the pandemic has steadily dropped as he has issued more vaccine mandates, with one of those mandates seemingly dead in the water.
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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday that House leadership plans to hold a vote on final passage of President Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better Act by Friday at the latest.
Biden’s social spending bill contains new federal benefit programs and about $550 billion for climate change initiatives.
“I expect to consider most of the debate, perhaps not all, but most of the debate on Build Back Better on Tuesday, excuse me, on Wednesday, today’s Tuesday, on Wednesday, tomorrow,” Hoyer said during a news conference.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr on Tuesday announced the state has filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.
Kemp and Carr announced this in an emailed press release.
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Outgoing vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten, said recently that China’s military is developing at stunning speed, and that China poses a major threat to the U.S.
As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden said that the Chinese are “not bad folks, folks” and “they are no competition for us.”
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Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said President Joe Biden is “all over” rising gasoline prices but failed to name a single administration policy aimed at lowering energy costs.
“The president is all over this,” Granholm said during a CNN interview Monday. “He really is very concerned about, you know, inflation, obviously, and the price of gasoline because that’s the most obvious manifestation of it. As you know, no president controls the price of gas, oil is sold on a global market.”
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The head of the Oklahoma National Guard won’t require troops to comply with the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, but don’t expect the Georgia National Guard to follow Oklahoma’s example.
Adjutant General of Georgia Major General Thomas Carden told The Georgia Star News on Monday that he intends to follow orders.
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Joe Biden is systematically eliminating the religious freedom protections that Donald Trump established. The latest example of Biden’s secularist program comes from his Labor Department, which is planning to undo Trump’s policy of defending the religious freedom of federal contractors.
Trump’s Labor Department protected federal contractors who “hold themselves out to the public as carrying out a religious purpose.”
“Religious organizations should not have to fear that acceptance of a federal contract or subcontract will require them to abandon their religious character or identity,” said Trump’s Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia.
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Senate Commerce Republicans are whipping opposition to the nomination of Gigi Sohn, one of President Joe Biden’s picks for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Biden nominated Sohn, former FCC counsel under Tom Wheeler and Ford Foundation alum, to an empty spot on the commission in late October, along with current acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to the permanent position.
While Republicans have been quiet in their response to the nomination of Rosenworcel, many are pointing to Sohn’s public statements on conservatives as reasons to oppose her confirmation.
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The directive for Drug Enforcement Administration officials to not use the term “Mexican cartel” came directly from the Biden administration to ease relations with the Mexican government, two recently retired DEA officials told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The DCNF exclusively obtained an email in August that instructed DEA officials to “now avoid saying ‘Mexican cartel’” when speaking with the media. The email was sent as drugs continued to surge across the U.S.-Mexico border.
One recently-retired DEA official told the DCNF that when the new administration came in, the Department of Justice (DOJ) required DEA to submit news interview requests for approval. The retired official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the DOJ declined many of the national news requests on top of the language guidance, but eventually eased up and allowed some to do local interviews where he used the term “Mexican drug cartel” and called each by its name.
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Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10) last week said President Joe Biden is not governing like someone who has intentions of running for reelection in 2024. Hice said this as he appeared on Newsmax.
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Representative Andrew Clyde (R-GA-09) said he voted against the recently passed federal infrastructure bill because it contributes to more government waste, stretches out the deficit, and doesn’t concentrate enough on security at the U.S.-Mexico border. Clyde said this in an emailed newsletter to his constituents this week.
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Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas demanding answers about Biden’s ‘failed policies’ at the border. Johnson wanted to know when the government was made aware of the surge of Haitian immigrants at the border and why they ignored that intelligence.
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The final $1.2 trillion INVEST in America Act passed the Democrat-led House in a late night vote on Friday. Tucked away inside the infrastructure bill are some controversial policies, including these five:
1. The cryptocurrency tax provision in the Senate version of the bill was the subject of scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans. The language was not amended in the final bill that passed the House. The legislation includes an IRS reporting requirement for brokers of cryptocurrency transactions.
2. Under the “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot” section of the bill, there is a pilot program to create a vehicle miles traveled system for taxing drivers based on their annual vehicle mileage. During his confirmation process, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg floated the idea of taxing motorists based on the number of miles they travel each year as a way to partly fund the legislation. The Biden administration backed off of full-scale development of the controversial proposal, settling instead for a pilot program.
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The Defense Department just released its annual report on China’s military power, and the report undermines those in the Biden administration who are promoting nuclear arms reductions with Russia and the adoption of a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons — a policy that is opposed by most of America’s allies.
The Pentagon’s report could not be clearer: “Over the next decade, the PRC aims to modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.” It is “expanding the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces.” This includes the construction of “fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities” that will enable China to “produce and separate plutonium.”
The report projects that the PRC will have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027, and perhaps 1,000 by 2030, significantly more than the Pentagon projected in last year’s report. China has what the report calls a “nascent ‘nuclear triad,’” with the capability to launch nuclear missiles from land, sea, and air platforms. It has expanded its silo-based force and moved to a “launch-on-warning” posture. Last year, the PLA “launched more than 250 ballistic missiles for testing and training,” a number greater then the rest of the world combined. It is growing its inventory of DF-26 intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and those missiles are capable of launching multiple independent warheads — known as MIRV capabilities. The CCP has ordered the construction of “hundreds of new ICBM silos” and is “doubling the number of launchers in some ICBM units.” China’s CSS-10 Mod 2 ICBM has a range of 11,000 kilometers, which makes it capable or reaching most targets within the continental United States. China is also investing in space and counterspace capabilities, including kinetic-kill missiles, orbiting space robots, and ground-based lasers.
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“Where are the real domestic terrorists?” wonders Julie Kelly. As it happens, the intrepid American Greatness reporter is in luck. Domestic terrorist Nidal Hasan is on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As embattled Americans might wonder, who is this guy? What did he do to land in prison? And what, if anything, does Joe Biden have to say about it?
Nidal Hasan, 51, is an American-born Muslim who earned a degree in psychiatry, joined the U.S. Army, and attained the rank of major. Trouble is, Hasan considered himself a “soldier of Allah” and in 2009 he was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing American soldiers. The FBI knew all about it, but as “Lessons from Fort Hood” confirms, the Washington office of the FBI dropped the surveillance on Hasan and took no action against him.
Major Hasan was a partisan of the Taliban and in November of 2009 Americans were being deployed from Fort Hood, Texas, for duty in Afghanistan. On November 5, 2009, Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he opened fire. Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Private Francheska Velez, who was pregnant and died crying “my baby!”
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Several state lawmakers want the Minnesota School Boards Association to withdraw from the national affiliate after it compared concerned parents to domestic terrorists.
The National School Boards Association wrote to President Joe Biden in September regarding an alleged increase in “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials.”
The infamous letter described this alleged behavior as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
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The 2021 elections are filled with key lessons for Republicans.
Vice President Kamala Harris had already warned in a Virginia visit late in the campaign that “what happens in Virginia will in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024 and on.”
If Republicans learn the lessons of 2021 – and apply them to 2022 and 2024 – they can prove Harris was truly prophetic.
It is already clear that the Democrats’ power structure in Washington has learned nothing. In 2009, after losing Virginia and New Jersey, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through Obamacare four days later. Remember, she said cheerfully “Congress [has] to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”
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Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) signed on to a letter asking President Biden to help preserve the “basic human rights” of Afghan women and girls. The bipartisan letter has been signed by every female United States Senator.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who was the first person in the country to sue the Biden administration over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates, is now co-leading another lawsuit with 11 other attorneys general over another aspect of the mandates. This new lawsuit challenges the mandate for private businesses with over 100 employees.
His first lawsuit, filed on September 14, primarily challenged the mandate’s applicability to federal employees and contractors. Brnovich and 23 other attorneys general next warned the Biden administration in a letter on September 16 that a new lawsuit was coming if the mandate wasn’t reversed. On October 22, Brnovich filed a request for an emergency temporary restraining order to stop the mandate from going into effect.
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Tennessee Attorney General Herb Slatery and six other state attorneys general have filed a petition before a federal court challenging the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private sector employees. This, according to a press release that members of Slatery’s staff emailed Friday.
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Federal law enforcement officers arrested more than 17,300 migrants with past convictions of other crimes attempting to cross the border illegally last fiscal year. That’s up from 9,447 in fiscal 2020.
The federal government’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
An additional 8,979 in fiscal 2021 were of migrants with outstanding arrest warrants against them from other law enforcement agencies.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton to the newsmakers line to weigh in on OSHA vaccine mandate and its relation to the Omnibus Bill from last weeks special session in the General Assembly.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr on Friday announced that they filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s employer vaccine mandate. The Federal Register published The Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) setting forth the mandate on Friday, the press release said.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is spearheading a measure to ensure the Biden administration does not pay reparations to illegal-immigrant families.
On Thursday, Blackburn joined her Montana GOP colleague Steve Daines and a number of other Republican senators in cosponsoring the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a rally in Palm Beach earlier this week where he embraced the viral “Let’s Go Brandon” chants and called President Joe Biden the “Brandon Administration.”
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Representative Jody Hice (R-GA-10) this week blasted President Joe Biden and other Democrats for asking the nation’s largest energy producers to reduce their energy production, all while energy prices continue to rise. Hice made his remarks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing.
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Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery has announced that he and the attorneys general in Ohio and Kentucky have filed suit against the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors. This, according to a press release that members of Slatery’s staff emailed Thursday.
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President Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 42%, according to a new NBC News poll; his disapproval rating hit 54%, up 6 points from August.
The majority polled, 71%, including nearly half of registered Democrats, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Republicans and Independents say the country is headed in the wrong direction, 93% and 70%, respectively, with 48% of Democrats saying the same.
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Rep. David Schweikert (R-06-AZ), known as the wonky numbers member of Congress, gave a speech on the House floor a few days ago about runaway spending in Congress that has gone viral with over 1.2 million views. It’s on Social Security and Medicare running out of money and how the U.S. is headed for a dystopian future if it’s not fixed. He addressed several myths and offered solutions.
He began saying he’s about to say some things most people don’t want to hear, “We call it math.” The biggest threat over the next couple decades facing the country is demographics. “Getting older isn’t Democrat or Republican, it’s going to happen to everyone.” But he says he’s been booed for telling people the truth. “You don’t raise money telling people the truth about what’s going on.” Referring to Congress, he said, “We live in a financial fantasy world in this place … there’s a fraud around here.”
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President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors could kill several Georgia jobs and even compromise the state’s food safety, Governor Brian Kemp and other state officials warned Wednesday.
Kemp — flanked by state attorney General Chris Carr and state Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black — alerted the public at a press conference at the Georgia State Capitol. Carr said Biden’s mandate is unconstitutional and he will sue to stop what he called the president’s overreach.
An NBC reporter said Monday that he has contacted the Secret Service about a gun dealer’s anti-Biden weapons parts. As Joe Biden sinks in the polls, multiple gun dealers appear to be capitalizing on his unpopularity to sell weapons parts and ammunition.
The dealers, according to NBC News’s “Fusion” Ken Dilanian, are “using a right-wing slogan widely understood as code for profanity” to mock Biden, and sell gun supplies.
That slogan—”Let’s Go Brandon”—”isn’t actually about supporting a guy named Brandon,” NPR explained in a hard-hitting investigative report this past weekend. The publicly-funded radio organization spilled the beans on what the phrase actually means: “it’s a euphemism that many people in conservative circles are using in place of saying, ‘F*** Joe Biden.’”
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The Biden administration rolled out broad new regulations that it said will substantially reduce U.S. methane emissions within 15 years.
The sweeping regulations would cut methane emissions, which account for roughly 10% of the greenhouse gasses emitted by the U.S., by 41 million tons between 2023 and 2035, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Tuesday. Such a reduction is equivalent to 920 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the amount emitted by all cars and commercial aircraft in 2019.
“As global leaders convene at this pivotal moment in Glasgow for COP26, it is now abundantly clear that America is back and leading by example in confronting the climate crisis with bold ambition,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.
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Apoll released Monday shows that 44% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want a Democratic nominee other than President Biden to run for the White House in 2024.
The results come amid sinking job-approval ratings for Biden, including those in the new national poll, by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist.
The poll showed 44% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president and 49% disapprove. The numbers compare to 45% approve/46% disapprove in the group’s October poll.
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State members of the National School Boards Association slammed the organization following its letter addressed to President Joe Biden’s administration that compared parental concern at school board meetings to actions of “domestic terrorists,” according to emails obtained by Parents Defending Education through a public records request.
Emails between Delaware, Florida and Ohio school board officials and National School Boards Association (NSBA) leadership showed the discontent its state members had with how the national organization handled the letter and the claims it made. The NSBA sent a letter on Sept. 29 that asked President Joe Biden’s administration to use federal legislation, such as the PATRIOT Act, to stop threats and violence in public schools toward school board members over actions that could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
On Oct. 10, Devin Sheehan, a regional director for the NSBA, sent a letter to executive directors to “compile any concerns, thoughts or recommendations” from its northeast region state board associations, according to the emails.
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Michael Regan began his tenure as President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator by dismissing dozens of outside scientific advisers appointed during the previous administration — part of an effort to “ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work.”
At the time, Regan (pictured) called it a “reset.” Opponents grumbled that it looked more like “a purge.” Now, one of those advisers, Stanley Young, has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the agency of violating U.S. law; the suit also seeks an injunction to halt the work of his former committee.
The legal dustup is the latest rearguard action from the right on environmental issues. Conservatives see the case as their best chance to thwart the Biden administration’s multi-agency approach to combating climate change, seen as hostile to the fossil fuel industry.
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Reflecting on the unfolding disaster that is our social and political life in the United States during the consulship of Biden, I cannot help but think of Aristotle’s description of the structure of Greek tragedy. Obviously, the parallels are not exact. For one thing, tragedy as Aristotle understood it was a quick affair, its action over within a single day. Our national tragedy, by contrast, seems to lumber on indefinitely.
Then there is the question of the character of the protagonist. Aristotle’s chap is “a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” Sound like Joe Biden? Almost, maybe, but not really. Rudy Giuliani was not talking through his hat when he invoked the specter of the “Biden crime family,” as the words “laptop,” “China,” and “10 percent for the big guy” remind us.
There are many other differences between tragedy in Aristotle’s sense and the disaster we are suffering through. Still, when I think about the development Aristotle traces from ἁμαρτία (the tragic flaw) through ἀναγνώρισις (recognition) to περιπέτεια (the sudden reversal of fortune) to καταστροφή, the “catastrophe” that ties up the loose ends and consummates the action, I think “We’re somewhere on that road,” though exactly where is hard to say. Have we achieved the enlightenment of recognition yet? I am not at all sure about that.
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Propane heating costs in the U.S. rocketed to $2.59 per gallon this month, the highest level in a decade, as winter quickly approaches, the federal government said Friday.
The average cost of propane during the first four weeks of the current winter season, which begins in October, was 49% higher than last year, according to an Energy Information Administration (EIA) report. The agency noted that the low propane supply is a major reason for the increased prices.
“U.S. propane and propylene inventories are starting this winter season lower than in recent years; weekly U.S. inventories are averaging 28% lower than the same time last year and 21% lower than their recent five-year (2015–2020) average,” the report stated.
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Magicians try to distract the audience from looking at one hand by dangling something shiny in the other. So do politicians.
The left’s latest magician: Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. OCC is an important agency — it has power to regulate all national banks and federal savings associations. OCC’s wrong moves negatively affect millions of Americans, making banking and other services more expensive and inaccessible, particularly for vulnerable, unbanked Americans.
Rather than answer serious congressional inquiries about whether she is the right fit for OCC, Omarova has attacked duly-elected members of Congress whose voters empower them to serve their interests. By refusing to answer basic questions about her work and worldview, Omarova has obstructed the constitutionally prescribed legislative process.
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Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) said members of the Biden administration misplace vital priorities, especially in how they treat parents at school board meetings versus how they treat a flood of incoming illegal immigrants. Loudermilk made these remarks this week as he appeared on Newsmax.
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