Climate war: Our Dangerous Reliance on China
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050,” as the White House wants, “will almost assuredly make the United States dependent on China” while also “enriching it,” warns Ben Weingarten at RealClearInvestigations. Beijing holds “a commanding position in the clean energy industry, controlling the natural resources and manufacturing the components essential” to Team Biden’s “alternative energy transition.” And experts believe Beijing’s dominance will only grow, thanks in particular to “environmentalist opposition to perceived ‘dirty’ mining and refining operations” in the United States, and the administration’s “ ‘clean energy’ spending blitz — which could provide Chinese companies and subsidiaries billions in subsidies.” Equally alarming, critics think China, which is essential to reducing emissions, “will leverage the Biden administration’s desire for it to go green to its own advantage.”
Neocon: Biden-Trump ’24 Is Worse Than ’20
“Americans dread another Biden-Trump showdown in 2024,” and it won’t be just a 2020 do-over — but “something worse,” predicts Commentary’s Abe Greenwald. “It was a lot easier to hold your nose and vote for Trump in 2020,” since Jan. 6 and other events hadn’t yet happened. And since the other side didn’t have to justify Hunter Biden’s laptop or the family’s foreign-business dealings and influence-peddling, “it was a lot easier to cast Joe Biden as conventional.” This time it’ll be “something utterly new: a bipartisan devaluation of accountability and a moral compromise forced on the American voting public.” Given each man’s sins, neither their supporters nor voters “can be said to have clean hands — no one here is righteous.”
Foreign desk: Why America Has Lost Respect
Biden’s foreign policy — “one big mess” since the Afghanistan withdrawal — continues to worsen, dashing any hope that foreign governments will respect his administration, contends Samuel Byers at The Hill. The “slapdash” Afghanistan retreat two years ago was only the start of Biden’s “weak strategy” — “in the Middle East and around the world.” In Ukraine, Biden has “slow-rolled support” while withholding “critical aid out of a misplaced fear of provoking Russia,” and his incoherent approach to China has “failed to demonstrate American resolve.” And his evacuation of six US embassies in two years, “twice the rate of his predecessors,” “hardly betokens an administration” capable of “protecting American citizens and the country’s interests abroad.”
From the right: Trump’s Indictment Win-Win
President Donald Trump can turn his Jan. 6- and stolen-election-related indictments to his advantage by portraying them as “the criminalization of views Republican primary voters largely hold,” reasons the Washington Examiner’s W. James Antle III. “In the Republican primary, at least, ‘us’ would be those who have doubts about the 2020 election, see the justice system as having been ‘weaponized’ against conservatives” and “think the indictments are bogus.” Those “on the other side of those issues are ‘them.’ ” Trump’s GOP rivals “can side with ‘us,’ ” but then they’ll have no “compelling way of distinguishing themselves from the front-runner. Or they can more forthrightly and directly challenge Trump on these issues and become one of ‘them’ ” — hardly “an optimal position” to be in.
Culture critic: The Dating Disaster
Some 43% of young women “have no interest in dating whatsoever, compared with” 34% of young men, notes Rob Henderson at The Free Press. And 55% of women “now say that dating has gotten harder in the last 10 years.” “A larger percentage of women say that ‘not being able to find someone who meets their expectations’ is a major reason they are single.” Why? One “classic study” found that “people presented with fewer flavors” of jam “were more satisfied with their choice.” Now, thanks to dating apps, abundance, “or its illusion,” makes people “feel less satisfied.” Perhaps this is why marriage — “ ‘the most important differentiator’ of who is happy in America” — has over the past five decades dropped by 60%.
Source : New York Post
