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Reported Senate Offer:  We'll Give You Matt Gaetz in DOJ, if You Give us Mike Rogers in FBI.  Majority Leader John Thune will play his cards carefully in order to extract maximum damage.  The Senate is factually the core of republican opposition to MAGA and President Trump.  The visible battle against Obama, Biden, Harris and the professional political left, always consumes the most attention.  However, it is the less-visible battle against the entrenched ideological republicans that proves to be the hardest.  The Republicans in the upper chamber will not relinquish power easily.  They have a multitude of weapons to use against the insurgency of President Trump supporters.  We are seeing this play out now in the alignment of Republican Senators who stand in opposition to President Trump's nomination of Matt Gaetz as U.S. Attorney General, and this recent report aligns with exactly the type of move we would expect.  The basic outline is that senate leadership will reluctantly support Matt Gaetz for Main Justice, where 'support' means they will not directly oppose; in exchange for the nomination of FBI Director Mike Rogers to defend their interests at FBI.

Spoiler:  No.
Is Burgum the Right Choice for Interior Secretary and Energy Czar?  From running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination himself, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has proven himself a Trump loyalist who commands the president-elect's trust. [...] Politicians are often firebrands, so Burgum's behavior is not surprising.  However, his views on issues important to conservatives and his many constituents — the COVID plandemic, January 6, China, zero carbon, carbon dioxide capture, and land grabs — make his choice extremely questionable.  The COVID 'Plandemic':  As governor, Burgum financed and promoted a tracking app as part of a public-private partnership between the North Dakota Department of Health and ProudCrowd.  He imposed strict masking rules, penalizing violators up to $1,000.  Restaurants were limited to 50% of capacity, bars had to close at 10 p.m., and sports and recreation at schools were suspended, though championship contests and performance events were allowed to continue.  January 6:  While Republicans questioned the highly suspicious 2020 election outcome, Burgum defended it as "fair and honest."  When the Capitol protests broke out, he called for an end to "violence."

Brief: On the Article II Recess Appointments Clause.  Given the extensive delays experienced during his first administration in getting the Senate to approve his nominees expeditiously, President-elect Donald Trump recently proposed the use of recess appointments, if necessary, to briskly stand up his new administration early next year.  The question is whether the law and our history confirms the President's belief that he should be allowed to assemble his Cabinet quickly via recess appointments?  The answer is "yes."

Senator, you don't get to veto the people.  The big hubbub in DC is over Trump's selection of Matt Gaetz as his attorney general, who does not meet Washington's standards.  Those standards include Eric Holder who openly defied a congressional subpoena, Loretta Lynch who discussed Hillary's case with Bill in plain sight days before the dropping all charges against his wife, and the detestable Merrick Garland who jailed hundreds of Trump supporters.  DC fears retribution for a decade of prosecutorial persecution of Trump and his team.

An Insider Describes the Medical Field.  A secret about medicine is that it is mostly self-taught.  It is an expensive trade school without the apprenticeship.  If you wait around to be taught, you will learn next to nothing.  By the end of residency, the hurdles were obtaining board certification in my specialty and practicing medicine.  Certification in your specialty board was once voluntary, billed as possessing knowledge that exceeded the average physicians.  With the allure of creating an enormous source of income, the medical specialty boards turned what was once voluntary into something almost mandatory.

Oh, If This Is What Schumer Wanted to Do, Republicans Should Nuke the Filibuster.  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) seemed to have taken the 2024 loss somewhat well.  The Democrats expected a total blue takeover of Washington, with Kamala Harris at the helm.  Instead, it was a MAGA landslide.  Republicans kept the House, reclaimed the Senate, and took back the White House — a Democrat's true nightmare.  The soon-to-be former Senate majority leader was mushy about bipartisanship and hoped that Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the newly minted leader of Senate Republicans, would be willing to work across the aisle.  The problem is that Schumer didn't plan to be so accommodating if things had gone differently on election night.  For starters, the man was planning to nuke the legislative filibuster if Democrats retained control, which should be on the minds of every Republican senator regarding any future talks on legislation.

We Need To Take A Wrecking Ball To The DOJ.  Matt Gaetz Is Just The Man For The Job.  The collective pearl-clutching by the corporate press and Washington establishment on Wednesday after Trump announced he'd chosen Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general was something to behold.  The swamp consensus is that the former Florida congressman is "unqualified" to lead the Justice Department.  Never mind that the people making this claim are themselves deeply unqualified to hold their own positions of power.  (Consider Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who dismissed Gaetz as not a "serious" pick.  Murkowski is poster-child for unserious and unqualified Beltway drones.  She failed the bar exam four times and only got a Senate seat because her corrupt father, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to his seat after he became a one-term governor of Alaska in 2002.)

Republicans learned to ballot harvest.  After the steal, I said learn to ballot harvest.  Republicans did.  They did their ballot harvesting legally and in front of the entire world.  There were no midnight dumps of ballots from California into unattended ballot boxes.  Vote tabulations did not suddenly change in the wee hours of the morning.  Republicans read the rules, learned the rules and applied the rules in new ways.  Trump urged voters to vote early — to bank their votes as they say.  Republican voters did.  According to the New York Times, in 9 states more than half the ballots cast were cast before Election Day either by mail or in-person.  Trump won 8 of those 9 states, including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, which were four of the seven swing states.  The effort in North Carolina likely saved the state for Trump because of the extent of damage to western North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene.

Deconstructing the Mythology of January 6.  In the aftermath of the 2024 election, the certification of electoral votes at the House will stand as a looming civic impasse.  There is a congressional process necessary to the certification of Presidential elections and the rhetorical interpretation of January 6, 2021 stands as a profound point of misunderstanding.  The deliberate misrepresentation of events surrounding January 6 was the primary pretext to the longstanding argument against Trump's election — suggesting he is a "threat to democracy."  The mythology of January 6 is an incredible story of the power of this misguided epistemology.  Kamala Harris chose to build her closing argument for election upon the D.C. space where President Trump urged followers to "peacefully and patriotically" have their voices heard at the Capitol.  The misunderstandings surrounding January 6, 2021 are at the foundation of current political angst in America that fears rising violence in the months ahead.

Trump's Victory Makes Clear:  America Is Still America.  Last night was the night America roared back.  The difference in vision of what America is and what America could be between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was as stark as has existed in a presidential election in decades.  America's verdict was decisive — the popular vote, the Electoral College, the Senate in a landslide, and, presumably, the House of Representatives will soon follow.  The American people affirmed the core message of Donald Trump's campaign:  That America is still America, that it is worth all of us fighting for, and that our destiny is to do even greater things in the future than the remarkable things our ancestors achieved in the past.

Trump's victory is a formidable setback for the New World Order.  Donald J. Trump's victory in the electoral competition for the presidency of the United States of America constitutes a historic moment in the dramatic events of the present and marks a formidable setback for the criminal plan of the New World Order.  I express my warmest congratulations to President Trump, while I thank Our Lord for having prevented the United States and the Western world from definitively falling into the tentacles of the deep state and globalist tyranny.  The battle against the subversive elite of psychopathic criminals who hold the West hostage is not over; it now begins.  I urge American Catholics and all Christians to pray for President Trump, so that the Lord may protect him in this transition phase towards taking office in the White House, guiding him in the unavoidable eradication of the lobby of corrupt and perverted people subservient to the deep state.  His determined action against the traitors of the nation will also weaken the work of the deep church, which today holds the Catholic Church hostage.

Who is the real Colin Allred?  Who is Colin Allred?  A native of Dallas, he received a scholarship to play for Baylor as a linebacker.  He was signed by the NFL Tennessee Titans in 2006 and played in less than half their games between 2007 and 2010.  After a serious injury in that final year, he left the NFL and attended the leftist UC Berkeley School of Law.  He then worked for Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development and moved on to the controversial Perkins Coie law firm, who were involved with the notorious Steele dossier.  In 2018, he ran for Congress and defeated GOP incumbent Pete Sessions.  From 2019 to 2023, he voted with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time and then with Biden after her term ended as Speaker.

The One Overlooked Reason Christians Should Vote in 2024.  [Scroll down]  By staying out of the election Christians remove themselves from being the salt and light in this election and in the administration that follows.  Imagine the scenario that Trump ekes out a win — but the exit polls show he could have won easily if those millions of Christians had voted.  Christians not voting nearly cost him the election.  That lack of support can and will influence his administrative choices.  It's simple human nature to remember who your friends were when you needed them the most.  Given that scenario, how favorably will he look at deeply conservative and deeply Christian judges knowing that when Christians had a chance to stand up for him, they instead chose to stab him in the back?

Christians Must Vote.  [Scroll down]  Trump's concerns are echoed by a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, which cites a recent report from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.  The study revealed that "approximately 104 million people of faith, including 32 million self-identified Christians who regularly attend church, may abstain from voting this November."  The report cites lack of interest in politics among both congregants and pastors, as well as lack of engagement with social issues.  Some pastors even refuse to encourage congregants to vote.  A deeper reason many evangelicals (and other Christians) are not voting is that many churches and church leaders over the last few decades gradually have absorbed the left's draconian secularist view of separation of Church and State.  In essence, the agenda requires the total submission of the former to the latter.  Worse, in the past and even in the present, secularist totalitarian regimes like the CCP seek to eliminate the Christian religion altogether, replacing it with anti-God ideology.

Oswald and JFK: What insiders really say.  [Scroll down]  Oswald possessed six wallets, a spy camera, and the top of a small cardboard box with him when he was arrested at the Texas Theater immediately after the assassination.  One of those wallets (with his alias, Alek Hidell) was found at the murder scene of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit.  The other was found on Oswald after his arrest at the Texas Theater.  Oswald's last known phone calls from police custody in Dallas were directed toward intelligence contacts. [...] Senator Richard Schweiker said it best about Oswald.  Leading the Senate Church Committee that investigated "performance or non-performance" of intelligence agencies during the initial investigation of the JFK assassination, Schweiker stated: "We do know that Oswald had intelligence connections.  Everywhere you look with him [Oswald], there are fingerprints of intelligence."  As of today, the president and U.S. intelligence agencies still withhold over 4,600 records related to the JFK assassination.  Without question, a portion of these records will show Oswald's undeniable intelligence connections and that Oswald was involved in an operation that led to JFK's murder.  This alone proves that the Warren Commission Report is pure fiction.

When Did Halloween Decorations Go Demonic?  Most of us know that Halloween originated in an annual Celtic pagan festival called Samhain, which was then "Christianized" by the early Catholic Church approximately 1,200 years ago, and named "Halloween."  The jack-o-lantern is also from the Celts representing the harvest," which was to be competed every November 1st.  Carving the pumpkin was done "in hopes that the good magic will help to preserve the harvested food through the dark half of the year, until the next growing season could replenish the community's food stocks," History.com says.  Christianity.com assures us that even if we have a penchant for Halloween traditions, when we celebrate Halloween by passing out candy to children, dressing up, or going trick-or-treating, we are not celebrating evil. [...] But something has happened to the wholesome Halloween traditions that goes far beyond creepy — and it's not just State Senator Scott Wiener's Annual Halloween Pumpkin Carving Event with Celebrity Drag Queen Judges.

This post should not be allowed.  It's really quite simple.  Schools were meant to teach students how to think, not what to think — to educate, not indoctrinate.  There are only two sexes.  Earth's climate has always been changing, often faster and more dramatically than it is today.  Diversity is not necessarily a good thing.  (Think diversity of crime, death, invasive species, etc.)  The mainstream media is biased against conservatives.  Incredibly so.  There is a reason the U.S. became the most successful nation in history — and it has little to do with size, oceans, or resources.  Capitalism has lifted much of the world out of poverty, whereas Marxism/communism put much of it into poverty.  We are born with certain unalienable rights, granted by our Creator.  Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  You cannot tax and spend a nation into prosperity, just as a heavily taxed family can't spend its way into wealth.  Those who desperately seek power for power's sake should never be trusted with it.  You can't save a democracy by trying to silence, imprison, or kill your political opponents.

The Orwellian Noble Peace Prize.  Last week nominations for the Noble Peace Prize were announced, and the nominees were typical of the Prize's history.  A perusal of past winners reveals that the majority of prizes are for good intention, moralizing internationalism and its institutions, short-lived peace treaties, feckless disarmament, and any choice that gratifies global anti-Americanism.  And let's not forget terrorists and their enablers included in this year's nominees:  the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency, the International Court of Justice, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.  All three reflect the Prize's long history of promulgating globalism and the "rules-based international order" that has serially failed to deter aggression.  The Wall Street Journal's profile of this year's nominees is a must read. [...]

The British are Coming — U.K Labour Party Sends 100 Staff to Assist Kamala Harris.  Apparently, some forms of foreign election influence are okay.  According to recent reports the British Labour Party are sending their staff to the United States to run support operations in battleground states. [...] It is worth remembering the British intelligence operation (Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6) was at the center of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy in 2016.  Additionally, September 27th, 2024 — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had a two-hour dinner with President Donald Trump after the U.K leader delivered a speech to the United Nations in New York.  However, intentionally unnoticed by U.S. media, the Prime Minister immediately left the U.S. following the lengthy meeting with President Trump, and never met with Kamala Harris.

Battleground Democrats Are Avoiding Kamala Harris Like The Plague As Election Day Nears.  Several Democrats running for key Senate seats have distanced themselves from Vice President Kamala Harris and her bid for the presidency as polling continues to tighten between her and former President Donald Trump.  Democrats such as Texas Rep. Colin Allred, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Montana Sen. Jon Tester have been largely quiet about Harris's bid for President or have even skipped campaign events for Harris in their own states.  Allred, who is running against Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, appears to be trying to keep Harris at an arms length.  He did not appear with Harris during any of her half-dozen visits to Texas around July and the beginning of August.  Allred's first endorsement of Harris, which came from his account on Twitter, was described as "cautious and unclear" and focused primarily on President Joe Biden's legacy.

The Editor says...
Allred is a stiff.  A placeholder.  Just like Robert F. "Beto" O'Rourke, he doesn't have any real chance of defeating Ted Cruz, the only useful Senator from Texas.  But the Democrats can't afford to let Cruz run unopposed, so Allred will take one for the team, just in case he accidentally and miraculously wins, in the same manner that Lyndon B. Johnson got elected to the Senate.  Tune in again in six years, when the Democrats will put somebody else in the same position, with the same results.

Do the Democrat Elites WANT Kamala to Lose?  It sounds crazy, and perhaps it is.  But there is a lot of suspicion that Democrats are either throwing in the towel on the presidential race or that members of their elite are so unenthusiastic that they want her to lose. [...] The case for Joe Biden wanting Kamala to lose is most compelling.  Harris, after all, helped push him out of the campaign, sidelined him, and made him look like a weak fool.  It was obvious that Biden didn't want to budge — he said so often and loudly enough — and it was similarly obvious that he resented being pushed out.  Many people speculated at the time that Biden's endorsement of Harris hours after the obviously written-for-him letter bowing out of the race was a big screw-you to the Democratic Party.  Harris was thought to be a terrible candidate without a chance of winning, and Biden put our his endorsement separate from the statement pulling out of the race, and was likely not filtered by an establishment which had been pushing for an open process.

Elon Musk:  Secretary of Cost Cutting.  Most presidential candidates wait until they have at least won the election before they begin measuring the Oval Office for new drapes or at least begin picking new cabinet members, but Donald Trump is clearly not "most candidates."  He proved that to be true yet again during a recent interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo when she asked the former president how he planned to "trim the fat" in Washington.  Rather than identifying areas where he might make cuts, Trump suggested that he planned to expand his cabinet by adding a new Secretary of Cost-Cutting.  That person would be SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.  According to Trump, Musk is "dying to do this."  This proposal opens up an entirely new set of questions as to how this new department would operate and how Musk would fit in with a presidential administration.

Minnesota: Uniquely imbecilic politically?  The Land of 10,000 Lakes, while beautiful, has also spawned about the same number of whacko politicians.  These include, but are by no means limited to, "Gov. Goofy," Jessie "The Body" Ventura (who wasn't Gov. Goofy), Rep. Ilhan Omar (who apparently temporarily married her brother), Al Franken, Tim Walz ... and communists (but I repeat myself) like Gus Hall, who ran for president on four separate occasions, the last time in 1984.  Gus was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) from 1959 until his death in 2000.  What's more, the Loony State voted against Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984 — the only state to do so in the latter election, in which it voted for yet another ultra-liberal, home-grown embarrassment named Walter Mondale.  (Known to many as Walter "Mondull.")  And now Tim Walz, who appears to be a big fan of Chinese-style communism as well as Tampons in boys bathrooms, is running for vice president so that he can help do to the country what he has done to Minnesota.

A fraudulent Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve has been losing massive amounts of money since 2022 by essentially paying banks more money for their deposits than what they earn.  The big banks are the biggest winners in this scheme.  Instead of showing the losses in their balance sheet, they just create a fictional asset called a deferred asset.  They pretend they didn't lose money. [...] The Federal Reserve simply pumps out more money to cover the losses, and all Americans are victims.  This money is not counted as part of the deficit because they are off budget.  The Federal Reserve is supposed to manage America's money, inflation, employment, and interest rates, but why should anyone trust them when they cook their own books?

Let the Economy Roll.  Maybe the primary complaint against Kamala Harris is that voters don't know who she is nor where she stands on issues, given her flip-flopping-for-votes campaign.  But we can be sure that her instincts are to bridle the economy rather than unleash it.  Not many weeks ago, we argued that Harris' Marxist roots, from both her mother and father, inform her economic positions.  It should be kept in mind whenever looking at her economic proposals. [...] It is not a radical position to support a free market economy.  The moral and material benefits of an open economy are enormous.  No other system can match its dynamism and positive outcomes.

After bungled response to Helene, demand a squeaky-clean election.  Hurricane Helene has devastated parts of Georgia, east Tennessee and particularly western North Carolina.  The death and destruction it dealt to unprepared mountain communities has been catastrophic.  More than a week later, roads are still closed, thousands lack electricity, and hundreds of people are missing amid an unimpressive response from federal and state governments.  So leave it to Politico to ask the big question:  Is this good for the Democrats?  "The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican," the outlet noted.

Did Hurricane Milton Have Help In Suddenly Becoming One Of The Most Powerful Storms In History?  This normally doesn't happen.  During regular times, a hurricane is not supposed to go from Category 1 to Category 5 in less than a day.  At this moment, the roads out of the Tampa Bay area are absolutely jammed with vehicles as local residents attempt to get out of the path of the coming storm.  We literally just witnessed one of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history, and now we are being told that Hurricane Milton could also be one of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history.  So what in the world is going on here?

Schrodinger's Election.  Some people are predicting a Trump landslide, based both on the various predictors and on the haplessness of Kamala's part-time campaign and fourth-rate running mate.  It's plausible.  The nation isn't in great shape, despite the finagling of interest rates and unemployment figures (expect a bigger-than-usual downward revision of the employment numbers for this month after the election), the Biden Administration, after running on a "return to normalcy" after the "chaos" of the Trump years, has delivered chaos in spades, and there's a pervasive sense, everywhere from NASA to FEMA to the U.S. Navy, that nothing, at least nothing related to the government, works anymore.  Trump, meanwhile, has come back from not one but two assassination attempts, named a first-rate, not fourth-rate, running mate, and is barnstorming the nation even as Kamala's appearances are so few and far between that Democrats are worrying out loud to Politico.

Yes, Car Seat Laws Reduce the Birth Rate.  Opponents of the Trump campaign are having fun this week with some year-old comments from vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance.  Apparently, in a Senate hearing during March 2023, Vance stated that car seat laws have an impact on the number of children parents feel they can afford. [...] Most of the mockery was based on the idea that a $100 or $200 dollar car seat is surely not the deciding factor in whether or not to have another child.  This claim may seem perfectly plausible to anyone who has never had children or has only had one or two small children at any given time.  Anyone who has actually considered having a third child, however, knows that the cost of the car seat itself is not what dissuades parents from having an additional child.  Rather, the realities of car seats and car-seat laws mean that a third child adds significant costs and obstacles in the form of a necessarily larger car.

How To Blow Up the Middle East War in Five Easy Steps.  When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm.  Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.  So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on September 29, 2023 — and just eight days before the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis — Biden's national security advisor Jack Sullivan could still brag that "The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."  [Promotional video clip]  So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?  In a word, theocratic Iran — the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict — was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.  [Advertisement]  The Biden-Harris administration adopted a 5-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.  The result was a near guarantee that something akin to the October 7 massacres would inevitably follow — along with a subsequent year of violence that has now engulfed the Middle East.

This Is A Slow-Motion Nationalization of the Economy.  Global liquidity is expanding.  In the past three months, the global money supply has soared by $4.7 trillion.  This rapid increase started when the Federal Reserve panicked the first time and delayed the normalization of the balance sheet in June.  Since then, we have seen a chain of fresh stimulus policies implemented by developed economies, adding to the large fiscal packages already in place.  Multi-trillion-dollar investment packages like the EU Next Generation Fund now include massive deficit spending plans.  However, money velocity is not rising.  All these programs only lead to secular stagnation.  Government projects and current expenditures are consuming money at an unprecedented rate.  Developed economies cannot live without new and larger spending plans.  The result is more debt, weaker productivity growth, and declining real wages.

Is America Undergoing a Quiet Coup, Courtesy of Wall Street?  In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the then-chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Simon Johnson, warned that the same dysfunctional policies he saw in basket case banana republics had taken hold in the United States.  He warned that if we didn't act fast, we would plunge into a "quiet coup" as the American financial system effectively captures the government, bailing itself out until we run out of money.  Well, we didn't act fast.  In fact, it got worse.  And here we are.  [Video clip]

Hurricane Helene Fallout Shows Why America Can't Afford Another Potemkin Presidency.  Americans throughout several southeastern states are enduring catastrophic devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.  So naturally, America's lamebrain Democrat president and vice president are missing in action.  After making landfall in Florida late last week, the Category 4 hurricane ripped across the Southeast over the weekend, producing massive flooding and mudslides.  At least 110 people across six states are reported to have been killed as of Sunday night, according to The New York Times.  Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee were among the regions hardest hit by the storm.  According to the Associated Press, residents in Asheville, North Carolina, had to be airlifted from a hospital due to floodwaters engulfing entire roadways throughout the city.  Yet, despite such widespread suffering among the people they were elected to serve, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — the latter of whom is running to be our next president — seem to have bigger things to worry about.

Trump's Debate Anger Reflects America's Anger.  Like a father to an indignant child, Trump answered Harris's lies and empty promises the way Babe Ruth hit home runs.  One home run was his answer to Harris's copying Biden's economic plan, saying it was about four sentences of "run spot run" sophistication.  Another home run:  when Trump asked her point blank if she supported abortions outside the womb, Harris looked the other way and did not answer.  Trump swatted the ball again over the fence again with: "Joe Biden still hates the Veep after the palace coup that ended up in his removal from the 2024 Democratic ticket.  I'll give you a little secret:  He hates her... He can't stand her, but he got 14 million votes.  They threw him out.  She got zero votes."

Yes, Trump Really Did Do Better Than Kamala in the Debate.  The first presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris has ended.  While there were some inevitable disappointments and lost opportunities, I am here to assure you that, yes, Trump definitely performed better overall than Harris did, in spite of the egregiously biased moderators.  Trump was working under a handicap, because the debate moderators — most particularly Trump-hating, Harris-loving David Muir — were as eager to undermine him as Harris was, meaning Trump was essentially debating three people at once.  But he hit almost every major point he should have hit, he absolutely hammered Kamala on the border crisis and the disastrous economy (voters' top issues), and he came off most of the time as calm and confident, whereas Harris was sneering, giggly, and unlikable.

President Trump Releases Statement After Shredding Kamala Harris in Rigged 3 vs 1 ABC Debate.  President Trump delivered a masterclass performance in last night's debate against Kamala Harris, decimating her record on live TV.  Despite the obvious bias of the Fake News ABC moderators, who sided with Kamala at every turn, Trump stood tall and dismantled Kamala's failed policies that have left Americans struggling over the past four years.  During the debate, Trump laid out a clear, bold vision for America's future.  His message of prosperity and security stood in stark contrast to the dark, government-overreach narrative pushed by Kamala Harris.

President Trump Won the Debate with Harris.  One of the most important successes that Trump scored that has been ignored by analysis was his effective handling of the hostile moderators.  Muir and Davis "fact checked" Trump five times while making zero fact checks of Harris.  The debate format is unusual because each candidate had an option to make a one-minute rebuttal at any point during the debate.  Trump used this option masterfully to have the last word on most of the major controversies in the debate.  This was compounded by his win of the coin toss where he again had the last word and made the powerful point that any of the proposals Harris made during the debate could be dutifully performed back at the White House.  Trump suggested in the middle of the debate that the two of them should stop debating so she could go back to the White House and implement her proposals.

A Harris Victory in 2024 Would Make the U.S. a One-Party State.  The election of 2024 will be epochal for the United States.  It will be as impactful on the course of the nation as the election of 1860 and the ensuing Civil War.  This November's election will determine whether the U.S. remains a viable constitutional republic or becomes a one-party state.  If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the result will be the realization of President Obama's intent, voiced in his famous 2008 remark, to "fundamentally transform" the United States.  Thus, the election is important for all Americans, particularly the voting public, to be aware that should Harris win, then 2024 is likely to be the last free, fair, and competitive election in the U.S.  If she does win, then the U.S. by 2028 will be a one-party country, with the Democrats in permanent control, as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, or Hawaii are at the state level today.

The Deep State Is Past Its Shelf Life.  [Scroll down]  Most of the federal blob is dead weight.  Its chief purpose is to hook so many families on a federal paycheck that tens of millions of Americans will never stop voting for its continuing expansion.  Even worse, it's a Janus-faced monstrosity with internally conflicting mission objectives.  We've got departments dedicated to fomenting wars abroad and departments dedicated to stopping them.  We've got agencies tasked with confiscating taxpayers' income and agencies tasked with providing economic relief.  Committees are organized to study "problems," but those problems can't be officially solved because doing so would mean that committee-members are out of jobs.  That possibility becomes the only "problem" that needless federal workers decide to solve, and they "solve" it by doing absolutely nothing.  The end result is that an unknowable number of ghost programs dedicated to issues that arose decades ago are still bouncing around the bureaucratic ether for no other reason than to keep the federal blob paid and happy.

What's Good For Generac Is Bad For America.  We Bought One Anyway.  If you are in the business of selling standby home generators, hurricanes, severe weather, and blackouts are good for business.  And as the frequency of blackouts across the country increases, companies like Generac are making bank on the declining reliability of the US electric grid.  Generac is profiting from people like me.  Back in 2021, during Winter Storm Uri, we lost power for two days.  At that time, I thought the Texas grid would recover and all would return to normal.  That hasn't happened.  Over the past 12 months, we have lost power at our house in central Austin three times, and in each instance, the outage lasted eight hours or more.  Plus, ERCOT has repeatedly warned about looming power shortages.  Given all that, we are installing one of Generac's whole-house standby generators.  The cost: about $15,000 for a 22-kilowatt, gas-fired, air-cooled system that will automatically turn on when the lights go out.  Our contractor is Current Power Technologies, a new company based in San Antonio.

The Truth About World War II.  In a recent and now widely seen Tucker Carlson interview, a guest historian named Darryl Cooper casually presented a surprising number of flawed theories about World War II. He focused his misstatements on the respective roles of Winston Churchill's Britain and Adolf Hitler's Germany — especially in matters of the treatment and fate of Russian prisoners, the Holocaust, the systematic slaughtering of Jews, strategic bombing, and the nature of Winston Churchill.  Because of the size of the audience Carlson introduced him to, and because of the gravity of Cooper's falsehoods, his assertions deserve a response.  It is simply not true, as Cooper alleges, that Hitler's Wehrmacht was completely surprised and unprepared for the mass capitulation of the Red Army and some two million Russian prisoners who fell into German hands in summer 1941. [...]

Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess?  On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it.  The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress.  The food companies don't admit the harm of the mainstream American diet.  The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury.  Media companies deny any bias.  So on it goes.  And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so.  This is why the admission of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was so startling.  It's not what he admitted.  We already knew what he revealed.  What's new is that he admitted it.  We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies.  It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true.  We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be.  In his letter to Congressional investigators, he flat-out said what everyone else has been saying for years now.

Hope Not Hate — the 'charity' built on deceit:  Part One.  This is not the first time I have expressed my concerns about the increasingly baleful influence of the registered 'charity', but in fact activist outfit, Hope Not Hate (HNH).  Its original purpose in 2001 was to counter the rise of the British National Party (BNP).  Its declared mission today is 'to work tirelessly to expose and oppose far-right extremism' as though that was the major threat to society.  Its undeclared but barely disguised mission, as I will argue in these articles, is to position itself as the definer of political discourse and arbiter of free speech.  This ideological thought control aim became clear in 2017 when HNH negatively associated Brexiteers (over half the adult population of this country) with racism and the 'far right'.  By 2019, they had totally lost their way, justifying their existence by extending and distorting their definition of far right to anyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn.

Hope Not Hate — Part Two.

Hope Not Hate — Part Three.

How To Stage a Coup.  After the Biden/Harris regime was installed in 2020 thanks to 3 AM vote dumps and mass censorship, regime changes have occurred around the world at a dizzying pace.  Insurrections, coups, color revolutions, and civil unrest have become much more common compared to a period of relative peace in 2016-2020.  It is staggering, yet unsurprising how little MSM coverage they have received.  When America is weakened by a senile president, the planet destabilizes.  Tectonic plates are shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity.  In clown world, MSM claims that voting for the joyful word salad VP will fix everything.

Freedom Is Now Just One Election Away From Extinction.  Ronald Reagan famously warned us that "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." For many, this may have sounded like hyperbole, but in 2024 we find ourselves at a crossroads where that sentiment couldn't be more relevant.  This time, freedom isn't just one generation away — it's one election away.  Make no mistake about it, the principles that have defined our nation for over two centuries — limited government, individual liberties, and free-market capitalism — are under siege.  But now, the radical left is so emboldened that they no longer even try to hide their intentions; they openly advocate for policies that would fundamentally alter the fabric of our republic.  They seek to expand government power, restrict free speech, erode our Second Amendment rights, and impose a socialist economic model that would devastate the American Dream and make freedom a thing of the past.

Retirees explain why they're fleeing Florida: 'It's all strip malls'.  Florida has long been a top state where retiring Americans flock to — but some, like local resident Alisa Newman, are doing the exact opposite.  Newman settled in the Miami area in 1997 when her husband got a job there.  But now, at 58, she has decided to move out.  While she knows she will leave behind many of Florida's retirement-friendly perks — such as no state income tax and year-round sunshine — she's also painfully familiar with the area's downsides.

The Editor says...
If you find a state (or another country) with no "downsides," be sure to let everyone know.  Mrs. Editor and I just got back from Tampa (one of us with a sunburn), and we found Florida to be quite pleasant, although I still prefer Texas.

Which is Worse:  Conspiracy Theory or Hive Mind?  It's good to know that the daughter of two academics, one a Tamil Brahmin and the other a Marixt economist, is just Middle-Class Kamala.  But now the last echo of the Kennedy mystique, RFK Jr., has plumped for Trump, after releasing a screed in which he accused the Democrats of being meanie jelly-beanies.  But I wonder if the main contribution from RFK Jr. will be to help mainstream three "conspiracy theories." [...] Conspiracy Theory One is "our children's health and chronic disease in general." [...] Conspiracy Theory Two is the Ukraine war. [...] Conspiracy Theory Three is Democratic Party lawfare. [...] On Conspiracy Theory Three on saving democracy from the Democrats, I couldn't agree more.  The best way to evaluate it is to imagine Republicans doing to Democrats what Democrats are currently doing to Republicans.  Imagine the reaction to any Republican President loading up Nancy Pelosi with dozens of felony charges, and changing voting laws at the last minute to benefit Republicans.

Mark Levin rips the mask off the anti-democratic 'thug' Kamala Harris in his FOX News show.  Mark Levin is an attorney, a writer, a talk show host — and a great thinker.  His eight non-fiction books, thoroughly researched and brilliant analyses of legal and political issues, are long form and have all been New York Times bestsellers. [...] I never miss Levin's FOX News programs.  They are getting better and better, including his fifteen- to twenty-minute long opening monologues.  Yesterday's show was a prime example.  At the end of a week that featured all but one of the nation's mainstream broadcast and cable television media outlets fawning over Kamala Harris and essentially acting like the Democrats' PR surrogates to drag her over the election finish line, Levin zeroed in on the reality.  Delivered with his usual laser-like intensity, Levin's analysis exposed the "thug" nature of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim "Manchurian Candidate" Walz, and the ramifications of their Hollywood-style "joy vibes" convention.  His unparalleled skills at commenting shone through.

A New Documentary Rehabilitates Nixon's Reputation On Watergate's 50th Anniversary.  Watergate expert and author Geoff Shepard, who was a young attorney on the Nixon Defense team and who, since then, has spent decades deeply researching administrative, political, and prosecutorial Watergate archives obtained through FOIA requests[, ...] has written three books on this subject.  His most recent is The Nixon Conspiracy:  Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, a detailed and easily read analysis of the whole Watergate debacle. [...] The book has now been made into a documentary motion picture, Watergate Secrets, with live discussions with Shepard and other notables, and with dramatic reenactments of Watergate events of the time.  My advice:  watch the movie, then read the book, then watch the movie again.

Faking Reality is A Bad Idea.  It boils down to this:  Every take on reality is couched in a bias.  The challenge for the serious is to find the best one — best, that is, in covering what is most important to human beings.  The one that encompasses the most about what is most important to human beings gravitates toward God, the Creator.  It is impossible for any human being to find a better, more natural take on reality.  And it need surprise no one that when it comes down to the things of greatest significance in our lives — love, hate, loyalty, treachery, attraction to beauty and truth, etc., etc. ad infinitum — morally decadent leaders remain silent or spout dismissive rhetoric to hide their embarrassment.

Politicizing the Military Must Stop.  The Pentagon is now conducting an expedited review of the awards of Medals of Honor to soldiers who took part in the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee, during which Seventh Cavalry soldiers killed an estimated 150-300 members of the Lakota Sioux Native American tribe.  The rushed nature of the review reeks of political partisanship designed to help win votes for the Democrat nominee in November.  This is not about the wisdom or ethics of that operation.  Virtually all Americans understand that the United States government behaved dishonorably on numerous occasions during its relations with Native Americans as we expanded westward — including regularly signing and then violating solemn treaties.  Congress often undermined treaties by refusing to appropriate sufficient funds to implement them.  But I have seen no evidence that any of the soldiers whose decorations are being "reviewed" were involved in the decisions that led to the "massacre."

Our Three Silent Mice.  [#3 — Walz]  [W]e are learning very quickly that Walz is as erratic, error-prone, and dishonest as Harris.  He too is already heading for seclusion from the media.  The man of the people from the countryside has scoffed, in self-incriminating Mike Bloomberg fashion, that rural Minnesota is little more than "rocks and cows."  In mere hours after his nomination, he has grown mute about his past and politics except for teleprompted rah-rah speeches — avoiding reporters, interviews, and unscripted moments.  Why?  Because, in less than a week, the nation learned that Walz lied about his military rank, lied that he had deployed to Iraq, and lied that he had carried a weapon in war.  The more we learn about Walz's record as governor in Minnesota, the more it trumps even the disastrous tenure of Gavin Newsom in his imploding doom-loop state that Walz apparently saw as a model for a once can-do stable Minnesota.

Watergate(s) on Steroids.  50 years and one day ago, Richard Nixon resigned as president less than two years after being the first man to sweep 49 of the 50 states in his landslide to re-election.  Washington forced out of office a man who had received more than 60% of the votes.  He left to the cries of no man is above the law, and the coverup is worse than the crime.  Both are untrue in the World of DC where a government too big and too powerful has been a magnet for crooks and traitors.  The crime in Watergate was the press, the deep state and Judge Sirica conspired to make a third-rate burglary a presidential scandal.

Everybody Knows the Captain Lied.  The dice have been loaded for decades.  The war was over in 1963 when the CIA, on behalf of the Deep State, murdered John F. Kennedy.  The American people (the good guys) lost, and the Deep State won.  They got their war in Vietnam.  They got their Welfare State.  They got guns, butter, a currency unlinked from gold, and the green light to create debt to infinity.  The Deep State has consolidated their power and control over every aspect of our lives in the six decades since they killed JFK.  They have used every crisis they create to abscond with more of our liberties, freedoms, rights and wealth.  In addition to the never-ending wars created around the globe to benefit their military industrial complex, their wars on poverty, drugs, terror, CO2, and covid have enriched them and their lackeys, while exacerbating the very things they declared war upon.  None of these wars are meant to be won.  Keeping the masses in fear and ignorance makes them easier to control.

As the stock market falls, so does Biden's White House of economic cards.  Time has finally caught up with the Biden-Harris administration's disastrous economic policies.  Global markets tumbled on Monday, sparked by sharp declines in leading US indicators, a worse-than-expected July jobs report and fears that the dollar will weaken in the coming months.  The sum of all fears — a hard recession — is again looming after President Biden squandered his time in office jacking up unproductive government spending, subsidizing key Democratic voting constituencies with costly handouts and gaslighting the public Soviet-style whenever any negative economic news reared its ugly head.  Since Biden entered office in 2021, he has overseen annual budget deficits of $2 trillion a year, thanks in part to his student loan bailout plan and other giveaways.  The 1.3 million public sector jobs he's added kept unemployment figures artificially low — and with no significant firings or layoffs among government workers, last week's spike in job losses meant they've come almost exclusively in the private sector.

'Kamala Crash'? Wall Street — And Everyone Else — Laying an Egg.  Did the July jobs report signal an oncoming recession?  Or has something else spooked stock markets around the globe?  Like, say, a regional war in the Middle East?  Or maybe a bad election outcome in the US? [...] The fall didn't start this morning, as an interactive chart on CNBC shows.  The DJIA peaked on Thursday and then began falling from its peak at 41,193 and some change.  By closing on Friday, the DHI had lost nearly 900 points; now it's down nearly 2600 points since the Thursday close, and apparently is still falling.  CNBC believes the shock of the large miss in the unemployment report on Friday is driving the losses.  But AI trading could be partly to blame too: [...]

Which Party Protects the Vulnerable?  Numbers can lie, but no one can deny that poverty exists in America, and poverty contributes to vulnerability.  And Biden/Harris have made poverty worse.  Between 1959 and 2023, average American incomes grew at 3.2%, but during the Biden/Harris administration, incomes declined, including the worst year (the 2022 decline of 4.2%) since 1959.  Because of the effect of compounding, those declines will continue to affect workers for decades to come.  Under Trump, the median average household income rose from $61,372 to $67,521, more than a 10% increase despite the effects of COVID in the last year of his term.

Guess Who Is Going to Steal the Election (or Tank the Economy!) This Time.  So now it's the Federal Reserve that's going to either taint the November election or tank the economy.  "Delivering a rate cut ahead of the election could rile up Republicans and former President Donald Trump," the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, "but withholding a needed reduction could undermine the economy and upset Democrats."  Never mind that high rates are what's keeping inflation in check and that we've been told for three years that Bidenomics has delivered an economy so strong that it kicks sand in the face of 7% mortgages and 9% car loans.  The facts are that full-time, private-sector jobs are still well below pre-lockdown levels and that the labor participation rate has been declining for a year and remains well below where it was in 2019.  We've been in a jobs recession for four years and yet, thanks to Washington flooding the economy with trillions in funny money since 2020 and overregulation since 2021, inflation could still come roaring back.  So what is Fed Chair Jerome Powell supposed to do?

Starmer will follow in the footsteps of Ardern's "how to ruin a country".  The Conservative Woman published an article today by Stephen Becket discussing the policies and actions of New Zealand's Ardern government, drawing parallels with the government under Keir Starmer.  Becket was born in Scotland.  After leaving the British Army he spent over 40 years in construction, travelling the world.  After a lifetime working in jungles and deserts, he decided to retire to the more temperate climate of New Zealand.  "Although Ardern made me wonder if I had done the right thing," he said.  His article highlights issues such as energy bans leading to problems with fuel quality and supply, overpayment of certain public sector workers, soft approach to crime, negative impact on education, diversity and inclusion policies, inflated house prices, tensions around indigenous rights, media manipulation and the potential implications for the UK.  "Oil, gas and coal bans led to the closing down of the Marsden Oil Refinery, the only one in New Zealand.  This resulted in the importation of refined fuels, at greater cost and with a drop in the quality of that fuel," Becket wrote highlighting the problems that ensued because of this policy.

Freeing America From The Shackles Of Big Government.  [L]ast week marked the 55th anniversary of man landing on the moon.  Impelled by the words of a murdered president, Americans achieved what was easily the most technologically complex operation man ever undertook. [...] The moon landing was perhaps the high point of American civilizational achievement.  The America of the first two-thirds of the 20th century was a robust nation that could do almost anything.  Americans won two world wars and, between them, built the Empire State Building in 13 months and the nuclear bomb in 4 years.  Perhaps most tellingly was the fact that, at mid-century, Detroit was not only the richest city in the United States, it was the richest city in the entire world.

Charting A New Course.  The level of insanity in the government of the United States of America has crossed yet another red line.  The nearly simultaneous events of the Trump assassination attempt, the resignation of Joe Biden from the campaign, the Crowdstrike attack, the carelessness with which conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are being managed and the open border signal a lack of leadership at all levels.  The fact that there is no one apparently in charge or responsible for defending against any of these catastrophes, no one who takes the blame and subsequently is either fired or resign, indicates a level of acceptance of that failure and a queasy feeling that they are by design.  In the United States, and especially this page, there is an understanding that there has been a communist coup, probably initiated in 1963, but invigorated over the supposed Pandemic and the increasingly provable stolen election in 2020.  Other nations, however, see this as simple anarchy, producing a military and governmental weakness that can be exploited to their benefit.

Crowdstrike, which helped orchestrate the Trump-Russia hoax, is not to be trusted.  Over the weekend, the world has been witnessing a global software outage that has impacted computer systems across all sectors, from business to healthcare to critical infrastructure to government systems and beyond.  That problem reportedly traces back to a software update with companies that use Crowdstrike, a controversial American cybersecurity company with deep ties in government and political circles. [...] I know little to nothing about cybersecurity, but I know enough about Crowdstrike to never trust the company with legitimate professional services.  To understand the corruption associated with Crowdstrike, we have to go all the way back to 2015, when the cybersecurity outfit laundered its reputation and legitimacy to a massive campaign of fraud and deception that was organized by Hillary Clinton and the broader Democratic Party.  Democrats relied upon Crowdstrike — and for reasons still unknown, not the federal government — to determine that Russia was responsible for claimed cyber attacks against the Democratic National Commmitee (DNC) and email leaks from high-profile Democrats.

Trump's Hillbilly VP.  Trump nominated Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his vice president. [...] Trump's nomination of Vance is significant.  It shows that he was committed to picking a vice president who's fully on board with his MAGA agenda.  This isn't 2016 when Trump went with Mike Pence, the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment.  In 2016, Trump was willing to play by the "rules," much like in 1980 when the Republican establishment pushed the moderate George Bush on the more conservative Ronald Reagan.  Bush had previously condemned Reagan's supply-side economic agenda, "voodoo economics."  So he wasn't a natural Reaganite.  The consultant class, including Karl Rove and other Republican advisers, were highly critical of Trump's decision to nominate Vance.  They preferred a more centrist figure, hopefully from a swing state, who could appeal to suburban voters, or a female or minority candidate to attract those demographics.  But Trump ignored them and picked Vance.

JD Vance:  The Perfect Pick.  J.D. Vance was there through it all.  Right alongside us, he has become a fighter for election integrity and putting America First.  He has decried weaponizing the justice system for political purposes.  He is against men competing in women's sports and has strongly opposed killing the unborn.  His voting record speaks for itself.  He currently has a 93% rating with the conservative grassroots organization Heritage Action for America, whereas most republicans have a 63% score.  His opposition to increasing the national debt, and tying federal funding for military defense and securing the southern border to foreign wars, is unwavering.

The price of calling Trump a Nazi is made obvious.  At what point does angry political discourse cross the line between legitimate impassioned advocacy and direct incitement to violence?  It's a question that's been all too common in both the United States and Israel for the past generation.  It's one that would be difficult to answer for even the most objective observers.  But given that few of us are truly objective about the issues and disputes that generate the greatest amount of heat, most tend to respond along self-interested lines, treating our own positions as inherently legitimate and those of the people with whom we disagree as clearly beyond the pale.  That is why acts of political violence — such as the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump this past weekend — can just as easily exacerbate the tensions within societies rather than help heal them.

Any Assassination Investigation That Includes Merrick Garland Or Chris Wray Is A Coverup.  The White House, Congress, and FBI immediately announced investigations into how a 20-year-old who couldn't make his high school gun team nearly killed the former and potentially future leader of the free world Saturday.  In a city as corrupt as Washington, D.C., "investigation" is politico-speak for "cover-up."  That goes double for Merrick Garland or Chris Wray, the heads of the DOJ and FBI, respectively.  Any investigation into this assassination attempt from which they do not recuse themselves is irrevocably poisoned.  In fact, any involvement even from their headquarters and D.C. offices is a sure sign the investigations are cover-ups.  It's not even clear that field offices are credible investigators.  The best option would be a genuinely independent commission or special prosecutor.

The Immaculate Conception of Thomas Crooks.  Plenty of poisonous rhetoric has been flying around on the left for the past decade.  Biden is waging a campaign whose only argument, expressed with intermittent coherency, is that democracy is on the ballot.  "We're done talking about the debate, it's time to put Trump in a bull's eye," Biden told donors last week.  Even in the 2022 midterms he was scaremongering in front of Washington, D.C.'s Union Station, telling voters that the race was about "democracy itself" and a Republican victory would "allow dark forces to thirst," whatever that means.  The New Republic and others compare former president Donald Trump to Hitler.  We don't know whether those moronic and misguided talking points led Thomas Crooks to try to assassinate Trump, but there are a few things we do know.
  [#1]   The Democratic Party has bathed itself in violent and hysterical rhetoric about Trump.  See above.  And yet, the Democratic Party has consistently egged on Trump in the belief that he is the weakest possible standard bearer for the GOP.
  [#2]   Trump is a force of nature, a unique political talent, and a showman who at the moment of maximum danger yesterday was at his finest.  As it turns out, the Republican primary voters who nominated him see things clearly.
  [#3]   The media are a spectacularly incompetent and ineffectual arm of the Democratic Party that has done more to empower Trump's rise and resurrection than any other institution in American life.

They Tried to Kill Trump — Now We're Going to Fight Twice As Hard.  Both Trump and America literally dodged a bullet, but the left did as well and doesn't even know it.  The scumbag crawled onto an open building roof with a view of the podium that somehow wasn't covered or defended and got off several shots that — but for one inch — would have blown Trump's brains out.  The convulsions that would've followed in our society are terrifying to imagine.  Unfortunately, he did manage to murder one Trump supporter and wound another.  You could almost feel the disappointment in the coverage by the regime media.  After the regime media reluctantly admitted it was an assassination attempt, which took hours, it was followed by a few halfhearted thoughts and prayers from the left, as well as more than a few social media cheers.  Major Democrats are now publicly shaking their collective collectivist head over political violence for once.  Out of public view, they are probably pounding their collective collectivist head against the wall because they fear — rightly — that Trump's glorious defiance in the face of his attempted murder may have just won him a landslide against their dementite candidate, a corrupted, perverted zombie who thinks Matlock is a real lawyer and that Hunter ought to hire him for his next trial.

The Loss of Political Trust.  There was a time when a majority actually believed our government.  Pollsters have quantified the erosion of trust.  Pew identified a peak of 77% in 1964, a full 55% above the current level.  Gallup puts the current number disbelieving the lone nut gunman explanation for the JFK assassination at 65%, static over the past decade but "higher between 1976 and 2003."  Immediately after the assassination, 52% believed in a conspiracy.  The objective of the Warren Commission's report — 16,000 pages, 27 volumes — was to bury the truth.  It failed.  Ditto for the J6 "select" committee.  Disbelievers increased to 81% in 1976, followed by a steady deterioration since.  Why?  Probably because younger generations are unfamiliar with the subject.  Why the 1976 peak?  That year the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed, eventually concluding: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."  And: "The committee believes on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a result of a conspiracy."

Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union.  Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982.  But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely.  Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.  By Brezhnev's late 60s and early 70s, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances.  Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.  Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.  "Journalists" sent out false communiques.  They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people.  Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom — or even their lives.

Dethroning Biden.  The rules for the debate that Biden's handlers demanded were no consequence to either participant.  Strangely, the Democrat-leaning moderators appeared to be fair to President Trump.  When adversaries suddenly display fairness they always have ulterior motives.  This was an order from the top, to allow Biden to crash on his campaign runway even before takeoff.  Biden's incoherent performance led to waves of disapproval within the DNC.  In just a few days those waves have become a tsunami across the party with many prominent Democrats in politics and Hollywood urging Biden to drop out and making it clear that he cannot win.  Nothing about this is genuine or well-meaning.  These individuals knew of Biden's decline all this time, but not only did they keep quiet but lavished blandishments on Biden.  Now they suddenly want him to quit.  George Clooney is a prime example.  Three weeks ago, he held a fundraiser for Biden.  He knew of Biden's condition but chose to stay mum.  But suddenly he urges Biden to quit and others such as Mia Farrow and Rob Reiner, join the flock.  This group, much like the debate moderators, is following orders from the DNC establishment.

Ending 'Treason Citizenship': Deporting "native born" terrorist supporters from America.  Terrorists running around cities waving the flags of Islamic terror groups could have easily been removed from the United States, even if they were born in this country, until the 1960s.  That's when the Warren Court detonated one of the 'bombs' buried in the 14th Amendment.  The 14th Amendment, passed during a period of suspension of civil liberties and legal norms after the Civil War, was an example of why the Framers made it so difficult to add amendments to the Constitution and why adding them is usually a bad idea. [...] But the biggest time bomb in the 14th Amendment was birthright citizenship.  The 14th Amendment had set out to end once and for all the debate about black citizenship that had been argued in cases like the Dred Scott decision by confirming citizenship for former slaves and their descendants.  While Section 1 had set out to stop Southern states from suppressing black voters, its sloppy language created the entire civil rights industry and automatically made anyone born in the United States a citizen regardless of anything else.

Reviving the Constitution.  For 60 years we've been waiting for the courts to recognize "affirmative action" for what it is: state-sanctioned racial discrimination.  Finally, at long last, the Supreme Court has ruled that benign intentions cannot justify discriminating against any racial group.  For 50 years we waited for the great, and thoroughly unconstitutional exercise of eugenics and birth control known as Roe v. Wade to be overturned, and it finally happened.  For 40 years we've waited for the sprawling, invasive administrative state to be brought under control, and with the overturning of "Chevron deference" it's finally happening.  None of these cases were, in the least sense, revolutionary.  They were, in turn, a restoration of equal protection, judicial restraint, and the separation of powers.

The Democrat mutiny machine wants to have their braindead Biden cake and eat it too.  Even if the mutiny attempt against President Biden succeeds, it seeems that he won't be made to resign immediately, because that would potentially empower the political opponents of the coup plotters.  You see, Democrats — which includes the politicians, the donor class, and especially, the corporate media — are in a bit of a pickle.  They want to declare Joe Biden braindead, but not so cognitively impaired that he wouldnt be able to serve out his term, but also braindead enough that he must immediately declare that he's not going to run for another term.  Should Biden resign or should VP Kamala Harris and the Biden cabinet pursue the 25th amendment approach, things would get rather dicey for the newly enshrined President Harris, who would become vulnerable to the political priorities of Republicans in Congress.  Some point to a potential precedent of how President John Tyler went an entire term without a vice president, but that would probably no longer fly.

Is Lawfare Against the Left the Only Means to Restore Norms?  The key to blocking political lawfare is more political lawfare, legal experts regretfully asserted Monday at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.  Possible targets for conservative lawfare include Attorney General Merrick Garland and Kristen Clarke, the head of his Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, they said.  Since President Joe Biden's administration, backed up by local and state prosecutors, has targeted former President Donald Trump and other conservative-leaning leaders, unilateral disarmament isn't an option, law professor and former government lawyer John Yoo said.  "Unfortunately in warfare, the only way to get someone who refuses to obey important norms is [that] you have to retaliate," Yoo told conferees at the Capital Hilton.  "So, if we're not going to become a banana republic, unfortunately we are going to have to use banana republic means exactly the same way by conservative or Republican DAs, until they stop."

Democrats — postpone Trump's sentencing and question Biden's fitness.  [Scroll down]  At the same time the Democrats temporarily postponed their lawfare against Trump, Democrat loyalists in the media and elsewhere are continuing the attack on Biden.  This is the same media that defended the current president as "the best Biden ever" up until June 27, knowing this was false.  The media could have done what they usually do to protect a Democrat:  ignore the issue, make up excuses, blame Trump, or pivot away from Biden and focus on "Trump's lies," abortion, racism, and Russia.  Democrat loyalists in the media typically never criticize their candidate.  Yet now, the Teleprompter Readers making seven-figure salaries who fancy themselves real journalists but are actually prostitutes for the elite, and many of the analysts and experts appearing on left-wing news continue questioning Biden's fitness.  They had to receive permission to squeal to their sheep about Biden's deteriorated cognitive state.  Biden, though, insists he's not going anywhere, and is now on the offensive against the elite.  But someone gave instructions to Bragg to opt out of fighting the sentencing delay and gave the media permission to tell the truth about Biden.

Who Turned Off the Gaslight?  There's a reason that the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes is so potent:  it describes a mentally ill society that retreats into abject unreality, to avoid contending with truth.  Alas, this archetypal human quandary shoves such a society towards nemesis:  downfall and punishment.  And that is exactly the consequence of our news media's craven, dishonorable, degenerate behavior the past decade.  They have disordered our nation's consensus about reality with peremptory lying about everything, in service to a political party that lies to its citizens about everything.  The big question is:  who or what recruited them into serving the Party of Chaos, and why did they go along?

The Spirit of 1776.  Any smooth-talking politician who pretends that government should be praised for the "gifts" it bestows upon the people is a smiling agent of the Crown fashioning new chains for citizens to wear.  Laws, taxes, and regulations do not liberate human beings; they are the bricks and mortar trapping us inside ever-smaller cells.  Government is the destroyer of liberty.  Bureaucracies do not light the flame of freedom; they snuff freedom's light out.  People alone (separate from the organizing strictures of the State) secure their liberty by pushing back against and restraining the otherwise ever-growing oppression of power-hungry governments.  Citizens hold the keys to their own prison cells.  They must only find the courage to open up their doors and walk outside.  This was true in 1776; it is no less true today.

The Only Way to Read This Biden Fundraising Email Is That the Campaign Is Having a Meltdown.  Joe Biden's Thursday night debate performance was unspinnable.  The only way to cope is to pretend it didn't happen.  The debate was on CNN, which was friendly territory for Democrats, with debate rules the Biden team thought would benefit them.  Instead, it blew up in their faces, with Joe Biden being kicked in his dentures for 90 minutes in a national political slaughter where Trump didn't need to do much heavy lifting.  That's one of the most [damaging] aspects — all Trump had to do was not bully Biden and deliver his lines without entering a brain fog.  The former president did that, but Biden failed miserably.  Democratic donors, lawmakers, and other bigwigs are freaking out.  However, the Biden campaign is still trotting out the 'don't believe your lying eyes' line, and it's insulting to the American voter, especially to supporters of the president — all of whom know that Biden got steamrolled.

Biden's Failing Brain Exposes Deep State Treachery.  I know the country's going to hell in a handbasket.  Inflation is killing working-class families.  Illegal immigrants are raping and murdering little girls.  "Woke" corporations are pushing "transgender" madness on young children.  Public schools are telling students that they will not survive the "climate apocalypse."  Biden and the build back better buffoons in control of Western governments are doing everything they can to drag us into WWIII.  Still, if you are a Trump supporter who believes the status quo must go, Thursday's presidential debate was awfully fun.  Perhaps you couldn't bring yourself to watch the event "live" because you knew CNN was going to do everything it could to prop Biden up and tear Trump down.  If that is the case, then surely you were happy to awaken the next morning and find your usual newsfeed filled with two types of headlines:  one recognizing Trump's winning performance and the other recounting Biden's total humiliation.

Two Trump justices just failed the First Amendment test.  The U.S. Supreme Court may have mortally wounded the Constitution this week by seemingly forgetting or not caring that the First Amendment is kind of the whole ballgame. [...] Stick with me now, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.  Because if "we the people" don't have permanent and unambiguous standing on behalf of the First Amendment to the Constitution, then explain to me what we can possibly have standing on without threat of it being taken away.  And what is the ACLU's standing to sue Oklahoma over speech?  Or what's the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation's standing to sue Louisiana over speech?  Notice how this street only goes one way?

Archbishop Viganò: I accuse Bergoglio of heresy and schism.  [Scroll down]  Before my brothers in the episcopate and the entire ecclesial body, I accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of heresy and schism, and I ask that he be judged as a heretic and schismatic and removed from the throne which he has unworthily occupied for over 11 years.  This in no way contradicts the adage Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur, because it is evident that, since a heretic is unable to assume the Papacy, he is not above the Prelates who judge him.  I also accuse Jorge Mario Bergoglio of having caused — due to the prestige and authority of the Apostolic See which he usurps — serious adverse effects, sterility, and death in the millions of faithful who followed his insistent invitation to undergo the inoculation of an experimental gene serum produced with aborted fetuses, even to the point of issuing a formal "Note" declaring that using the vaccine is morally permissible[.]  He will have to answer before the tribunal of God for this crime against humanity.  Finally, I denounce the secret agreement between the Holy See and the Chinese communist dictatorship, by which the Church has been humiliated and forced to accept the government appointment of bishops, the control of liturgical celebrations, and limitations on its freedom of preaching, while Catholics loyal to the Apostolic See are persecuted with impunity by the Beijing government with the complicit silence of the Roman Sanhedrin.

The debate:  A victory in the first half.  Biden's response to the question about voters feeling worse off under his presidency appeared unnaturally polished, almost as if he were reading from an invisible teleprompter.  This raised questions about the authenticity of his answers.  His comments on Medicare, where he repeatedly misspoke about "trillionaires" when he meant billionaires, only added to the perception of his stumbling performance.  Tapper had to step in to redirect the conversation, highlighting Biden's difficulty in staying on message.  Trump did not miss the opportunity to point out what he described as Biden's failures.  He accused Biden of weaponizing his office against political opponents, describing Biden's actions as "absolutely criminal."  Trump emphasized the safer borders and stronger national security during his administration, contrasting them with what he called Biden's open-border policies.

The death of Europe is greatly exaggerated.  I spent the last month hiking and trekking in France, Austria and Germany. [...] I concluded in a non-scientific sort of way that the death of Europe has been greatly exaggerated. [...] French women are very friendly but not very hot.  German women are very hot but not very friendly.  (Those respective attributes and liabilities make sense when you think about it.)  Scottish women are neither.  German men are large.  Europeans don't refrigerate eggs.  We don't have to refrigerate them either, and grocery stores know that, but American consumers don't.  Muslims are certainly in Europe.  In France in particular, it's common to see Muslim women.  You know they are Muslim because they want you to know.  They are in long dresses and scarves.  They tend to be overweight.  A great many are pushing baby carriages.

Insider Trading:  Why Politicians Can Do it and You Can't.  When the SEC prosecutes someone, it can cost millions of dollars in legal fees to defend against them.  And as with most regulatory law, concepts of ethics, justice, and property rights never even enter the equation.  Instead, it's a question of arbitrary legalities.  Whether someone is prosecuted of insider trading is largely a question of who he is.  A maverick researcher and a powerful government official will tend to get very different treatments.  It's also a question of the psychology and motives of the prosecutor.  Insider trading is generally a non-crime that can be used in a Kafkaesque manner by upward-mobile prosecutors.  Insider trading should, at best, be the basis of a tort suit by a company if a board member betrays a trust.  It shouldn't be a crime prosecuted by the State.  Any ethical problem shouldn't be about how information is used or who profits but whether it's acquired honestly.  Whether information is "inside" has no moral significance as long as it is honestly acquired.

Let this be the last debate.  I am not saying debates are irrelevant.  Certainly the 1960 debates elected JFK and the one Carter-Reagan debate in 1980 elected the right man president.  But if Nixon had won, the nation and world would be better today.  Nixon and Khrushchev held an impromptu kitchen debate in 1959 and the Soviet leader learned not to mess with him.  Khrushchev met with Kennedy in Vienna in 1961 and sized him up as a fool.  A year later, the Berlin Wall was built and Soviet missiles were headed for Cuba.  Politicians have adapted and are wary of debates.  That the only debate between Biden and Trump occurs this week, four months ahead of the election, informs me that no one wants to risk having the debate affect the outcome.  I agree.  While I am not knee-deep in the hoopla, I am amused by the spectacle before the spectacle.

If Julian Assange Is A Criminal, So Is The Entire Corporate Press.  Julian Assange is now a free man, but he should never have been charged with a crime to begin with.  The Wikileaks founder, who has spent the last five years in a British prison, was released Monday after striking a deal with President Biden's Department of Justice.  Assange pleaded guilty to violation of the Espionage Act for publishing classified material about U.S. government operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan beginning in 2009. [...] As Assange's years-long ordeal comes to a close, it's worth noting that what was done to him is criminal — and it poses a very real threat for journalists who dare to question the national security state.  Put simply, what Assange did is no different than what The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and many other corporate media outlets do every day: they publish and report on classified material that was stolen or obtained illegally by sources.  The main difference between Assange and these outlets is that Assange did what he did in order to hold power to account, whereas the corporate press does it in service of power — at least when a Democratic administration is in the White House.

Trump Needs to Hammer This During the Debate.  The first and perhaps only presidential debate between presumed nominees Donald Trump and Joe Biden takes place on June 27 in CNN's Atlanta headquarters.  Home court advantage goes to President Biden.  Is there anyone at CNN, aside from the janitors and cleaning crew, that support Trump?  Doubtful.  The debate will be moderated by the Trump hating undynamic duo of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.  CNN will mute the microphones, to keep Trump from objecting to Biden's fabrications, and likely to silence Biden's gibberish, something occurring with increasing frequency.  No live audience will watch the debates, which will run 90 minutes, two commercial breaks, time for Biden to get a shot of vitamins, stimulants, or whatever keeps him awake and coherent for brief stretches of time.  "CNN said they won't be allowed to use any props or pre-written notes but will be given paper, a pen and water."

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  I suspect Biden's "paper" will have all his talking points on it, and Trump's paper will be blank.  And if I were Trump, I'd trade water bottles with Biden at the last minute.

Everything in Our Civilization Is Stacked To Keep Us Believing the Propaganda.  It's not so much that people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are dumb, or because humans are selfish.  Primarily, people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are lazy. [...] This lazy tendency to select for cognitive ease and defend the worldviews we construct as a result of that tendency is what gives rise to confirmation bias, because believing things which confirm our preexisting ideas about the world is easier than believing things which would blow our worldview apart.  If you're among those who've gone from fully believing the mainstream propaganda worldview to realizing that everything you've been trained to believe about the world is a lie, then you know how uncomfortable and disruptive this shift can be.

Canada is America's Least Helpful Ally.  The official NATO estimate of Canada's defense effort is only 1.33% of GDP.  Canada is currently the world's ninth largest economy, and the most productive major manufacturer committed to unilateral disarmament.  A combination of incipient anti-Americanism, which creeps in as early as grade school history education, coupled with a federal government focused narrowly on the material well-being of Canadians, disincentivizes political leadership from spending political capital on international relations.  From the perspective of a Canadian, U.S. politics oscillates wildly from expensive international engagement to isolationist hostility against international norms and institutions.  Canadians, in contrast, proudly embrace joining international organizations that demand little of it.

The Coming Collapse Of Venezuela.  Here's Peter Zeihan to state what conservatives knew a decade ago:  Venezuela is headed for collapse.  [Video clip] [...] "In calendar year 2022 and calendar year 2023, the Biden Administration did a partial lifting of sanctions on the regime, basically saying that if you start working in the direction of free and fair elections, we will allow investment to come in to stabilize the energy sector and get some more oil out of the ground.  Uh, we're going to trust your word for it, and then we will reassess when we get closer to elections in 2024."  I bet everyone reading this can figure out exactly how well that worked out.  "We'll just take your word that your three card monte game is on the level."

It's All Fixable.  The bureaucracy of DC exists to sustain the career influence and affluence of a group of people who would never survive in the private sector.  Their weak work ethic, selfish worldview, insufferably annoying character traits, flawed logic, silly outlooks and disconnected opinions created in a bubble that has no relationship to reality, are only useful within their echo-chambered system.  President Trump has a skillset of commonsense accomplishment that runs completely counter to the mindset of the administrative state.  President Trump thinks like you and me; Trump finds optimal solutions.  Washington DC simply cannot fathom successful policy outcomes that do not come from their creation.  Trump succeeded with a doctrine that was entirely unfamiliar to the DC bureaucracy.  It is absolutely critical that we never forget this.

A Gift From God.  "The Internet is a gift from God," said my brother once, "that will save mankind from tyranny and injustice.  The people now have a power to reckon with."  I think my wise old brother had forgotten that those in power control the means of mass communication, including the Internet.  Did he not see that in this capacity they can use the Internet to make "the people" parrot their narratives and follow their agendas?  Had he not observed how easy it is to mold the opinion of a public dumbed down for generations in the public schools?  Were we actually to believe that people could liberate themselves from tyranny and injustice with computers, smartphones, tablets and what-have-you? [...] [T]he reality is that a computer, smartphone, or any device of access to the Internet is, to begin with, not even one's own property.  They really belong to the corporate conglomerate that controls them.  These devices can be disabled against the will of the users by those who run them, and this includes the government, along with private hackers.  The evidence ought to make it abundantly clear that technology is subject to manipulation by those who provide it and make it work.

The Broken Chain of Command.  There have been a few times in history when the decision of a single person has held back the waves of destruction of a nuclear war.  Most notable of those is Stanislov Petrov, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces and on duty in September of 1983.  It was only a few weeks after the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007. With international tensions running high, Petrov was informed of a missile launch from the United States.  Shortly after that the system showed that another five missiles had been launched.  They were, theoretically, in the air, on their way to Soviet Russia.  But Petrov did not report the launch to superiors as he was supposed to, knowing that a counterstrike would be ordered based on his report.  Several minutes ticked by as he waited for confirmation of the launches that never came and he did not report it until later. [...] One thing Petrov had going for him was the general suspicion of computers prevalent in 1983, so when he received an erroneous report from sensors that there was one launch, and then five more, he had reason to doubt the validity of what turned out to be a rare alignment of sunlight on high altitude clouds.  Today's military are much less skeptical of the accuracy of computer generated reports.

D-Day and America in 2024.  This nation is at the stage that it cannot be salvaged if far too many Americans continue to be obsequiously deferential to and place their unbridled faith in the self-serving promises of egomaniacal collectivist politicians and succumb to the irrational influence of the nescient societal elites.  The past four years have been a period of extreme trials and tribulations for the people of the United States.  They are struggling to regain a sense of optimism and confidence in the face of near unbridled despotism, brought about by one political party.  If Americans, beginning in 2024, do not begin the process of soundly rejecting the Democrat party and returning to the advancement of liberty and individual self-determination that so many over the past 248 years fought to defend, then the sacrifices of the soldiers on D-Day and their fellow patriots over the centuries will have been in vain.

Did The Government Frame Lee Harvey Oswald?  A Forged Object In An X-Ray Says 'Yes'.  Dr. David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., in conducting his optical density (OD) measurements of the three extant JFK autopsy skull X-rays in the National Archives, was perplexed at finding a 6.5 mm object inside JFK's right orbit on the anterior-posterior (AP) skull X-ray.  This (apparent) bullet cross-section was clearly the largest metal-like object in the X-ray films.  But — under oath — none of the three autopsy pathologists could recall seeing it at the autopsy, nor did they remove it.  Even more mysteriously, that piece of "metal" is not in the National Archives.

Sometimes People Aren't Merely Misguided.  They Really Are Evil.  If people are working for an evil cause — whether they identify as a freedom fighter, Woke individual, humanist, truth-teller, or whatever pop culture phraseology they may care to use when they work for the Devil — the core evil of that cause rubs off on them.  Certainly, redemption is possible, but the siren song of engaging in evil acts for supposedly good causes is not a form of protesting, no matter how much your cute little college coed thinks it is.  Nor is revisionist history that seeks to reform evil people.  Groups like Hamas or individuals like Hitler, Marx, or AOC parroting the party line of evil agendas will always be as evil personally as the essential evil that they espouse.  I don't care if Hitler loved [his dog] Blondi.  It does not change his status one iota.

Let's Pick Members of Congress at Random.  Anyone who managed to stay awake during their classes in high school knows how members of Congress are selected.  People who wish to run for office set up campaigns and the parties hold primary races to determine candidates.  Then a general election is held and the person with the most votes is sworn in at the beginning of the next session.  So how's that been working out?  According to many, not all that well, really.  With that in mind, Rasmussen has once again asked the public if we might be better off if we just randomly selected people out of the phone book and sent them to Washington.  The largest majority in the history of this survey (54%) said that randomly selected members would probably do a better job.  Let's hope the current crew in DC is paying attention to these results.

The Editor says...
The idea set forth in the article above has some potential, but needs a few modifications.  [#1] Put the idea into a referendum.  If the voters approve, then  [#2] select the Congressman for that district at random from all those who have been residing that district for at least five years, and have voted there, and are between 30 and 75 years of age.  Send the random volunteer to a week of basic training in the law, the Constitution, history and civics.  Then [#3] have that person serve one term, provided he or she is willing.  (If not, make another selection.)  That congressman may run for re-election, for a second (and final) term, provided he isn't disqualified by the next step (which is an idea that could stand on its own):  [#5] In odd numbered years, administer a standardized IQ test to everyone in the House of Representatives.  Those who score in the bottom five percent may not run for re-election.  This country should be governed by the smartest people, not the stupidest.

You are being nudged.  We might expect our governments to rely on transparent rational argument to influence the electorate.  Recently published research, on the other hand, has given further credence to a view that has been gaining popularity over the last decade or so:  our thoughts and actions are being furtively influenced, on an unparalleled scale, so as to align them with the goals of our political elite.  A major source of this psychological manipulation is state-funded behavioural science, a discipline dedicated to strategically reconfiguring our physical, social and informational environments — by deployment of "nudges" — so as to increase the likelihood that we do the "right" thing.  A nudge is a method of persuasion that often achieves its impact below the target's level of conscious awareness, thereby providing a "low cost, low pain" way of inducing new ways of behaving "by going with the grain of how we think and act".

When every word uttered can be deemed offensive, small talk is doomed.  What is wrong with people these days?  Why is everybody tripping over themselves to take offence?  When did hypersensitivity become a lifestyle choice?  That's what I might have said had I stood on the steps of the Old Bailey this week, channelling Elle Woods (yes, we are clearly related) in Legally Blonde after an employment tribunal ruled against a Japanese academic and in favour of small talk.  What's that?  Employment tribunals aren't heard at the highest court in the land, but in drearily municipal buildings without Sicilian marble floors, allegorical paintings or even a single ornate mosaic arch between them?  Oh, and also the Old Bailey is a criminal court and it's not an offence to sue your bosses because a colleague mentioned a fondness for sushi?

Biden can't be trusted to take on anti-Semitism.  On 7 May, Joe Biden condemned the 'anti-Semitic posters', the 'slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel' and the 'rationalising' of 7 October on colleges across the US. Such practices 'must stop', he said in a speech marking the annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Yet where does the US president think that campus anti-Semitism comes from?  Pro-Hamas hysteria is the foreseeable outcome of a belief system dominant not only in academia, but also in Biden's own administration — a belief system in which the West is [condemned] as 'systemically racist', and the world divided between 'marginalised groups' and the white, male, heterosexual power structure that oppresses them.  Campus anti-Semitism will not stop until the university is transformed and the Democratic Party rejects identity politics.

The Looming Electrical Power Shortage.  People in developed nations take abundant electricity for granted.  When asked where electricity comes from, most will point to their wall outlet.  But many states in the U.S. are headed for a serious and prolonged shortage of electrical power not seen in decades, driven by rising demand from the artificial intelligence revolution and mandates to adopt green energy.  For 20 years, U.S. electrical power policy has been dominated by efforts to try to "mitigate" global warming, believed to be caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.  In 2021, President Joe Biden called for achieving a 100% carbon-free electric sector by 2035.  Twenty-three states have enacted statutes or issued executive orders to achieve net-zero electricity generation by 2050.  Because of net-zero mandates, grid operators spent the last two decades replacing coal-fired power plants with natural gas plants, wind turbines, and solar installations.  More than 200 coal plants have been closed, reducing electricity output from coal by almost 60% since 2007.

The Editor says...
Artificial intelligence is a small part of the demand at this point.  Larger amounts of power go into marijuana farming, bitcoin mining, and electric car charging.  All of them benefit only small fractions of the population, and are thus dispensable.  (Even so, if electricity is available, and consumers buy it, nobody should ask, "Why do you need this much electricity?")  There is no reason to tolerate rolling blackouts, because the United States has plenty of coal and natural gas available, if the government would get out of the way.

The Machinery of Fascism Revisited.  Read any writings from polite society from 1932 to 1940 or so, and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed.  They should be replaced by some version of what was called the planned society, of which fascism was one option.  A book by that name appeared in 1937 as published by the prestigious Prentice-Hall, and it included contributions by top academics and high-profile influencers.  It was highly praised by all respectable outlets at the time.  Everyone in the book was explaining how the future would be constructed by the finest minds who would manage whole economies and societies, the best and the brightest with full power.  All housing should be provided by government, for example, and food too, but with the cooperation of private corporations.  That seems to be the consensus in the book.  Fascism was treated as a legitimate path.  Even the word totalitarianism was invoked without opprobrium but rather with respect.  The book has been memory-holed of course.

Unrepresentative Government.  The 2020 election was strange because of COVID, which became a pretext to change the rules in order to rig the outcome.  This time, there is no such excuse for a "basement campaign."  It's true that Biden is old, feeble, and unpopular.  And Trump has been sidelined, quite deliberately, by a malicious New York judge who won't allow him to travel and conduct his signature rallies.  The problem, however, now infects all electoral politics.  There used to be rituals common to all political campaigns, but you don't see them much anymore.  This included multiple events taking place every day, announced in advance, and open to the media and the public.  There used to be rituals common to all political campaigns, but you don't see them much anymore.

Call for the Resignation of Pope Francis.  [Scroll down]  On October 4, 2019, Pope Francis attended an act of idolatrous worship of the pagan goddess Pachamama, and participated in this act of idolatrous worship by blessing a wooden image of Pachamama.  On October 7, the idol of Pachamama was placed in front of the main altar at St. Peter's and then carried in procession to the Synod Hall.  Pope Francis said prayers in a ceremony involving this image and then joined in this procession.  When wooden images of this pagan deity were removed from the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina and thrown into the Tiber by Catholics outraged by this profanation of the church, Pope Francis, on October 25, apologized for their removal and another wooden image of Pachamama was returned to the church.  On October 27, in the closing Mass for the synod, he accepted a bowl used in the idolatrous worship of Pachamama and placed it on the altar.

Warning: Everything on Social Media Is Probably Fake.  If you are on a social network like Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, do not trust any video you see, especially any that asks you for personal info or credit cards.  Advertisers are using images of well-loved celebrities to hawk their wares and I don't know how they get away with it.  The latest one I saw was a video of Tom Hanks promoting a dental plan, but fortunately, Mr. Hanks went on several talk shows warning that his AI image was being used and he was not endorsing any dental plan.

Unscientific American.  In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country's leading mainstream science magazine.  Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer — some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all.  SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints.  In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics.  In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs.  Suddenly, certain orthodoxies — especially concerning race, gender, or climate — couldn't be questioned.

The Paramount U.S. Constitution.  To preserve our constitutional republic, the federal government must stop funding all initiatives undermining this country and its historic values.  Funding should be eliminated for Marxist critical theory (e.g.  CRT, DEI, ESG, gender theory, etc.) implementation and promulgation (e.g. through our own government, into the hydra known as the U.N., WEF, and supporting nonprofits and NGOs), for Trojan horses such as climate change emergencies spurring energy costs skyward and aiming to destroy unfavored industries and coercing consumers into buying inferior products they wouldn't otherwise voluntarily purchase, and for the multitude of expenditures that are inconsistent with the limited powers granted the federal government.  Expenditures for the military industrial complex, censorship industrial complex, medical/pharmaceutical industrial complex, federal police state, and NATO should be on the chopping block. [...] Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Congress must assert its constitutional prerogative to be the only branch of government passing legislation.

Journalism Is Not a Crime, Even When It Offends the Government.  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned in London for five years, while Texas journalist Priscilla Villarreal was only briefly detained at the Webb County Jail.  But both were arrested for publishing information that government officials wanted to conceal.  Assange and Villarreal argue that criminalizing such conduct violates the First Amendment.  In both cases, the merits of that claim have been obscured by the constitutionally irrelevant question of who qualifies as a "real" journalist.  Assange, an Australian citizen, is fighting extradition to the United States based on a federal indictment that charges him with violating the Espionage Act by obtaining and publishing classified documents that former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked in 2010.  He has already spent about as much time behind bars as federal prosecutors say he would be likely to serve if convicted.

You're on your own: what to do about it.  The police can't protect you.  There are so very few of them, and even if you're able to call 911, it's going to take much longer than you'll have for officers to arrive, even longer for them to orient, decide and act.  Better yet, the police have no obligation to protect anyone, and can't be successfully sued for failing to protect anyone.  Sound crazy?  If they could be sued for failing to protect people they had no idea needed protection, who would become a police officer?  What city could afford a police force?  One could simply never go out in public, but then there are home invasions and burglaries, so that's no solution.  Besides, why should any American surrender their freedom of movement and association to the depredations of criminals, particularly when the American Left is encouraging and aiding them?

What became of communism in Vietnam?  Rainer Zitelmann's book, How Nations Escape Poverty, is particularly interesting for American veterans who served as G.I.s in Vietnam or for those who may have lost their fathers or family members in the conflict.  The irony of history is that the communists initially won — however, upon establishing their socialist regime across Vietnam, they came to realize what a huge mistake they had made.  Today, young Vietnamese in particular admire the USA and capitalism, as Zitelmann's book shows. [...] Zitelmann describes how Vietnam, the poorest country in the world in 1990, overcame poverty and became a prosperous country by abolishing the planned economy and introducing private property rights.  By examining the case of Poland, which was among the poorest countries in Europe in the 1980s but has since emerged as Europe's growth champion for the past three decades, Zitelmann shows how capitalism makes people's lives better.

War By Affirmative Action?  Why does Biden play Iranian poker with American and Israeli lives?  [Advertisement]  Answer?  He envisions war sort of like affirmative action, in which the less accomplished belligerent is allowed all sorts of concessions for the sake of equity.  [Advertisement]  Israeli and American military capability, and particularly their missile defenses, are seen as unfair, almost like high achievers' top SAT scores that are seen as unearned and used to privilege some over others and therefore must be countered or dropped.  Given Iran's and its surrogates' incompetence, the administration, then, must extend the theocracy some allowances "to level the playing field."  Biden does not believe in an equality of opportunity in war, when an aggressor does its best to attack or indeed destroy a defender, who in turn does its own best to retaliate and achieve victory.

Pope Francis on Earth Day:  Planet Is 'Falling into Ruin'.  Pope Francis commemorated Earth Day on Monday by warning that the planet is "falling into ruin" thanks to humanity's failure to protect it.  "Our generation has bequeathed many riches, but we have failed to protect the planet and we are not safeguarding peace," the pontiff chided on X (former Twitter).  "We are called to become artisans and caretakers of our common home, the Earth which is 'falling into ruin,'" he declared, followed by "#EarthDay."  For the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, Pope Francis issued a similar indictment of humanity's failure to care for the planet, blaming human selfishness for the ruin of the earth.

The Editor says...
Only someone with little or no faith, and little or no knowledge of the Bible, could think the Earth has been ruined or can be ruined by mere humans.

Who is going to tell them?  Kennedys boost RFK, Jr.'s campaign without realizing it.  [Scroll down]  Everyone knows that RFK, Jr. is not like the rest of the Kennedy chi-chi crowd.  He thinks for himself, he challenges canards and narratives, he takes care of himself, he talks sense on many things, and he certainly has lived an honorable life.  He couldn't be less like the rest of the Kennedys and that's part of why he's doing so well in the polls.  Unbeknownst to the Kennedys who put out these ads, Americans don't like dynasties.  The dynasty thing was one factor that took down Jeb Bush as the GOP heir presumptive in 2015-2016; Bush's statements were the other.  The same dynamic loathing of dynasties is going on on the Democrat side, but with RFK, Jr. alienated from the Kennedy compound clan, his bloodlines are not held against him.  The Kennedys would have you think that they're so royal, so influential, so popular, that people just won't be able to resist their appeal to vote for senile old Joe.

America is in a Deepwater Horizon Moment.  Moments like the one we live in now come along from time to time, providing the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past.  For instance, key takeaways from the Deepwater Horizon incident of April 2010 and how they apply to today are clear except to those who deny them. [...] Today, the financial pressure percolating below the surface of trillions of dollars of debt is being denied as a problem by the so-called experts who know just enough about economics to be dangerous.  At some point the pressure will be too much not just for the U.S. but for the nations to whom the U.S. is indebted as well.  The results will be a global catastrophe.  However, just as with the Deepwater Horizon, where needless suffering and death could have been avoided if the "experts" had listened to the people with the experience running the rig, so too global disaster can be avoided if the people with the experience resist the pressure of the so-called experts.

The World Is Paying A Deadly Price For Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Legacy.  If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States, would Joe Biden call it a "win"?  Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show "restraint"?  What if that same terror state's proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children?  What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences?  This is what Joe Biden and the Barack Obama acolytes, Iranian dupes, and Israel antagonists he's surrounded himself with demand of Jewish State.  And by "Iranian dupes," I don't only mean the Jake Sullivans and Antony Blinkens of the world, who worked to elevate the mullahs over Sunni allies and the Israelis, or even a Hamas-bestie like Rob Malley or Israel-hater like Maher Bitar.  I mean assets of the Islamic State who promised the Iranian government to help out in any way possible.  Their worldview is a cancer that's metastasized within the Democratic Party.

"Don't" Is Not A Foreign Policy.  The ground shook in Tehran as Ali Khamenei, the 84 year old supreme leader of Iran, shook in his boots as he listened to President Joe Biden give his terse warning to Iran about attacking Israel.  Biden looked into the camera, mustered all of his intestinal fortitude, and barked a single word that he thought would instill fear in the rogue country, "Don't."  Without another sound, he turned and shuffled away from the podium.  He had spoken.  It was feckless, but why should we expect more from this man who has disappointed us daily during his presidency?  I can imagine Biden had a similar effect on Benjamin Netanyahu as he listened to the American President, and it just adds to the confusing message of support that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been delivering since the October 7 attack last year.  One day, Biden is pledging unwavering military support for our greatest ally in the Middle East, and the next day, he is condemning Israel's strategy and tactics.  Since World War II, American support for the sovereignty and safety of Israel has been unconditional except for two Presidencies, Obama and Biden.

Independent Voters:  Not the Brightest Crayons in the Box.  After the popular votes of five of the last six presidential elections, what other conclusion are we to reasonably derive?  Leftists are not stupid.  Leftists are intolerant, fanatical, violent, fascistic, and single-minded in purpose.  But they are not stupid.  They control the media, the schools, Big Tech, much of corporate America, the IRS, the DOJ, the FBI, the Pentagon, an increasing number of religious organizations, and almost every lever of representative and bureaucratic government, not to mention our physical streets, whenever they want, with zero consequence.  Whatever that is, it isn't stupidity.  Stupidity is maintaining the farce that choosing between democratic republicanism and mob tyranny is a difficult choice for rational citizens.  With both parties now on polar opposite sides of the spectrum, the idea that there exists any legitimacy in carefully weighing which side to vote for no longer holds merit.

A Big Hand for the Little Ladies.  Unfortunately, the tanks did eventually roll on into Tiananmen Square to crush the protestors, merely delayed, not stopped, by the random man.  Leftists are never stopped for long — even if their cultural tanks are momentarily blocked by a couple of problematic children's authors. [...] The scolding busybodies in Scotland are not going to ever forget how J.K. Rowling has defied them.  Pointing out that their philosophy just doesn't work doesn't change their minds.  Because Marxism, communism, socialism, or any other kind of -ism, are really just flags of convenience.  The true motivation is the gathering, growth, and entrenchment of power.  Power over you, incidentally.  No amount of logical argument will divert them from that path.  The answer is to limit the amount of power piled in one spot, governmental or otherwise.  It draws them like flies to honey.  Or to manure, depending on which metaphor you might think more appropriate.

Who does the Commie Pope think they is?  The current Pope was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, and took the name Francis when he moved to Rome.  The Cardinals thought they were showing real strategerie in picking a guy from Latin America.  There's lots of alleged Catholics there, and their numbers grow every day.  In contrast, in Italy there aren't even many putative Catholics, even fewer real ones, and their numbers are dwindling every day as Italians make a religion out of defying the Church's birth control prohibitions.  Pope Francis is known for what he doesn't like.  He doesn't like Israel.  He doesn't like Ukraine.  He doesn't like America.  He doesn't like Europe.  He doesn't like the best tool in history for alleviating material suffering — capitalism.  However, he does like food.  He likes to lecture people about their morals.  Like all Argentinians, he likes inflation.  He likes Karl Marx.  But (or is it "therefore"?) he likes the most lavish palace in all of Christendom, the Vatican.

Biden [is] Not [the] Only Reason for Dems To Panic.  One incident last week showed the dynamic of the 2024 presidential election campaign better than anything else yet, and what it reveals is that the Democrats have good reason to panic, and it has nothing to do with the obvious weakness of their candidate.  What matters even more is that the Republican Party is showing signs of waking up from its long uniparty slumber and recognizing that fighting back is the best way to win an election.  You saw elements of this renewed engagement last month when the new leadership of the GOP opted to partner with community activist Scott Presler to increase voter registration and legal ballot harvesting in battleground states.

Why We Should Keep Lovin' on RFK Jr..  Back in the 1950s, there was the Red Scare.  Up until a couple of months ago, there was the "Kennedy Scare."  Corporate media was spinning that Robert Kennedy Jr. might swipe more votes from Donald Trump than creaky Joe Biden this autumn.  That was never going to happen.  RFK Jr. is Donald Trump's best chance to win the White House.  A three-candidate race hurts Joe Biden.  Okay, the state of nation matters, but with the electorate strongly polarized, the game is less about persuasion and mobilization than securing ballots.  Independents count, but many are partisan leaners, so they aren't truly independent-minded.  Securing your side's leaners is key in battleground states.

The Editor says...
I am confident that Mr. Trump is going to receive the greatest number of legitimate votes in the upcoming election.  The entrance of Mr. Kennedy into the race will make it impossible for the Socialist Democrats to manufacture enough fraudulent ballots to overcome Trump's lead.

The Bezmenov Plan:  Is America now in the Last Stage?  [Scroll down]  And it's not hard to recognize the plan being followed is parallel to the blueprint plan revealed forty years ago by Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who explained the four stages of communist subversion:  1) Demoralization, 2) Disorientation, 3) Crisis, and 4) Normalization.  The United States has been under prolonged internal attacks of demoralization for several generations, through the educational system and the culture which have delivered messaging that disparages the United States and derides traditional values.  The second stage, known as disorientation, is most successful after a large portion of the population has been demoralized.  Covid-19 brought about disorientation through mask mandates, social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, and the abandonment of best medical practices of preventative and therapeutic treatments.  Another important part of disorientation that was inflicted on America at that time was the ginned-up racism after the death of George Floyd, which triggered rioting, looting, and destruction of several billion dollars' worth of property and the tearing down of historic statues and memorials in many cities across the United States.

That 1938 Feeling:  A scent of trouble in the air.  It's feeling a little like 1938.  There's not a great power shooting war going on, but you can smell one coming.  There's the Ukraine war, which involves Russia (kindasorta a great power, but not really nowadays), and which seems to fill the role that the Spanish Civil War played in the 1930s — a testing ground for new technologies and tactics, and an indication of just how destructive, and expensive, modern war can be, but not a main event.  Meanwhile, the main antagonists — this time around, that's the United States and the People's Republic of China — are arming up, seeking allies, and thinking strategy and tactics.  [Tweet]

Only an 'Educated' 'Expert' Could Give Advice This Bad.  Sometimes, you see things that one cannot believe.  It is as if recent history means nothing.  The National Institute of Health is considering the effectiveness of an opioid (Tramadol) for depression.  The USA is still in the midst of an opioid crisis, and our edumacated experts are considering opioids as a treatment option?! [...] Again, if you have pain issues, there is nothing wrong with Tramadol.  It is quite effective, and it works.  Use it wisely.  But don't label it as an antidepressant.  And again, I can understand why some people might need psychiatric medication, but opioids should not be part of the psychiatric arsenal.

America's Minsky Moment Approaches.  Named after American economist Hyman Minsky, the idea behind a Minsky moment is that a financial markets crisis (especially in credit markets) is caused by a sudden and systemic collapse in asset prices, usually after a sustained period of speculative investment, excessive borrowing, and widespread financial risk taking.  In other words, it's the moment when the music stops playing, investors stop buying, and the Ponzi game ends abruptly.  It's a hard crash.  America may be on the brink of its Minsky moment.

The Third Fall of Rome.  What we take for granted today — freedom, safety, and prosperity — we might have to fight to keep tomorrow.  In the outside world, e.g. the capitals of the so-called "BRICS" countries, preparations are made to end the hegemony of the West.  Sure enough, we have paid indulgences for our alleged sins of colonialism for almost a hundred years.  However, we should not expect forgiveness or pity on that account.  In case we think that we have built "goodwill" with the third-world countries receiving foreign aid, we have seriously miscalculated.  As far as they are concerned, our wealth is up for grabs. [...] If the Westerners of today had any historical awareness of the past, they would know that, since the dawn of time, we have fought against invasions from the East.  The wealth and strength, which we have preserved so far, are due to the ingenuity of our ancestors, their courage and care for posterity.  However, there is a general reluctance to face the real dangers of today and fight for our home in the West.

America Has Become A Society Of Gamblers.  You may not think that the US economy is broken, but the average American would disagree.  It is now less expensive to rent than purchase in all 50 major metros.  Citizens owe more than $1.1 trillion on credit card balances.  More than 43 million Americans have federal student loan debt, with the average balance being more than $37,000.  The US dollar has lost 25% of its purchase power since January 2020.  For every $1 someone had 4 years ago, they can only buy $0.75 worth of goods today.  Given these facts, gambling doesn't seem so illogical.  There are only two paths to fixing the problem.  Either the United States figures out how to stop the accelerated debasement of the currency, which would allow citizens to gain restored confidence in the protection of their hard-earned economic value, or citizens will have to resist the urge to gamble and instead seek out alternative assets that help them outperform the inflation they are experiencing.

Why Are So Many Pushing for America to Have a Hot War with Russia?  In a war with Russia, American soldiers will be forced to fight with horrendous casualties.  When this happens, Americans will relive the Vietnam War.  Also, as our Afghan withdrawal displayed, we have no Pentagon leadership.  That leadership will also direct a war against Russia.  Moreover, today's woke military will not fare well against battle-hardened Russian troops.  Many fighters have been forced out because of their Judeo-Christian values.  Others are gone for refusing to surrender their right not to take an experimental vaccine that has unknown efficacy and side effects.  Woke troops will not get the job done.

A "Black Swan Event" - General Flynn Raises Questions About Baltimore Bridge Collapse.  "Can we take the idea that this [Baltimore bridge collapse] was a terrorist attack off the table ... and absolutely we cannot do that," President Trump's former national security adviser (and retired lieutenant general) Michael Flynn told Alex Jones in an online interview.  [Tweet with video clip]  Flynn called the container ship ramming the 1.6-mile-long bridge mile bridge at the Port of Baltimore a "black swan" event.  [Tweet with video clip]  Meanwhile, the White House and federal government agencies have been quick to declare this was not a terror attack. [...] Maritime job placement company BalticShipping shows the captain of the container ship is a Ukranian.

This Analysis Of The Dali Hitting The FSK Bridge Is Popping Up On Various Social Media Sites.  [Video clip]

The Meltdown of Commercial Real Estate.  In case you've still got money in a bank, Bloomberg is warning that defaults in commercial real estate loans could "topple" hundreds of US banks. [...] So what happened?  The Fed's yo-yo interest rates first flooded real estate with low rates and cheap money.  Which were overbuilt.  Then came the lockdowns, which forced millions to figure out new workday patterns.  People liked foregoing the long commute (not to mention the free money).  Despite every effort, downtown businesses have not been able to get all workers back.  These days, everyone talks about hybrid models of working, some in-person and some remote.  But judging from observation, remote is winning.  In any case, even a 30 percent reduction in the footprint of office space once the leases are renewed could topple the entire sector.  The restaurant and retail sectors of downtown feel the pinch, with more closures all the time.  Adding to the pressure are absurd levels of inflation and ever-riskier streets on matters of personal security.  Put it all together and there is ever less reason to slog to the office.

Tulsi Explains Who She Thinks Is Running the White House.  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama portrayed former Rep. from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard as a traitor and a Putin puppet after she risked her life in service of her country.  Tulsi bucked them on war.  She addressed that with Tucker Carlson during a recent interview. [...] Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not in office right now, but they still continue to wield immense power in influencing the decisions that are being made.  Tucker asked her who is running the government.  "It's obviously not Joe Biden.  You think Hillary?"  Tulsi:  ["]It's not a leap of imagination to know that that's true.  When you look at the people who are in Joe Biden's administration, they are the people who were the right hands for the Obama administration, for President Obama, and for Hillary Clinton.  When Hillary Clinton said herself the other day, she said, oh, yeah, I talk to the White House every day.  So it's not. it is no shock or surprise, who the influences are behind the policies that are coming out of this White House that many people say is the most radical and woke White House that our country has ever seen.["]  Tulsi left out George Soros.  His close ally, Neera Tanden, took over for Susan Rice.  She runs domestic policy, including pornographic books in the school libraries.

Another bad idea:  Touchscreens in cars.  In 2018 when my car was built, Audi was building cars with features controlled with a simple and intuitive driver interface.  One could navigate through systems with tactile controls requiring minimal distraction from the road.  For the 2020 model year, the engineers at Ingolstadt decided that touch screens would become the new control method in Audi interiors.  Many of the physical buttons were removed.  Controls are now in the center screen, activated by pushing on a flat panel without any haptic feedback.  In many cases, previously simple tasks are now buried behind several menus.

We Should Fight First for the Bill of Rights.  Would you be willing to fight and die for multiculturalism?  Would you put your life on the line for "Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity" (DIE); "Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance" (ESG); or other Marxist worldviews?  Would you go to war to preserve the right of delusional men to use women's restrooms and dominate women's sports?  Would you fight for any government that hunts down and imprisons J6 protesters as political hostages but celebrates Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters who cause physical injury and property damage?  I [...] wouldn't.  I will not fight for institutionalized racism, corporate Marxism, viewpoint discrimination, or the profits of multinational investment houses.  I will not fight for people who wish to erase the First and Second Amendments while paying lip service to what's left of the Bill of Rights.  I will not fight for the Federal Reserve's continued manipulation of the dollar or BlackRock's control over foreign policy.  I will not fight for a government that is guilty of murder, rape, drug-trafficking, and other violent crimes because the Department of Homeland Security refuses to enforce our sovereign borders.  I will not fight for the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the United Nations, or any other international body that seeks global control over local communities.

Keep American Troops Out of Haiti.  You can already hear the same old scam revving up, this time about Haiti — yet again.  I remember 30 years ago when we were going to fix Haiti.  And since I read history, I know about 100 years ago when we were also going to fix Haiti.  Now, our garbage ruling class is on the verge of demanding we try to fix Haiti yet again.  Spoiler — you can't fix Haiti.  And it's not worth one single American life trying to.  That's not to say Haiti isn't a mess and that we shouldn't provide some humanitarian aid.  Look, Haiti had it hard from the beginning.  It was a French colony of slaves, so that's two strikes right there.  They overthrew the French, a military victory for which they are quite proud even though [it] is an achievement on par with beating Chris Christie in a breakdance competition.  And from then on, it was chaos broken only by extended periods of cruel and rapacious dictatorship.

Turkey's Islamic supremacist, Jew-hating tyrant.  Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the Turkish President, and the rude-and-crude master of all he surveys from the 1,100 room "White Palace" that he had the government build for him in Istanbul, at a cost to the Turkish taxpayers of $615 million.  But when a man like Erdogan comes along only once a millennium, why should the national exchequer skimp?  In Istanbul, having announced to the world that he will not be running for office again (the hundreds of journalists he has imprisoned in Turkish jails must now be breathing proleptic sighs of relief), just to make sure we do not forget that he is still the Padishah and Grand Panjandrum of Turkey, he has now delivered himself of some unusually unpleasant remarks, even for him, about Israel and Jews, and Hamas.

In Praise of Ties.  The first thing I notice when I watch a black-and-white TV show on one of the rerun networks is the ties.  In the 1950s, every man wore a tie.  The milkman wore a tie.  The mailman wore a tie.  The policeman wore a tie.  Even Elvis wore a tie on occasion.  Chuck Berry always wore a tie.  Gas station attendants wore them.  You could trust your car to the man who wore the star because he had a tie on.  Men wore ties to ballgames because men were civilized.  Ties were important because they gave a sense of authority but ties also showed that a man wants to belong in society.  As Benjamin Franklin said, "Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others."  But gradually the ties came off.  Comfort meant more than community.  Men's stores gave way to Sears and then Kmart and then Wal-Mart, which is now Walmart.  The loss of ties — the loss of formality in interactions with strangers on the street — came with a price.  When you stop wanting to please others, you begin to stop caring about others.

Report: President Trump Didn't Release The Classified JFK Reports Because They Were That Bad.  Donald Trump told Andrew Napolitano that he didn't release the JFK assassination records because "if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either."  Napolitano said the comments came one week before Trump left office in 2021.  "I said, 'you promised you would release the records of the JFK assassination.'"  "He said to me, 'Judge, if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't have released it either.'"  [Video clip]

Let's Move the Capital.  Washington, DC, Squandered Our Trust.  For most of the nation's history, the District of Columbia was an inhospitable "swamp" with relatively few permanent residents and a minimal federal establishment.  Pigs and cows roamed the streets; summer heat and humidity were unbearable; slavery was widespread until it was outlawed in 1862.  Congressional sessions were brief:  representatives and senators did not enjoy life in the capital, and did not stay there any longer than necessary.  The expansion of government since the 1960s (along with air conditioning) has changed that:  Washington today is a company town, with government as its sole business — and a growing business at that.  It is increasingly remote from the people it is supposed to serve, a development feared in 1787 by supporters and opponents of the Constitution as incompatible with representative government.  The Capital today is far removed from the geographical and population centers of the country, which today are located well beyond the Mississippi River.

The Editor says...
All kinds of places would be appropriate:  Liberal, Kansas.  Area 51.  Ferguson, Missouri.  Guam.  Puerto Rico.

Western Civilisation Is Crumbling.  We all know by now that the corrupt elite need their wars to keep their finances in tip top condition and to tighten their grip on society via the imposition of emergency legislation to control the populace and to control the supply of food, energy and merchandise.  But that aside, all bets are off if they spark all out nuclear war.  We all fall down.  Mutual assured destruction (MAD) they called it back in the day.  Even those who hide away in their bunkers built with stolen taxpayers' money lose out.  What world have they got to return to when they eventually step outside into the light, bleary-eyed and bloated from their six month champagne and freeze-dried caviar binge?  Not much of one I imagine.  A post apocalyptic ruined wasteland doesn't seem much like the flower of opportunity even for your most ardent fascistic control freak.  Stupid!  Really, really stupid.  But stupid people don't like being called stupid.  In fact, they are extremely sensitive about it.

A Course in Biden Budgetology.  After President Biden's award-winning SOTU speech on March 7, 2024, it was time, on Monday 11, [sic] 2024, for the President's FY2025 Budget, which is now up and running on usgovernmentspending.com.  Hey, nothing to see here.  Deficits of $1.5 trillion as far as the eye can see: [...] Earth to Uncle Joe.  Here's how the economy works.  Some guy starts selling books online from a garage in the 1990s.  The result in 2024 is a corporation, Amazon, today worth 1.8 trillion dollars.  What do you say, President Biden?  Is Amazon an example of supply-side, trickle down, middle out, or bottom up economics?  Or is it a question of having the right idea at the right time and working your pants off?  I wonder what experts agree.

Can We Survive.  Spring is in the air.  The weather is getting milder by the day.  But many people are getting nervous.  We can pretend all we want that everything is normal, but many of us know better.  An election is coming unlike any election in our lifetime or even our history, if anyone even reads history anymore. [...] A democracy, in its purest form, is a government of the majority.  Our founders were wise in that they knew a pure democracy was not benevolent; it can and often is oppressive.  A common metaphor would be two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch.  So, pure democracy was out.  A federal government was created to disburse power between the central government, states, cities, local governments, and so forth.  Our founders decided that an electoral college was necessary to give representation to the minority.  Otherwise, only large cities would choose our leaders.  It did not age well.  The tendency of mankind is to take power and keep it.  Our government was no different.

The Most Foreseeable Disaster in U.S. History.  As has become painfully obvious since Oct. 7, you should dismiss everything coming out of the Ivy League these days if you want to stay sane.  Well, almost everything.  A recent warning from the University of Pennsylvania about the national debt reminds us of the dangers of blanket dismissals. [...] The authors estimate the U.S. debt held by the public can't exceed 200 percent under "today's generally favorable market conditions," i.e., historically low interest rates and a functioning economy.  The United States' precarious balance sheet could lead to disaster even sooner than the rosy 20-year scenario.  Financial markets may start to doubt the federal government's unsustainable "debt dynamics," which need only a little economic weakness before they start to unravel.

The military-industrial complex changes the subject:
Haiti replaces Ukraine.  The internal polling on Dark Brandon's state-of-the-union speech must be horrible because Democrats and their deep-state go-fers in the media quickly changed the subject.  First, they tried to make the story about Republican Katie Britt's Karen-in-the-kitchen response to Biden's speech, but no one outside DC cares about these responses. [...] With the Ukraine war wearing out its welcome, the only diversion left was the uncivil war in Haiti.  Suddenly riots in its capital became the most important story in the world!  We are sending troops to Port-au-Prince, something we failed to do to Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland four years ago.  Apparently it is OK to give rioters in Baltimore space, but not in Haiti.  Haiti has replaced Ukraine as the 51st state, just like Dick Sargent replaced Dick York as Darrin on Bewitched.  There was no discussion and no explanation.

The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  A new book has been published entitled: "The Final Analysis:  Forensic Analysis of the JFK Autopsy X-Rays Proves Two Headshots from the Right Front and One from the Rear" by David W. Mantik M.D., Ph.D and Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D. Dr. Mantik has a PhD in physics and is an radiation oncologist.  At the heart of this book is a re-analysis of the original radiographs from JFK's autopsy.  The re-evaluation of the original forensic evidence of President John F. Kennedy Assassination using modern pathologic techniques should send shock waves through the world. [...] This book exposes how our government had to have murdered a US president in cold blood (who else could have done it?), lied to the American people about the assassination and then the USG created a massive cover-up story, which included framing an innocent man for the murder and most likely ordered his execution.  For over sixty years, our government has not only covered up this murder, they created an alternate reality of facts that have been presented as truth to the entire world.  This may be the first concrete example of psywar on the American people.  Being conducted by multiple agencies and may even be in collusion with one or more of the following US presidents.  This is truly a rogue government.

NASA: Solar Storms 'Could Cause Internet Apocalypse' by 2025.  NASA is warning that the Sun is entering a period of high volatility as it nears the peak of its 11-year solar maximum cycle.  During this time, sunspots have the potential to generate intense solar storms, which — if directed at the Earth — could cause widespread outages to electronics and radio communications.The last several months have seen a spike in solar activity, with sunspots causing several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — phenomena responsible for solar storms.  NASA, which has been monitoring our Sun's activity using the Parker Solar Probe (PSP), warns the potential for a solar storm-caused "internet apocalypse" remains a cause for concern through 2025.  Such an event could surge currents through our planet's infrastructure, disrupting navigation, communications systems, and the GPS-enabled time synchronization critical to the functioning of the internet.

The Editor says...
I tend to agree with George Carlin:  Anything the federal government says should be met with a great deal of skepticism.  Including anything NASA says.  (Especially NASA.)  Particularly anything that sounds like an excuse for the internet to collapse right before Election Day.  They'll blame it on sunspots.  They'll blame it on a freak storm wiping out all 38 GPS satellites at once.  Horse hockey.  If the whole internet fails right before another election is handed to Joe Biden, it won't be due to solar activity.

Col Douglas Macgregor Response to Joe Biden SOU Speech Is Profoundly Accurate and Important.  Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor delivers a surprisingly accurate response to the situation created by Joe Biden as espoused in the 2024 State of the Union address.  I cannot emphasize the value of these remarks strongly enough, in part because my own independent research — and that of a global team I have been working with — is in direct alignment with this outline.  Two years ago, I accepted the reality that Western sanctions against Russia were profoundly different from all other sanctions and completely ridiculous in the bigger picture of how the global economy operates.  A sanction regime is familiar and has been used against Cuba, North Korea, Iran and even Venezuela before.  Few were paying attention, but for the first time the U.S sanctions against Russia were not created to target Russia and punish any violator, they were created to remove the tools which would allow violations.  The actual dollar as a trade currency was being weaponized.  What followed was not a surprise.  [Video clip]

The Five FUBARs.  [#4]  The people of this land are not being allowed to do business, to find a livelihood, to transact fairly.  "Joe Biden's" shadow string-pullers are messing as badly with the oil and gas producers as they have messed with Ukraine.  And they are doing it in pursuit of a laughable mirage: their "green new deal."  John Podesta, the "clean energy czar" who replaced the Haircut-in-search-of-a-brain called John Kerry, sits on a $370-billion slush fund that can be used to just dole out to anyone and everyone as a political patronage payoff, especially to janky "community" orgs and NGOs with fake agendas.  This really just amounts to an asset-stripping operation that will leave the American people busted and with broken supply chains for everything.  Instead of annual budgets, Congress raises the US debt ceiling by "continuing resolutions" to keep the government from shutting down.  The national debt races to the $35-trillion mark.  As interest rates on debt rise, our debt payments now exceed our military spending.  You can be sure that our country will break down financially very soon.

No, Substack is Not a Haven for Misinformation.  [Scroll down]  But you can see, with all the panic in our "six ways from Sunday" Intelligence Community over their faked COVID panic and their faked climate panic, that our mechanical Gutenberg rulers just can't get their arms around the new Free-for-all Age.  Just Press Publish!  And yet, if they had half a brain, they would know that it's been a century since the mechanical physics of Newton was superseded by the wave function and the probability amplitudes and the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.  Just Press Publish!  It's been a century since Ludwig von Mises said that socialism couldn't work because it couldn't compute prices.  It's been 80 years since Friedrich Hayek said that planning couldn't work because planners can't plan.  It's been nearly a century since Stalin's Five Year Plans failed, and over half a century since Mao's Great Leap Forward plan failed.  We are in the middle of understanding that our global COVID plan failed, and the farmers are about to teach us that the NetZero plan is failing, and the Democratic Party is in the middle of understanding that its unrestricted immigration plan is failing.

Left With the Ashes.  The Heritage Foundation has put together a 920 page book called "Mandate for Leadership" in PDF, for free.  It details the changes they would make, day #1 of a Trump second term.  The reason I bring this up, is it shows that there could be a plan to save America from the Administrative State.  It is possible.  Even acknowledging that the communists that currently run Washington would fight it tooth and nail, lawsuit after lawsuit, the authors of the book know that too.  This is a landmark work of extreme importance.  I would take it and use it to rebuild a state or a confederation of states, but this is what should have been done in the first Trump presidency, not the second.

Why Farmers Are Protesting Around the World.  From Europe to India, farmers have taken to the streets in recent months to protest agricultural policies.  First, demonstrations erupted across Europe, with farmers forming blockades, dumping manure in cities, and egging government buildings.  Now, thousands of farmers have marched toward New Delhi in scenes that recall the mass protests of 2020-21.  Although the reasons for agricultural workers' discontent differ from country to country, the ongoing unrest comes as the world's farmers are "increasingly feeling under political attack," Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist, recently told FP's Christina Lu.  This edition of Flash Points considers the root causes of the farmers' protests, what unites them, and how climate and trade policy are transforming global agriculture.

Republicans Must Use Leadership Change as Opportunity to End Business as Usual in Senate.  To anyone not living under a rock, it should be clear what's at stake.  The leftist regime is prosecuting former President Donald Trump.  The border is wide open.  Inflation and federal deficit spending are crushing everyday Americans.  These are existential threats to the republic.  Regardless of what happens in the presidential election, the Senate is — by design — positioned to address these issues.  Conservatives across the country are exhausted by business as usual in the face of these multiple impending crises.  Senators must recognize the moment in considering what type of leadership to elect.  As Sen. Mike Lee has pointed out, Republican senators regularly vote with Democrats to pass Democrat priorities, yet this is never reciprocated.  The irony of this is that, because of the structure of the filibuster, any 41 senators could block bad legislation and demand changes in exchange for passage.  To the great shock of absolutely no one, there aren't 41 Republican senators with the political will to do this.

The Benefits of Hardship.  While the Patriot Act broadened the toolkit for tracking down foreign threats, its nefarious use as a domestic surveillance weapon took a sledgehammer to Americans' privacy.  Rhetorical battles against Islamic supremacy morphed into another "politically correct" surrender in which Americans were required to speak of Islam as a "religion of peace."  Fighting the terrorists overseas somehow meant we were also expected to open our doors to millions of new refugees.  What originally felt like a robust offensive strategy for eliminating hostile threats transformed into an endless military occupation on the other side of the world with little in the name of long-term strategy.  Why were Americans fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq?  If you asked a warrior, he was there for 9/11 payback and to end the threat of Islamic terrorism.  However, the official line from the White House evolved into some inscrutable notion that Americans must put themselves in harm's way, so that ancient tribal cultures could magically become stable democracies that valued human rights.  That strange vision didn't make sense to anybody but the politicians in D.C.

Map of the Day:  Another Way to Visualize the Enormous Size of America's $18 Trillion Economy.  The map above provides another perspective on the colossal size of America's $18 trillion economy (US GDP in 2015) by showing seven areas of the US that had GDP in 2015 that was equivalent to the GDP of entire national economies.

The Great Replacement is Real.  The Nightmare Scenario is Now.  All over the world, people joke about us, mock us, and for the past fifty years, we have deserved it all.  We went to sleep, we let the buggers have it all and we deserve everything that is happening.  Our passivity is real.  But it is skin deep — a recent and artificially imposed national character.  The people I grew up among, all the families, the thousands among whom we lived, were anything but, though by the time I left university, the new Canada was forming, courtesy of the Marxist Trudeau and the civil service he bulked out.  The truckers invented the protests going on all over the world right now in every single country.  That was us.  Don't count us out, but this is what they did, over fifty years, when we trusted them, how they bullied and destroyed a great people.

The Dark and the Light.  The poison killing our country is pervasive untruth.  Every institution we have relied on to run the public interest has become a factory churning out lies, evasions, and misdirection — not unlike the way mRNA "vaccines" turned the cells in your bodies into tiny generators of spike proteins destroying your organs.  Likewise, half the population, apparently, thinks this is a good thing, that we need more lawfare — the perversion of law by attorney perverts — and that we need ever more lies, evasions, and misdirection (just as the degenerates who run Harvard declare their student body needs more mRNA boosters to remain in school).  Since the doctors have all failed — miserably and dishonorably — America needs an exorcism. [...] Are you asking yourselves:  what will satisfy these maniacs?  Anything short of the ruin of our country?  What will their coveted power be worth in a ruined country?  Mr. Trump volunteered to play the role of exorcist in this grand psychodrama.  Whatever else you make of him, he has shown a lot of fortitude.

I'll Vote for Anyone Who Promises to Nuke the Dept. of Education.  It should come as no surprise to regular readers here that I think Republican candidates in 2024 should lead with Joe Biden's border nightmare when attacking Democrats.  It's both a humanitarian and national security crisis and this country can't survive another four years of open borders madness.  While that is the most pressing issue, there's plenty more to throw at the Dems after a few years of the Team Biden wrecking ball.  One issue that predates this clown car of an administration is the hot mess that is public education in the United States of America.  It's an evergreen issue and one that I think the Republicans haven't been giving enough attention to in recent election cycles.  There are a number of ways to attack the failures of the Dept. of Education because it manages to screw up anything it touches.  It's the classic example of a bloated bureaucracy that is nothing but a black hole for taxpayer dollars.  Kids are getting dumber, and the Democrats can only screech for money.

France Teeters on the Brink.  Upon first seeing videos of the European farmers' recent protests, I, along with many others across the Atlantic, was deeply impressed.  Like Canadian truckers on steroids, these supposed hayseeds gave the world a lesson in determination, ingenuity, courage, and organizational skill beyond the wildest dreams of the appalling bureaucratic yahoos who lord over them and seek to drive them to extinction.  Rumors of French President Emmanuel Macron avoiding Paris hinted on possible lasting effects for the better.  In their protests, the farmers also displayed several of the highest of human character traits, including an admirable level of restraint against violence, and even a wicked sense of humor.  It was inspiring and hilarious all at once.  Watching them block roadways to major cities for weeks, simply "off-roading" in their tractors when confronted by the so-called authorities, was awesome.

How Would a Post-Apocalyptic Society Function Without Electricity and Running Water?  For a person to survive without electricity and running water is actually quite easy.  There were still many people in America who didn't have electricity and running water well into the 1940s.  Even in Boston there were people on the outskirts who still used outhouses into the 1930s. [...] In a modern society where the electricity and water failed there would be no way to flush toilets and eventually the sewer pipes would fill up with waste.  Modern sewers require a certain flow generated by waste water to move the waste to the treatment plants.  A rain storm can help, but these don't happen frequently enough to clear the sewers.

Federal Reserve records massive losses, makes up fictitious value called 'deferred assets' to compensate.  Maybe the problem with all of the government can be summarized by what the Federal Reserve is doing.  The Federal Reserve lost $114.3 billion in 2023 and doesn't seem to care.  Maybe that is why the federal government has run up $34 trillion in debt, while they pretend government programs are paid for.  They don't care.  They can always print more money.  So what does the Federal Reserve do on its books when it has this massive loss?  It just books a fictitious asset and fictitious equity.  It cooks the books.  It has no justification to claim it has money coming but does it anyway.  It just assumes it will make money in the future.  It certainly is not based on generally accepted accounting principles.  How many other fictitious assets are on the books at the Federal Reserve or other government agencies to intentionally mislead the public?  If a company were to book a fictitious asset to pretend they had more equity than they do, they would be charged with fraud.

Hospitals Aren't Charities.  Stop Pretending They Are.  Expenditures, and profits, in the health care sector have been rising inexorably for decades, as everyone reading this article knows all too well.  We're approaching 20 percent of our GDP solely dedicated to health care, which is a dubious honor no society on earth has ever achieved before.  To make a long story short, a lot of people are making money hand over fist by providing medical services — some of them necessary and life-saving, and some of them high-tech snake oil.  When that much money is changing hands, the opportunities for corruption and for fraud are legion, needless to say.  One area that is catching the attention of many experts is the tax breaks and incentives that many medical providers receive, often based on criteria that are highly suspect.  For example, the vast majority of hospitals in the state of New York are privately run but still tax-exempt because they are "nonprofits" that provide "charity care".  This means these giant institutions pay no federal or state corporate income tax, no state sales tax, and no local property tax either.  That's a massive giveaway that amounts to a $9.4 million windfall per hospital, in case you like round numbers.

Think About It.  [T]here is a reason that the WEF-Globalist cabal is losing the battle to control and dominate the rest of us.  They are trying to power straight into the opposing currents of reality.  Above all, they seek to centralize power and decision-making.  But the world is moving in the opposite direction.  All of the WEF's aims founder on the macro trends unspooling in history.  The rising rule for human affairs now is that anything organized at the giant scale is going to wobble and fail.  There will not be any world government run by the creatures of Davos or Brussels, or Washington DC, or any other place that the grandiose imagine would be their seat of global power.  It's not going to happen so you can stop worrying about it.  But you'd better prepare for what is happening:  everything in our world wants to get smaller, slower, finer, and more local.  Anything that opposes these trends is [futile].

Do We Have A Democracy?  The issue of whether the USA is a democracy continues to arise.  The simple truth is:  No, the USA is not a democracy, not even a representative democracy, although it once was.  That needs to change if America is to survive.  Theoretically, we live in a democracy.  Schools then and now keep saying America is a democracy, and our federal constitution and all our state constitutions say we are a democracy.  But today, the actual structure of our federal government and of all our state governments violates all those constitutions, so democracy is effectively dead.

Trump or Bust.  In nine months, America will be holding an election for the ages.  Yeah, I know everyone says that about every election, but the stakes for November 2024 could not be higher.  This assumes we will have an actual election.  If it looks like Donald Trump is running away with the election, expect a false flag event to postpone or cancel the election.  The excuse could be a war, especially as several are brewing, ready to boil over in October.  Or some other excuse to invoke martial law and lockdowns for "public safety."  How about those millions of migrants, military-aged males, an invading army ready to cause trouble when called upon?  Or a cyber-attack directed at election systems?  Another pandemic, the so-called "Disease X" could shut down the country, including voting.  And there is still good old-fashioned cheating, although this may be difficult if the margin is too large.

The De-evolution of the West.  It has been said that intellectuals can reduce a city of stone to sand.  Unfortunately, this is especially true as today's "thinking class" wages all-hands-on deck warfare against Western Civilization.  The most prominent of these attacks is the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) movement but DIE is not, however, the only assault.  Less obvious, but of no less importance, is how "scholars" now attack Western Civilization by celebrating, "indigenous" cultures that had largely been replaced by Western Civilization.  These enemies are not romantics wanting to "return to nature" by living off the grid sans modern conveniences.  Rather, the enemies of Western Civilization want it replaced. [...] Finally, there is the celebration of the contribution of indigenous people featured at the 2024 DAVOS meeting, the conclave of the world's most powerful political and economic leaders.  In fact, listening to the people from the rain forest and similar backward areas was a central feature of the conference.

If... Then... 2024.  One must wonder if our nation's capital is hopelessly lost.  One must wonder if the Deep State unelected bureaucracy is actually controlling America.  One must wonder if the social contract between the government and the governed is dangerously close to breaking.  One must wonder if there is anyone or anything that can rein in our CIA/FBI/NSA.  One must worry about President Trump's safety and health between Election Day and Inauguration Day.  One must wonder how long until normal moms and dads and regular grandmas and grandpas will "no longer comply."  One must wonder how many pastors, priests, and preachers will become Dietrich Bonhoeffers.  One must wonder if the Supreme Court and the other courts and judges (thus the law) are no longer blind.  One must wonder how far the Catholic and Evangelical communities will go to protect their freedom of religion and their First Amendment rights.  One must wonder how long two distinct and diametrically opposed cultures can remain one country.  One must wonder if time is running out, and the sun is setting, on the American Empire.

Why It's Important to Get to the Bottom of Who Killed the Kennedys.  The following is a collection of facts suggesting that we may not know what we think we know about two of our nation's most infamous assassinations, those of the Kennedy brothers.  The assassination of President John F. Kennedy affected no single person as profoundly as it did then-vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.  He and JFK hated each other.  Johnson was embroiled in the filthy Bobby Baker scandal, and JFK was considering tossing Johnson off the ticket in his 1964 re-election bid.  LBJ's political career would be over, and he might even go to jail.  If JFK had lived, Johnson was finished.  If the president died, LBJ would inherit the White House.  So it's suspect that a last-minute change of plans found JFK in a slow turn into Dealey Plaza, feet from a known communist and former Marine sharpshooter with a history of violence, all in LBJ's home state of Texas, where he held considerable influence.  Now is a good time to mention that JFK and the CIA weren't getting along.  The Bay of Pigs SNAFU allegedly led JFK to claim he wanted "to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."  Both LBJ and the CIA had everything to lose if Kennedy remained alive and everything to gain if he went away.

10 Questions That Will Determine Who Becomes the Next President of the United States.  We can't predict everything, but here are ten critical things to watch as the year goes on.  [#1] If Biden continues to look weak, do the Dems switch candidates?  If Biden can't continue or is pressured into retirement, what happens next?  Do the Democrats end up with a D-lister like Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, or Kamala Harris?  On the other hand, could they end up with much stronger potential candidates like Gretchen Whitmer, Roy Cooper, or Michelle Obama?  Unless it happens very soon, the primary process also wouldn't be a factor.  Would Democrats embrace a change that is made in smoke-filled backrooms instead of the primary process?  There are a lot of questions here, but not a lot of answers yet.

Kafka at the International Court of Justice.  Kafka's classic novel opens on a mystery we expect the rest of the book to solve: "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning."  A regular legal case reveals who is leveling the accusation and provides relevant details of the alleged crime.  But Joseph K. never learns what he stands accused of, by whom, or under what authority.  In this state of indeterminacy, no man can prove his innocence.  Unable to figure out the system that has put him on trial, he is ultimately killed.  "It was as if the shame of it must outlive him."

Texas Rebellion?  The issues in Texas have much greater consequence than a mere state's rights issue.  It is a question of national legitimacy.  Is the Constitution the legal and rightful expression of American government or is America now simply a mass of lawless land?  Is the president a dictator who can ignore the laws passed by congress, invite thousands of terrorists and foreign armies in without consequence, or is he bound by the laws as much as the states and the people?  When will the people punish him for this lawlessness?  The Constitution, for all of its flaws, shields the people from the government and serves as a limitation on the powers of the government.  It stands in the way of the power of government and as such has been attacked by government officials from the day it was presented to the people. [...] The issues are simple.  Does the executive branch have the right to ignore laws passed by the congress?  That would violate the separation of powers.  Does the executive branch have the right to forfeit national security simply because it is charged with maintaining it?  That would seem to violate national security, a crime, a felony.  If the executive branch can, and indeed has, violated the laws and endangered the nation, particularly damaging the border states, is it not within the power of those states and the people to defend themselves?

Defenestrating the Deep State:  Implement Schedule F.  Our government agencies have a set of existing career officials who can prevent a duly elected presidential administration from accomplishing its goals (e.g., the Russian dossier hoax). The Pendleton (Civil Service Reform) Act of 1883 sought to improve government efficiency and end the "spoils system" by creating a professional managerial element based on merit.  A noble idea that, since its enactment, has been corrupted by demographical shifts.  An elected presidential administration deserves to have a bureaucracy that facilitates accomplishing its goals, not one that obstructs it.

Gitmo [is] still there.  It was 15 years ago that President Obama signed an executive order to close Gitmo and keep a campaign promise.  Closing Gitmo was supposed to restore our place in the halls of freedom and due process; or so we heard during the campaign of "hope and change."  Well, where are we now?  Many of the bad guys are still in Gitmo and you don't hear much from the former president about it. [...] It's now 15 years later and they are still there.  It's no longer an issue.  The "Squad" has moved on to other issues.  So what happened?  I think that President Obama discovered a couple of realities.  The public had little sympathy for the so-called rights of terrorists.  Honestly, people are a lot more concerned about someone blowing up a bridge than a bad guy spending the rest of his life in Gitmo.  The public instinctively knew that these guys would go back to terrorism if released.  Many did.

The truth about Christian Nationalism.  Christian Nationalism has been given a bad rap by leftist intelligentsia and their media sycophants. [...] America is not a race; it is an idea based on a set of self-governing principles.  America First "nationalists" want to secure our sovereignty and the principles established at our founding.  We want our elected representatives to serve the interests of our people, not the elites in Brussels, Davos, or Rome.  Our people, being Americans.  Not "white Americans," but Americans.  The Left is also trying to equate Christianity with the legalism more commonly associated with Islam.  Christianity imposes no demands on your values or life choices.  It does offer value precepts and invites its followers to adhere to said precepts as a basis for living a righteous life and for positively interacting with our fellow man.  Our Founders, while crafting our Declaration and Constitution, well understood that those documents were only as good as "the people" who they were chartered to serve.

You're Going To Get Dirty.  [Scroll down]  We have already allowed them to back nationalism and populism into a corner, framing it solely on Trump and his behavior and approval, but it isn't just Trump.  They know that.  There were several outbursts at Davos that suggested that more of the world's leaders are starting to see through the manipulation, the failure and fraudulency of their proposals.  Green Energy is being exposed and rejected, the whole house of cards can be brought to collapse, if we just continue to push, continue to resist, but the first thing we have to resist is the tendency to seek acceptance; to be seen as congenial participants in a crooked system; believing that holding onto our own decency will somehow overpower their wickedness.

The Truth About Vivek.  [Scroll down]  A lot of stupidity gets posted because that's what you want.  Until you learn discernment, you're going to keep getting more of the same.  Vivek is different.  Whether he believes what he's saying or not is a question only God can answer.

No More J6s.  [Scroll down]  Learn About False-Flag Operations.  There's nothing at all new about any of this.  The Soviets pulled off this kind of thing repeatedly, and with great success, going back to the 1920s.  The CIA, FBI, MI6, Mossad, and numerous domestic law-enforcement outfits have done the same.  Familiarize yourself with this history, to help you recognize the methods and techniques. [...] Don't be a Media Puppet.  There is nothing that media lefties enjoy more than destroying an unwary grassroots conservative on the air.  This can range from trick questions in on-the-spot interviews up to reportage on the exact type of scam event that we're discussing here.  Ask yourself: has a single legacy media source reported honestly concerning Jan. 6? Don't let them make a fool of you. [...] The Authorities are Not on Your Side.  Don't think for a minute that the cops — whether local, state, or whatever — will be in your corner and will understand your point of view.  Nearly half the "conspirators" who set out to "kidnap" the Witch of Lansing were undercover FBI operatives.  In a sane world, that case would have been dismissed immediately on grounds of entrapment, but we don't live in one of those.  There will be no cavalry riding to the rescue.

Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio is acting as an emissary of the deep church to discredit the papacy.  For over three years, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, through his videos and messages, has revealed the truth about the narrative of the great deception we are experiencing.  Starting from the Great Reset, then passing through Davos, without neglecting any argument concerning the violation of the individual rights of all peoples, Archbishop Viganò highlighted the worldwide intertwining of the diabolical plan hatched by the globalist elite.  The heartfelt appeals of the high Prelate are aimed at strengthening the truth against the "satanic evil" that — warns Archbishop Viganò — is invading the world, to lead it towards a precipice not only of economic collapse, but above all in the direction of an irreversible moral abyss, as if to say that there is no more religion.

The Decades of Evidence That Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings.  SSRI antidepressants have a variety of horrendous side effects.  These include sometimes causing the individual to become agitated, feeling they can't be in their skin, turning psychotic, and occasionally becoming violently psychotic.  During these psychoses, individuals can have out of body experiences where they commit lethal violence either to themselves or others.  As lawsuits later showed, this violent behavior (and the frequent suicides that followed it) were observed throughout the SSRI clinical trials, but were covered up by the SSRI manufacturers and then the drug regulators (e.g., the FDA).  Once the SSRIs entered the market, there has been a wave of SSRI suicides and unspeakable acts of violence.  Sadly, the idea that SSRIs could cause any of this has always been viewed as a "conspiracy theory" or "mistaking correlation with causation" because very few are aware of the extensive evidence linking SSRIs to violent and psychotic behavior — despite it now being on the warning label of those drugs.

Our Awakening Terrifies the Left.  The Dems spent two years claiming there's no evidence of Biden corruption.  Now they're saying there's no "direct" evidence of Biden corruption.  Direct evidence being a cancelled check with "Bribe to Joe Biden for services rendered" written in the memo line, and drawn against a Burisma account.  Without that proof, the Dems claim this is all a political witch hunt, distracting Joe from doing the people's work of surrendering to goat herders, equipping the Ukrainian military, and ceding our airspace to Chinese balloons.  The MSM is doing more stories about Republicans "pouncing" than about what they're pouncing on.  They're claiming that Republicans are cheapening impeachment by making it about politics. [...] The jig is up because the mark is onto the con.  There will be no token sacrifice of a few useful idiots who have become unuseful — as they claim to have remediated the problem and continue the game.  They are acting desperate because they know the awfulness of the Biden administration is awakening Americans to the fact that the whole leftist movement is corrupt from the ground up.

The Most Consequential Act of Sabotage in Modern Times.  at 2:03 a.m. on Monday, September 26, 2022, at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, an explosion tore open one of the four massive underwater conduits that make up the Nord Stream pipeline.  The pipe, made of thick, concrete-encased steel, lay at a depth of 260 feet.  It was filled with highly compressed methane gas.  Pressure readings would show a sudden plunge as compressed gas screamed through the breach at the speed of sound, tearing the pipe apart and carving deep craters on the seafloor.  Gas escaped with enough force to propel a rocket into space.  It shot up and up, creating a towering geyser above the surface of the water.  There was no one in the vicinity — the middle of the sea in the middle of the night — to see or hear any of this, but the event registered with the force of a small earthquake on seismometers 15 miles away, on the Danish island of Bornholm.  Because the explosion had occurred in Danish waters, Denmark dispatched an airplane to investigate.

Do Not Apologize.  Do not apologize for saying the COVID virus came out of China, with the help of Fauci, and that the Deep State tried to cover up America's involvement in the COVID creation and China's involvement.  Do not apologize for saying that those in Washington care very little for the average normal American, who works five to six days a week in a forty- to fifty-hour work week.  Do not apologize for wondering if the CIA/FBI were involved in the assassination of JFK.  Stop apologizing when someone calls you a "conspiracy theorist," since most of these theories eventually become facts. [...] Do not apologize for believing that Biden and blue-city district attorneys are operating under tyrannical rules today.  Do not apologize for refusing to take the untested, untried, and apparently unhealthy vaccine.

The Collapse of Credible Authority.  In the last couple of decades, almost all of our institutions have failed.  One after another has been caught doing things that no one ever imagined they would do.  Most of us remember a time when the FBI were not the hired goons of the Democrat party, but almost always obeyed the same laws they were sworn to enforce.  Most of us can remember when the Democrat party was, at least from time to time, still worthy of its name — and might cough up the occasional politician who wasn't simply an empty cipher for the radical activists who now apparently run the DNC.  More broadly, there was a time when politicians lied when they were backed into a corner, or maybe when it was expedient — but didn't lie as a matter of course. [...] Companies that made packaged food did their best to make it tasty so it would sell — but they did not hire chemists and biologists to make it literally addictive.  There was a time in which the FDA could have been reasonably expected to care that roughly 9 out of 10 Americans are metabolically unhealthy.  It wouldn't have been crazy to assume that everything you bought in the grocery, other than cigarettes and alcohol, was fundamentally safe for human consumption.  Who in his right mind believes that now?

Archbishop Viganò: 'False prophet' Bergoglio is guilty of 'all-out apostasy'.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò delivered an address to the "Is the Pope Catholic?" conference this past weekend forcefully stating that Jorge Maria Bergoglio is a "false prophet" who fits the description of the one spoken of by the prophet Daniel during the time of the "final persecution" of the Church, to whom no Catholic owes "any" obedience or collaboration but rather steadfast resistance.  "We are ... far beyond heresy," His Excellency declared.  "[St. Robert] Bellarmine could never have imagined that an emissary of Freemasonry could go so far as to be elected pope with the purpose of demolishing the Church from within, usurping and abusing the very power of the papacy itself against the papacy.  Nor could he have imagined that a hypothetical pope would surpass mere heresy and embrace all-out apostasy."

How The American Republic Was Lost.  Some may say that it is an exercise in futility to consider what could happen if....  Nevertheless, if not for the Seventeenth Amendment, the Senate would not be controlled by political parties, and the states would have a say in any proposed legislation.  Obamacare, the skyrocketing deficit, generous welfare programs, the government-run education system, the departments of Energy and Agriculture, open borders, climate change, and a host of programs and executive orders, plus volumes of intrusive government regulations, would never have seen the light of day.

Contrary To Leftist Revisionism, Native American Culture Was Indeed 'Savage'.  Progressives embrace victimhood to give themselves moral superiority, which often requires grossly distorted narratives instead of historical facts.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in The Nation magazine, where two American Indian "activists" recently "debated" Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?  They agreed that Thanksgiving needed to be "decolonized" and that Thanksgiving needed to refocus on the evil of the colonists. [...] Great.  Let's have that "truthful" conversation.  The big lie behind this "debate" is that colonial era "indigenous culture" was superior to Western culture.  Scratch the surface, though, and you see that their complaint is not that the European colonists were evil but that, in the clash of civilizations, the Indian tribes lost.  The world — and the American Indians today — are far better for colonization.  The truth is that all the colonial-era North American Indian tribes were nonliterate, militaristic, brutal, stone-age, and only steps removed from hunter-gatherers.  Their decentralized tribal governance was a cause of constant war and bloodshed.

The Federal Reserve Broke The Budget.  Buckle Up For What Comes Next.  The 10-year Treasury yield set off roaring alarms about the U.S. budget when it surged to 5% last month.  Now those warnings look like a fire drill.  Federal Reserve rate hikes seem to be over for now, giving the bond market a reprieve and allowing a powerful S&P 500 rally to resume.  Enjoy it while it lasts.  The next debt scare may be the real thing, and it could rock the U.S. economy and stock market.  Here's why:  The Fed's historic turnabout, from enabling massive budget deficits to directing the sharpest rate hikes in 40 years, has seemingly broken the budget.  Treasury market stress is almost certain to return.  The era of Fed quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates promoted carefree fiscal policies that led the U.S. to rack up $20 trillion in federal debt since the 2008 financial crisis.

It's not migrants — saving New York City requires union concessions.  When the public complains about announced cuts to police protection and garbage collection, Mayor Adams weasels back, "Don't yell at me, yell at DC."  Adams is trying to shift the blame to President Biden and the Democrats' open-border policy.  Don't fall for it.  The surge of migrants accounts for less than half (42%) of the city's looming fiscal crisis.  New York was heading off a fiscal cliff before the surge.  Adams' predecessor, spendaholic Bill de Blasio, is partly to blame.  But Adams worsened the crisis by negotiating insane labor contracts — especially with the teachers union — that the city cannot afford.  It's a transparent attempt by Adams to lock in big labor's support for his own mayoral reelection — never mind that he's selling out city residents.

Spaniards Aren't Afraid To Protest, So Why Are American Conservatives?  Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government.  Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain's socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain.  By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.  [Tweet with video clip]  The protests are organized by Spain's conservative People's Party and Vox, its further right, populist party.  In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime "against the constitution" and "national unity."  But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they're about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.

A Plausible Explanation for JFK's Assassination?  JFK's assassination happened 60 years ago today, November 22, in Dallas.  Assassination "investigators" agree on very little, other than Kennedy was killed.  Why JFK was assassinated and who did it are the stuff of elaborate theories, a veritable grocery store full of them.  An entire industry has been created from them.  All claim to have solved the 60-year-old whodunit.  But most of it is highfalutin conjecture.  Facts are stretched.  Supposition is often presented as fact.  Solving Kennedy's death is bad for business.

JFK assassination: 60 years later we know the truth about the real killer.  The JFK mystery will never be solved.  Any immediate conspirators are dead or have kept silent into their 90s.  If there were indeed a conspiracy, it is remarkable that the silence of conspirators (and their children and grandchildren) remains unbroken over six decades.  Yes, there is an abundance of discrepancies and contradictions to provide fodder for the conspiracists; among them, an alleged shot from the grassy knoll, Oswald's presumed deficient Marine training in sharpshooting, his meeting with a KGB agent in Mexico City, and a flawed presidential autopsy.  Some sensational and near-comedic explanations have become grist for the conspiracy mill, such as Oswald was not Oswald but had been replaced by a KGB doppelganger. [....] Is not a delusional and dyslexic high school dropout, working for the minimum wage, ill qualified to murder a president single-handedly?  My own answer is that we have grossly underestimated Oswald.

The Two Nations.  Two political, economic, and cultural movements are vying for the soul of America.  One is a program from above, and the other, a movement from below.  But neither is nationalist as such.  One aims to dissolve the nation into a universalist glob, while the other intends to starve the State of resources and disempower its means of centralized command and control.  The dominant, top-down political orientation of the current regime is globalism.  It makes no practical difference to the U.S. whether the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, or any other globalist organization is behind its program.  It has been fully embraced by the government and its corporate partners, or what I call, in my book Google Archipelago, "governmentalities," otherwise "private" companies that operate as state agencies and undertake state functions.  Globalism has as its aim the de facto if not legal dissolution of the sovereignty of the United States.  It aims at eradicating national borders, nullifying the Constitution, and abrogating the rights of national citizens.  It means to control the consumption, reduce the living standards, remold the habits, overwrite the cultures, and even reduce the population of its subjects.  Globalism involves a technocracy, with an "expert" class wielding technological tools and systems for surveillance, behavioral modification, and repression.

When will NYC do something about the 'staggering' number of e-bike fire deaths?  Eric Adams ran for office on a public-safety platform two years ago.  His crime record is mixed, but public safety isn't just crime:  E-bike and e-scooter battery-fire deaths are reaching "staggering" levels, his fire commissioner says.  So it's not good the unrelated corruption suspicions swirling around the mayor involve ... pressuring the FDNY to ignore safety rules, rules that inconvenienced donors and their friends.  The familiar story unfolded again last week:  A powerful fire obliterated a Brooklyn brownstone.  Three people from three generations of the West family, ages 33 to 81, perished.  As has become common over three years, the cause was a battery charging an e-scooter, blocking exits.  So far, 17 of this year's 93 fire deaths are from such batteries.

When the Truth Hurts, Lie.  The U.S. Treasury is being looted for their benefit and political money laundering on a massive scale until the bonds can no longer be sold to other nations or corporations that see the writing on the wall.  The bond rating has been rightfully downgraded from AAA+ to AAA- and should actually be AA+ or effectively junk, because no one believes they will ever pay them off.  This places the banking system and the industries who depend on it in jeopardy from rising interest rates and no one says a word about it, because to acknowledge it would be to recognize our economic demise.  To recognize that would be to understand the completely broken nature of the whole system.  Vote for whoever you want, the financial and therefore the political structure is unsustainable, by any party no matter who controls the government and the further left the party is, the quicker it will be done.

Social Justice Bullets.  Although the following bullets regarding social justice are routinely ignored by alleged progressives, they will not go away:
  •   Life is sacred.
  •   The natural family is central to a functional society.
  •   Right and wrong are not determined by voting, because:
  •   Changes effected by majority vote are not necessarily improvements to society; for example:
  •   Tampering with core human values brutalizes people and helps bring down civilization.
  •   Playing god via eugenics, euthanasia, abortion, social engineering, genetics, or however else, is ultimately destructive of the social order.
  •   The function of science is to serve, not drive humanity.
  •   Sex is inseparable from procreation, which makes perverting it a form of abuse, not only against self but against children and against the formation of the family intended by nature in the sex act; this is sufficient justification for a permanent stigma against sexual perversion.
  •   Killing a baby in (or out of) the womb is homicide.
  •   Because the transgender cult is centered on a hatred of one's own body it is as dangerous and destructive a cult as any in history that have led people to an early grave.
  •   Any ideology that removes responsibility for one's actions, good or bad, trashes the value of each member of society, which in turn creates a community of hollow men and women.
  •   The differences between men and women are not faults that must be corrected in the misplaced drive for "equality"; [...]
  •   Socialism, a spin-off of radical egalitarianism, is a precursor of tyranny; [...]
  •   The Constitution is not an "outdated document," a mere footnote to the history of the United States, but its vital, defining, and protective Law of the Land — a law that places ultimate authority for governing in the people; [...]
  •   Public schools have for many decades failed to teach young Americans the basics of their people-based form of government; this vacuum of knowledge has been taken up by those who hate America, scheming for over a century to transform it[.]

America in October of 2024.  Joe Biden will not be the Democrat Party nominee in 2024.  His high unfavourability stemming from his egregious scandals, his age, his mental decrepitude, and his overall incompetence will embolden the party hierarchy to convince Biden to drop out of the race in the spring of 2024 and then resign after November 5, 2024.  Thus, allowing Kamala Harris to serve as the historic first female President of color.  The party will nominate someone else who can run on not being responsible for the failures of the Biden Administration while making Donald Trump the entire focus of their campaign.  Donald Trump, will in all likelihood, be found guilty of at least one felony in the January 6th "insurrection" trial as it is being adjudicated in Washington D.C. in front of a grossly prejudiced judge and a jury that will no doubt be predominantly made up of anti-Trump voters.

America in October of 2024.  The 2024 presidential election is a year away.  The political landscape of America in October of 2024 will be far different than it is today.  The current polling, which focuses on which candidate for president is winning and the attendant punditry, is meaningless.  Over the next twelve months there will be a significant increase in voter dissatisfaction due to unabated crime and illegal immigration as well as seismic shifts in the economy and foreign affairs which will dramatically affect the fortunes of both parties and their candidates.  A September 2023 poll revealed that just 28% of Americans believe the U.S. political system is working extremely or somewhat well. [...] When combined with 76% of Americans believing the country is headed in the wrong direction, the darkly negative outlook of the citizenry will not improve over the next twelve months as there is virtually nothing indicating a sea change in the nation's fortunes or politics.  In fact, an unjaundiced view of the immediate future reveals ever-growing dark clouds on the horizon.

The Damage of the 'White Privilege' Smear.  One of the many satanic paradoxes of the Third Reich's architecture of the Final Solution was the requirement — mandated after the 1939 outbreak of the war — that Jews anywhere under German rule or occupation had to wear a yellow badge or armband with the Star or David.  Yet was not all this elaborate bureaucratic need for identification embarrassing to the Nazi apparat?  After all, if Nazi doctrine about supposedly manifest Aryan "racial" superiority — Nordic looks and build, superior intelligence, stable disposition — were so persuasive, then why the need for Jews to identify themselves?  In contrast, the Star-of David IDs were prima facie proof that the entire bankrupt Nazi project was based on the unspoken fear that millions of Jews were indistinguishable in all respects from other Europeans.

Are We Witnessing The Suicide Of The Nation?  America is falling apart at the seams, or so it seems.  About a decade ago, Dr. Richard Land — then the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, today the executive editor of The Christian Post — wrote a book called, "The Divided States of America."  If we were divided then, how much more so today?  It is inconceivable that the day would come that Jews in America would need to feel fearful.  For all of its flaws, America has been a secure place of refuge for the downtrodden, including Jews, who have been historically oppressed in nation after nation.  But after Hamas' barbaric atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, including the beheading of Jewish babies, protesters in America have taken to the streets to denounce the Jews.  This anti-Semitic wave is just one of many examples of the decline of our nation.  Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal opined that if Western civilization, of which the United States is a prime example, were to die, it would be through suicide.

US Banks Are Sitting On $650 Billion In Unrealized Losses — Disaster Is Just A Bank Run Away.  Our economy runs on credit, and our banks are the beating heart of that system.  Without healthy banks, how would Americans buy homes, purchase vehicles or get credit cards?  The way that our system is currently constructed, it is absolutely imperative for our banks to function properly.  Unfortunately, the truth is that our banks have gotten into deep financial trouble.  They are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in unrealized losses, and the primary reason why those losses have become so large is because we have witnessed a historic bond market crash over the past several years[.]

Will America Make It Until November 5, 2024?  [Scroll down]  The complete ineptness and incompetence of Joe Biden and his hapless administration is on full display for all of America's enemies to see.  While he claims "rock solid and unwavering support" for Israel, he is pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a "humanitarian pause" and criticizing Netanyahu's conduct of his nation's self-defense.  Let's also add in the billions of dollars going to Ukraine.  What happens when Xi Jinping looks at the calendar and realizes Joe Biden may only be in office for another year, and now might just be the time to invade Taiwan?  What then?

Islamic Nazis.  Quiz:  What is the difference between Hitler's Nazis and Palestinian supporters of Fatah and Hamas?  Both are national socialists, both have embraced the totalitarian oppressors of their respective peoples and elected them whenever they were given the chance.  Both are driven by a demonic hatred to exterminate the Jews.  Both deploy "Big Lies" to justify their malignant cause.  Answer:  The main difference is that Hitler hid the "Final Solution" — the extermination of the Jews — because he feared that Germany's citizens were too civilized to embrace such an inhuman and evil cause.  By contrast every Palestinian leader has stated their intentions clearly, written them in their covenants and visions of a Palestine without Jews, boasted of their massacres of innocents down to the cradle, and even shouted them from the rooftops.

America Is on the Brink of Becoming a Communist Nation.  In 2020, America went through a cultural revolution instantly recognizable to escapees from totalitarianism like Xi Van Fleet, who had lived through the terrors of Mao's China as a schoolgirl, The New York Post reported.  Her new book, "Mao's America," is a grave and urgent warning that "the root of today's 'woke revolution,' not to mention its ultimate goal, is Marxism followed by Communism."  Mrs. Van Fleet is one of the Virginia moms who spoke to the Loudon County School Board in 2021 to warn them that critical race theory and other woke ideology forced on children is what she experienced during Mao's murderous cultural revolution in China when she was a child.  "Chinese by birth, American by choice, survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution, defender of liberty" is how she describes herself, having emigrated to America in 1996.  China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao Zedong, the Communist dictator who ruled from 1949 to 1976, lasted ten years and covered most of Van Fleet's school years.  "In my memory, it also appeared to happen overnight, just like in America in 2020 ... Overnight, we were told the country we lived in was rotten to the core and needed to be dismantled.

A War Designed To Be Perpetually Inconclusive Is Not Always Moral.  One of the most poorly informed debates in the media coverage of war is the concept of "proportionality."  The average person understands it as a kind of transaction.  If X kills N citizens of Y, then Y can fairly retaliate by killing N*(1+i) citizens of X, i being a penalty.  But what it really means according to the Red Cross is it prohibits attacks against military objectives which are "expected to cause incidental loss of ... civilian objects ... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."  It might be restated this way:  disproportionate acts are operations of war that are not worth it.  The bombing of Hiroshima is actually held by some, but not all, as justifiably "proportionate" because it averted an even deadlier invasion of Japan and ended WW2.  The same argument can be made to justify the Dambuster Raids, Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo, etc.  It is certainly a slippery slope, but it provides one important insight:  useless military acts, symbolic bombings, etc., are potentially disproportionate if they intentionally achieve nothing.

World War III is Here and We're Losing It.  World War III is everywhere and nowhere.  Politicians and pundits predict it and warn about it as they've been doing for 70 years.  And for all of that time we've been fighting World War III.  Is WWIII in Iran or Ukraine?  Yes in its own way.  Is it in the confrontations in the South China Sea, the Hamas attack on Israel or in the riots in the streets of our own cities?  Also all yes.  Not to mention cartels smuggling drugs and foreign influence operations being run in D.C.  And it's in a thousand other incidents and crises, some that make the news and some that don't, but that are all around us and others which have long become part of our history.  It's all WWIII.

This Saturday, Just Say No To The Clock-Changing Madness.  This weekend, hundreds of millions of Americans will dutifully set their clocks back one hour, convincing themselves that they've "gained" an hour — despite spending at least part of it resetting all their timepieces.  Americans should instead refuse to play along.  Few government mandates combine such utter pointlessness and serious public health harms than the twice-a-year switch on and off Daylight Saving Time.  It's time to end the madness.

A taste of their own medicine:
Americans Are Essential — Not Their Government.  The House has a new speaker, and now attention returns to whether a government "shutdown" can be averted before November 17. [...] In response to our unmanageable debt problem, there is an online meme that is spreading faster than Biden's human trafficking business at the border:  Government Shutdown — Fifteen Days to Flatten the Curve.  Sounds like a good plan.  Shut 'er down, and we'll see where we are in a couple weeks.  If the debt and deficit haven't improved, we'll just have to keep the federal government in lockdown until our unsustainable spending problem is finally under control.  For all those highly paid, partisan bureaucrats worried about their sinecures, stop being so selfish!  We're all in this together, after all.  The experts are working at the speed of economics!

Chomp Chomp, Gulp Gulp.  If we manage to avoid World War Three, America has its own grave problem to consider, which is comprehensive collapse — of economic activity, the financial scaffold for it, and of civil order in a society under deadly stress.  Most of this damage has been induced by our own political leaders.  Now that the House of Representatives has been put in order, it's time for that body to act expeditiously and relieve "Joe Biden" of his responsibilities... and then Ms. Harris... and then Messrs.  Garland, Mayorkas, and Wray.  Out with them, post haste, and begin the project to save our own country.

Johnson as Speaker Changes Everything.  Now in the final stages of a decades-long inflation, our economy is exceptionally fragile.  Federal spending accounts for 24.2% of GDP.  The more it is cut, the greater the short-term negative impact on economic activity.  The massive Bidenomics deficit spending, including the Inflation "Reduction" Act, constituted a desperate effort to postpone the inevitable.  Credit is contracting, the first step toward a deflationary death spiral.  The Federal Reserve's continuing efforts to control inflation by tightening credit contributes to this inevitably.  The federal budget will be slashed, one way or the other.  This can be accomplished through the political process and/or by financial markets.  The latter occurred in 1980, when bond vigilantes restored sanity.

Tucker Warns of End Times:  A 'Really Dramatic Abrupt Change Is Coming'.  Tucker Carlson issued a cautionary statement regarding the imminent occurrence of "abrupt change" that is being seen by a significant number of Americans, hence creating a sense of impending crisis or the "end times" inside the nation.  During his address at The Daily Caller News Foundation Gala, Tucker made the following statement:  "If something really dramatic in your country happens — like young people can't, I don't know, get married, you know, or buy houses or have any hope for a future that approaches, you know, the middle class upbringing they had — then you've got a huge problem and someone should be responding to that," Carlson advised.  He appended.  "And if your economy is like on the brink of collapse, you know, if your country is literally bankrupt, I hope someone would say that."

Dinesh D'Souza's 'Police State' — You Will Not Look at Government the Same Way After Seeing This Film.  My husband and I went to see this movie on Monday night.  I was encouraged by the fact that almost every seat in the theatre was filled — more people to get the word out.  D'Souza is joined in the general narration of the film by fellow conservative commentator Dan Bongino.  As a former New York City police officer and later as a Secret Service agent during the Bush 43 and Obama administrations, Bongino's experience lends much credibility to the many examples of how government agencies, like the FBI, whose chief duties have traditionally been law enforcement, have now become heavily involved in domestic surveillance.  The movie asks the essential question of how we got here, and maybe even more importantly, who is responsible for it?

Dinesh D'Souza's Police State: I was literally shaking.  It's a familiar trope:  The agitated young "transgender" person claims that being "misgendered" left him or her "literally shaking."  I've always seen that as a sign of a tragically weak human being.  However, last night, while watching Dinesh D'Souza's Police State, I found myself literally shaking, too.  Maybe I'm pathetically weak, or maybe that movie triggered such a strong "fight or flight" response in me that, sitting there in my seat, unable to react to either instinct, all I could do was tremble.  Why is the movie so powerful?  Because using a combination of reenactments, interviews, news footage, police body cams, and individuals' security cameras, D'Souza has compellingly put together things we already know about America in 2023 but don't want to admit:  We have in place a government that is loyal, not to the people but to the government itself.

The Day the Delusions Died.  We disagree about politics, [Thomas] Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature.  We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.  Those with "unconstrained vision" think that humans are malleable and can be perfected.  They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better.  To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable.  Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved.  We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more.  This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.  By contrast, those who see the world through a "constrained vision" lens believe that human nature is a universal constant.  No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce.  People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be "solved"; they can only be managed.  This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview.

Step It Up and Go.  The endless insults to common decency and common sense by the vicious governing blob that runs things don't help, either.  The main question du jour:  when things break really badly, will they break against that vicious blob hard enough to make it stop?  This blob — a weird cabal alien to our heritage — is composed of people with names and duties, and institutions too.  They have already lost their credibility, their authority, and their legitimacy.  The problem is that they haven't lost their power to wreck our country.  Exposed and disgraced as they are, they still occupy the seats of command, still twiddle the dials on the control console, still enjoy a foolish illusion of invulnerability.  I'm in favor of wholesale impeachment of these top people as the best way to go, first, to pry their hands off the levers of power, and second, use the process of impeachment to move public sentiment to a firmly anti-blob position.

What Israel and the US Have in Common.  At a current national security level, the two countries share a similar strategic threat from enemies at their borders and, in some respects, enemies internally.  In the case of Israel, like the current United States, it was its southern border that was recently penetrated by invaders (at the Kerem Shalom checkpoint near Egypt, among other locations).  Moreover, its northern flank, like in the U.S., is also exposed, and to its east looms a vast land mass of hostile interests that can encroach through an unstable Iraq, right up to Israel's lines of defense. [...] What both countries really share, however, is hatred from outside.  It is a hate based in many ways on envy.  Israel has many successes to claim, while also hosting a social culture utterly unlike its neighbors that surround it, who are still psychologically tied to customs and thought patterns rooted in centuries-old belief.  This includes the treatment of women, for example, as well as the full panoply of human rights, law and economics, and their respective institutions.

Very bad things are about to happen, on all fronts.  The right is divided and weak, and too often unwilling to stand up to the worst behavior of the left.  It is so divided that it can't even elect a speaker in the House of Representatives.  The left meanwhile is united and angry, and willing to use that anger forcefully at all times. [...] There is great uncertainty on whether the 2024 elections will be run fairly, or whether the Democrats will use fraud and vote tampering to falsify a victory.  The weakness and disunity among the Republicans only reinforces this uncertainty.  Adding to this uncertainty is the violence and barbarism in the streets of most American cities.  All political meetings — from school boards to Congress — seem fraught with anger and shouting and chaos, and it seems impossible for any sane and civilized person to make any headway against this madness.

Not Everything That Looks Like a Conspiracy Is a Conspiracy.  This past week, I have seen too many smart people conjecturing about whether the Hamas invasion of Israel was a "false flag" operation.  This possibility has prompted others to state as a given that 9/11 was an "inside job," or that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy.  None of these theories is a given.  Skepticism is healthy.  Cynicism is not.  In times of genuine peril, it can be crippling.  Conspiracies fall into two general categories:  conspiracies of execution and conspiracies of concealment.  The former are rare, at least at high levels; the latter are a dime a dozen.  In my own humble career, I have emerged as the chief chronicler of at least three significant conspiracies, two of concealment, one of concealment and possible execution.

Close the Border.  The American people, at least the reader, has to start getting tough.  Those in the government are not your enemies, because they don't even give you the respect of being a human being.  They consider you less than that and they've made that clear since 2008 when they threw the people under the bus so they could bail out the banks as if a total crash and reset wouldn't have benefitted the people.  It would have.  We would now be climbing to new heights of prosperity.  Just a simple solution to 2008 would have been this: any bank that went bankrupt would not only not get a bail out, it would not even be able to sell mortgages, of any sort to another banking institution.  The loans would have been dissolved.  This would have put a lot of homeowners in possession of their homes, commercial real estate would have remained with the businesses associated with them.  That would have flooded the economy with liquidity, instead they took the people's retirements, trillions of dollars in private equity and gave it to the banks, who faithfully returned a pittance to the politicians who agreed to the deal, who did it for peanuts in the broader scope of things.

Carlson: Our Country Is 'Changing Faster Than It Ever Has, But Not Through Democratic Means'.  Tucker Carlson argued in the Thursday edition of his online program on X, formerly Twitter, that the United States is being fundamentally changed under the Biden administration without the approval of the American people.  "Nations are defined by the people who live in them.  That is the most basic of observations about the world," Carlson began the show.  "If you have a country brimming with people who work hard, believe in Christianity and western standards of fairness and are willing therefore to settle their differences without violence, you will likely have a peaceful, prosperous nation," he continued.  But if the people inhabiting your country believe in tribalism over universal principles of justice, don't want to work 40 hours a week, and lack self control, "you get a place like Congo, a country that has remained in a state of perpetual civil war since before most Americans were born," Carlson contended.

Close the Border.  The American people, at least the reader, has to start getting tough.  Those in the government are not your enemies, because they don't even give you the respect of being a human being. [...] There are three things the American people need to demand and the time for asking and persuading is over.  The demand needs to be threefold:  1) close the border;  2) kill all spending bills;  3) dismantle the FBI.  When those things are accomplished to the satisfaction of the people who pay taxes and run the country, then spending bills can be revisited.

For Israel, Failures Never Learned and Lessons for Today.  In 1947, Arab countries rejected a UN plan to partition the British mandate in Palestine into two states.  Armed with British weaponry and guided by British officers, Arabs were convinced they could claim the entire territory by military triumph.  If not for comrade Stalin, who supplied the Jews with weapons via Czechoslovakia and dispatched hundreds of seasoned Soviet officers and generals of Jewish heritage to Palestine, all of whom played a pivotal role in the formation, organization, and leadership of the Israeli army, including the air force, Israel would not exist.  In subsequent years, however (e.g., 1956, 1967, and 1973), after each decisive victory, Israel crawled back to the humiliated enemies, begging them for reconciliation and offering captured lands as concessions for peace and recognition of the State of Israel.  The process was called "land for peace" and has resulted in neither land nor peace.

Biden Admin in the midst of crisis: climate change still the biggest threat US and world faces.  The Biden Administration is the biggest threat to America right now.  Not Russia.  Not China.  Not Iran or North Korea.  Biden.  Why?  Because the Biden Administration is profoundly stupid and evil and keeps creating disasters wherever it turns its attention.  Biden could easily mumble, stumble, and bumble us into a world war at any moment.  Biden has made every other threat to the country much worse.  Those guys may be the enemy, but Biden is better placed to actually harm the US and is too stupid to keep our foreign adversaries at bay.  In the midst of all the crises America and the world face, listen to what Admiral John Kirby says is the biggest problem America faces.  It is the most profoundly stupid thing I have heard since AOC opened her mouth and spoke.  [Tweet with video clip]  I would have expected Kirby to resign in disgust, but he has instead defended Biden's "successful" exit from Afghanistan, his failure to prevent the Ukraine war, and his border policies which have invited millions of military-age men and even terrorists into the US through an open border, and just handed billions of dollars to Iran as it planned and authorized an invasion of Israel.

Greg Mannarino:  Watch For A "MAJOR FALSE FLAG" On U.S. Soil!  The entire global war situation is becoming increasingly unstable, and with that comes a warning from market analyst, Greg Mannarino.  He warns that we should be ready and watching for a "major false flag" to occur on United States soil.  In his most recent video upload to YouTube, Mannarino warns that tomorrow is going to get interesting because the bond market is closed today.  What is going on, since this new war, is the "knee jerk" into the dollar.  It is a little stronger.  "This new war, the timing of it is... exactly what you would expect in this kind of an environment," he said.  Obviously, this war is a "false flag," and "if you think this is the last false flag that you're gonna see, no.  Be ready for not just another false flag, but something even bigger!  Much bigger!" he warned.

The Impact of Third Parties on the 2024 Election.  A Gallup poll published on October 4, 2023 should serve as a wake-up call to both the Democrat and Republican Parties as well as their prospective presidential nominees in 2024.  A massive 63% of those polled told Gallup they agree with the premise that the Republican and Democratic Parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is necessary.  46% of Democrats and a whopping 76% of Independents believe a third party is needed.  The change among Republican voters claiming the need for a third party is the most significant revelation of this poll.  As of October of 2023, 58% of Republicans believe a third party is a necessity.  That is up 13 points from last year when Donald Trump's announced he would run for a second term.

None Dare Call It Disruption.  [Scroll down]  The catastrophic mistake of shutting down the economy due to a virus, coupled with the wrongheaded decision to impose energy scarcity through regulatory schemes and politically correct virtue signaling born from ideological nitwittery, combined with higher tariffs, together created a perfect storm of economic disruption and are the primary reasons for what everybody calls "inflation."  Except that, again, it isn't inflation.  It is a rising price level driven by these underlying factors.  The higher prices in the economy have nothing to do with a devaluation of the dollar because there has been no devaluation of the dollar.  The US dollar remains the strongest currency in the world.  And there is no evidence that it is being devalued.  Moreover, the cost of an ounce of gold has been falling consistently since May of this year.  A rising gold price is your first sign of a troubled dollar.

The Horrific Attacks in Israel Are Brought to You by the Biden Administration.  Our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, fell under attack in a highly planned, highly tactical assault where thousands of rockets were fired into major urban areas in the Jewish state while terrorists simultaneously flooded the streets and killed civilians and soldiers alike.  Israel now finds itself in a war against inhuman actions and guerilla war crimes that have not been seen on this level in decades, with many fearing it's only going to get worse.  As of this writing, Joe Biden himself has been silent.  The administration's response wasn't just utterly embarrassing, it was borderline obscene.  The U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs actually sent out a tweet calling on Israel not to respond with violence.  [Tweet]

It's not the end of anything.  Why is there such consternation and surprise at the House's first-time ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy?  Please recall, McCarthy didn't obtain the position until the fifteenth vote!  And the victory came with a pyrrhic yoke around McCarthy's neck — the specter of a single Representative capable of starting an impeachment process against him.  Which is exactly what just happened. [...] Conservatives are fed up with the Republicans "going along to get along."  They want action.  Action on dealing with the porous border and stopping the arrogant interlopers with a chip on their respective shoulders, some with their home country's flag in their hand as they illegally sashay into our space and accept American largesse of "free" stuff:  food, clothing, healthcare, and shelter.  One can only hope that better things are coming from a new Speaker of the House.

A crisis of our own making.  Higher interest rates, like we see today, make it harder to pay for the essentials, such as critical infrastructure, national defense, and entitlement programs.  This forces the government to borrow more and more.  It's a vicious cycle.  Then one day the music stops.  How will the government meet its obligations then?  By reaching deeper into your pockets.  We can fix the problem, if politicians find the will.  But how likely is that?

Is America Nearing Fall of Rome Status?  America is moving in the wrong direction.  New York City, a hotbed of leftist ideology and a microcosm of what's causing America's decline, recently announced it would cut police funding to spend $12 billion more on illegal aliens.  The streets may not be safe for U.S. citizens, but at least those here illegally will be comfortable.  New York was once the greatest engine of prosperity in the world, and now people are fleeing in droves.  We haven't quite gotten to cows grazing in the Roman Forum, but entire swaths of once-thriving cities are now abandoned.  Even the inhabited cities are in decline, with rising taxes outpaced by the crumbling institutions they allegedly fund.  Left behind is lawlessness, dying communities, and a two-tiered society with the lower class living in progressive misery and insecurity while the rich retreat to luxurious enclaves.  Like Rome before it, New York is a valuable warning to America at large because our nation has been heading in the same direction as New York City — just moving slower.

2024: The Trump Boom vs. the Biden Bust.  Nothing focuses the minds of American voters more than an economy gone sour.  As voters watch their chances of living the American dream dwindle — the price of homes, gas, cars, food, and other necessities skyrocketing; good-paying full-time jobs disappearing; and layoffs spreading throughout the economy — they just want to make the pain go away.  And the easiest way for citizens to rid themselves of this pain is to vote out of power its perceived cause:  the sitting president and his party.

Can the Fed be made to go against human nature?  Rate hikes and federal spending don't seem related, until we get into the underlying intent of our fiscal leaders.  It's not a pretty sight.  But it is to be expected that a government entity, the Federal Reserve in this case, will naturally seek to prolong its existence and power.  The ugly side is that in order to preserve their power, they must act against the good of the people for whom they are supposed to work.  As an example, today's inflation was started by Fed actions taken in 2008, when they began printing U.S. dollars and ended up creating $8 trillion in new debt.  There are a few problems with this.  We citizens pay off that debt through increased taxation.  Further, that debt was used to allow government spending on Congress's favorite pork projects.  Finally, all that debt, all those dollars printed, resulted in inflation.  Once again, we citizens are paying for it through high prices.

Time to End the Fed and Its Mismanagement of Our Economy.  Every major economic downturn of the last 110 years bears the mark of the Federal Reserve.  In fact, as long as the Fed has been around, it has swung the economy between inflation and recession.  Yet Americans, surprisingly, have tolerated it.  But we shouldn't expect that to go on forever.  We had three central banks before the Fed, and confined each to the ash heap of history.  The problems inherent to central banking are cause to scrap the Fed as well.

Globalism Must Be Destroyed.  Powerful institutions as varied as the United Nations, World Economic Forum, BlackRock, and even the Vatican all demand an essentially borderless world, in which the peoples of any nation are encouraged to migrate freely into others.  Decades of mass migration, primarily in the West, have resulted in not only an explosion of ethnic enclaves existing somewhat autonomously inside host nation-states, but also the fracturing of common civic bonds that once loosely united those nations' native peoples.  When citizens or political parties have fought back against policies of uncontrolled immigration, globalist-minded authorities have been quick to demonize their own citizens as racists; xenophobes; or, more recently, purveyors of "hate." Even more devastating for afflicted populations, assimilation is now scorned.  Rather than encouraging new residents to adopt the language, customs, and traditions of their adoptive land, governments have chosen to prioritize the cultural identities of recent transplants over the historic identities of the nation states they now call home.

Shedding the Republic.  We are a nation shedding its skin.  It's a painful process, because the old skin isn't quite dead, yet.  The new skin, that of a communist, globalist tyranny is anxious to come out, to breathe freely. [...] It's hard to know what side to be on right now.  I'm a stalwart American patriot, where that is defined by someone who loves freedom, hates control, wishes to be left alone, but anxious to engage a threat.  I fit right in with those who believe that all rights are God-given and no government has the right to take them, even when they have the ability.  But is that the America we have been these past few years?  I believe in getting the truth and making my decisions based on that.  I even understand the responsibility to make sure that I am being given the truth, before making my decisions.  No one owes me the truth, though it would be better, more efficient, if I didn't have to track down every statement made by doctors, lawyers and politicians to see if it's the truth before I make a decision, but ultimately the obligation to seek the truth is mine.

Big Tech must not be judge, jury and executioner.  I'm almost surprised it took them this long.  Barely three days after comic, actor and self-styled online guru Russell Brand was accused of rape and sexual assault — as part of a blockbuster Sunday Times, Times and Channel 4 investigation — YouTube has 'demonetised' all of his videos on its platform, depriving him of any advertising income.  Brand's channel has 6.5 million subscribers.  His videos — catering to that curiously large intersection between 'wellness' aficionados and conspiracy theorists — often rack up millions of views.  Industry experts estimate that he was raking in between £2,000 to £4,000 a video, potentially amounting to £1 million a year.  But no longer.  Brand has been deprived of one of his main revenue streams at a stroke.  Apparently, because he has violated YouTube's 'creator responsibility' policy, which allows it to punish videomakers if their 'off-platform behaviour harms our users, community, employees or ecosystem', a standard so vague that it could conceivably be applied to any unpleasant offline conduct.  In effect, Brand has been defunded because he has been accused of serious crimes.

Is the Pope Catholic?  I watched a YouTube video that was filmed this month by Father James Altman, a priest from Holy Cross Parish in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  It has gone viral because Father Altman has dared to state that Pope Francis is not a valid Catholic and thus not the pope.  In his video, Fr. Altman reads from the Council of Trent, which details certain mortal sins that incur automatic excommunication for any Catholic who commits them.  In his video, Fr. Altman lists many recent statements and actions that Pope Francis has taken that disturb Fr. Altman considerably.  He refers to Francis only as Jorge Bergoglio.  Is Fr. Altman right?  Is "Bergoglio" no longer the pope?  After some research, I've discovered innumerable responses from those with theological expertise that mitigate several of Fr. Altman's charges.  But many supportive videos have also been broadcast on YouTube and Catholic webzines.  This division can serve as a microcosm for the wider division plaguing the Catholic Church.

Ken Paxton's Tucker Carlson interview and Texas's Vichy Republicans' war against conservatives.  When we think of American political families that just won't go away, we tend to look left.  The Kennedys, Clintons, and Obamas keep popping up again and again.  The Kennedys are a multigenerational dynasty, the Clintons are like a nasty rash, and Barack Obama is clearly Biden's puppet master, with Michelle waiting in the wings if things seem to be turning sour for Democrat prospects in 2024.  However, there's another American political family, and that's the George H.W. Bush clan, from Bush, Sr., to Bush, Jr., to Jeb!, to the youngest member of the family, George P. Bush.  This clan also won't go away and, from behind the scenes, it plays a very damaging role in the GOP, which it still controls.

Rumors Are Flying That Fetterman Has Been Replaced With a Double — but They're Missing the Biggest Oddity.  Ever since video spread far and wide last week of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Uncle Fester) reacting with sarcastic derision to news that House Republicans were considering beginning a formal impeachment inquiry against Old Joe Biden, rumors have been flying that the guy in the video wasn't Fetterman at all.  Twitter/X is full of detailed comparisons of still photos from each, with the slovenly socialist's supporters deriding doubters as crazed conspiracy theorists going nuts over photos taken with different lighting or from different angles.  Amid all the back-and-forth about whether there are now two Fettermans, however, the biggest part of the story has been missed, and that is this: when did this man become coherent?  [Tweet with video clip]

Lauren Boebert 'Beetlejuice' scandal starting to smell like a political hit.  Of course, there's immediate cause for suspicion and heightened skepticism when high-resolution and infrared video footage, focused right on a high-profile conservative firebrand, from a blacked-out theater, emerges almost simultaneously with the scandal. [...] If we use our abductive [sic] reasoning skills... if it looks like a political hit, swims like a political hit, and quacks like a political hit, it's a political hit.

The Editor says...
If I were an investigative reporter, I would ask to see the infrared camera.  How long has it been there?  Is it still in place?  Is it the only one of its kind?  How much does a camera like that cost?  Who owns that camera?  Is it always focused and centered on that specific pair of seats?  Has anyone else been targeted with footage from the same camera?

Some truths for conservatives to remember as things falls apart:  Americans are immersed in an ocean of lies, deceit, and propaganda.  The MSM, at the behest of the Marxist-Leninist Lizard Overlords, gleefully inject their digital fentanyl into our "skulls full of mush," knowing that tens of millions of zombiesque addicted souls will never recover their sense of inquiry and resolve.  So, for the never woke, the un-woke, the semi-woke, and the drooling woke, I have gathered a short list of what I believe is the honest ground truth in America today. [...]
The 2020 election was stolen.
Climate hysteria is an absolute hoax.
Deep State actors never get indicted, much less convicted.
America no longer has a southern border with Mexico.
E.V.s are an overpriced, overhyped pipe dream.
America has huge reserves of natural gas and oil still in the ground.
America stupidly burns food crops for fuel.
The MSM are nothing but a propaganda arm of our Marxist-Leninist Lizard Overlords.
The M-LLOs are planning to re-run the COVID playbook this fall, except they will change the excuse to climate hysteria.
The M-LLOs cannot allow Trump to run again, even if it destroys the U.S. legal system.
The U.S. military has already been stripped of most of its strategic reserves of war materiel and fuel.
The M-LLOs desperately want to confiscate your guns.
The M-LLOs' ultimate goal is to swiftly reduce the global population from eight billion to five hundred million souls.

Never Hire Anyone Who Looks Like They'd Be a Lawsuit to Fire.  While I believe social media is, over all, a cancer on society, it does serve some invaluable purposes for people willing to look for them.  One, possibly the biggest, is it leads a lot of leftist weirdos to show the world exactly who and what they are.  Radical racists, anti-American militants and attention-whoring gender mutants all feel compelled to film themselves saying things that used to be met with [violent retribution]. [...] The current crop of crybabies are ready to be victims; they crave it.  They are the mental equivalent of Meghan and Harry — telling every camera they can run up to about how they just want to be left alone without recognizing the irony.  Anyone with enough time to make up some dumbass word they insist passes as a "pronoun" simply because they've added "self" to it is worth avoiding.  And while the general state of unattractiveness, neck and face tattoos and so many piercings in their head that passing through airport security requires an extra hour of prep work are all dead giveaways, there's nothing like a confession.

Beware of man-made gods in churches.  In the context of this op-ed, I would like to underscore the activities of man-made gods that are not made of wood and stone.  These are human beings who have taken the place of God by arrogating supernatural powers to themselves and pervert the true worship of God.  In many African churches today, worshipers are no longer adhering to the Word of God but the words of false teachers.  Their words have become more authoritative than the Bible to their followers.  They made themselves appear so holy that no one dares criticize them.  Every one of their follower bows down to them whenever they are passing by and everyone stands still at their presence.  They have thugs and bodyguards who surround them and physically manhandle anyone who refuses to bow before them.

Despite Media Pearl-Clutching, Paxton Has A Clear Path To Beating Impeachment.  In Texas, the impeachment trial of popular Attorney General Ken Paxton has gotten off to its historic start.  The state has never impeached an AG before, and the last time a statewide elected official was removed from office was in 1917 — more than 100 years ago.  For many in corporate media, the day of trial was a long time coming.  For more than a decade, Paxton and his wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, have been relentlessly pursued in the press on allegations of misconduct and impropriety. [...] However, contrary to the prognostications of commentators and the wishes of the press corps, the first day of trial showed that Paxton has a very clear and very attainable path to victory.  In order to convict the attorney general and remove him from office, two-thirds of the Senate must agree.  While Sen. Paxton will be recused from casting a ballot for or against her husband, she is permitted to remain on the floor, meaning that out of the 31 senators, Paxton needs only 10 to vote for his acquittal.

The Veil of National Security.  There is no national security.  One cannot have national security with an open border and unvetted entrants.  It's as simple as that.  What we do have is national secrets kept from the people for no other reason than to protect the usurpers and treasonous from the consequences of their actions.  Part of this is accomplished from hiding the facts from the people, the other part is accomplished by arresting those who discover the hidden facts.  The point is, if the government didn't have so much to hide from the people, especially their illegal activity, there would be very little that would have to be kept secret.  But, today, almost everything that points to government corruption is hidden behind the veil of national security.  If this were a proper republic, with laws and stuff like that, where individuals had rights to privacy and the government didn't, as intended, it would be a much different place and it might prosper.  But in the corrupt world the treasonous have created out of the shell of the republic, it cannot.  Prosperity is the first casualty of tyranny.

No, Governor DeSantis, You are not a Navy SEAL.  Yes, JAG officers work with the SEALs, write wills for them, write powers of attorney, give legal advice, and sometimes even advise SEAL commanders on rules-of-engagement matters.  This is honorable service.  And yes, JAG officers might find themselves in harm's way.  But the SEALs, with the most dangerous job in the world, are always in harm's way.  DeSantis knows that JAG officers don't jump from a plane at 30,000 feet over the ocean, or go on top-secret missions to kill Al Qaeda Terrorists.  Technically, DeSantis claiming "I was with the SEALs" may be accurate, but misleading and incomplete.  DeSantis was a JAG officer, not a SEAL.  Both are honorable, but there's a difference.

India Lands Cartoon on the Moon.  First China and now India have successfully landed animations on the "moon" and in upside down world you are expected to digest it all as fact despite precious little proof that these scientific "accomplishments" are real.  And in the case of India's moon mission, the animation on South Park is better.  [Video clip]

India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander spotted from lunar orbit.  A NASA moon probe has snapped an aerial photo of India's Chandrayaan-3 lander, the first craft ever to successfully touch down near the lunar south pole.  NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the image on Aug. 27, four days after Chandrayaan-3's history-making landing on the moon.  The photo shows the dark rectangular shadow of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander surrounded by a "bright halo," which "resulted from the rocket plume interacting with the fine-grained regolith (soil)," NASA officials wrote in an image description today (Sept. 5).

Did India Really Land on the Moon?  [If so, we would expect to see better TV pictures with 21st-century technology than we saw in 1972.]  [Video clip only.]

But wait...
India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander spotted from lunar orbit.  A NASA moon probe has snapped an aerial photo of India's Chandrayaan-3 lander, the first craft ever to successfully touch down near the lunar south pole.  NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the image on Aug. 27, four days after Chandrayaan-3's history-making landing on the moon.  The photo shows the dark rectangular shadow of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander surrounded by a "bright halo," which "resulted from the rocket plume interacting with the fine-grained regolith (soil)," NASA officials wrote in an image description today (Sept. 5).

Time for Another Great Awakening.  We may be on the path to a combined financial, moral, civil, and geopolitical crisis that could extend for many years.  This is no one-day event.  There are no easy answers to what lies ahead.  People already sense trouble and are starting to pay attention.  We don't need a transformed nation; we need a restored nation.  And that happens only through a change in individual attitudes and beliefs toward the Divine Providence of God.

Why Are Mortgage Rates So High?  Thirty-year mortgage rates were over 7 percent at the end of August 2023, a level not seen (other than two isolated weeks) since 2002.  Why are mortgage rates so high?  Factors commonly mentioned are important.  Interest rates are higher due to the Federal Reserve's increases in rates from their near-zero levels.  These higher rates indicate some combination of higher expected inflation and higher expected real interest rates.  These higher short-term rates are reflected in higher long-term rates and higher yields to maturity on government bonds.  This indicates that the higher short-term rates are expected to persist.

Is Justin Trudeau the Worst Prime Minister in History?  Having recently posted an article in which I ask the rhetorical question "Is Joe Biden the Worst President in History," I felt an andiron piece with regard to my own country might be appropriate.  Is Justin Trudeau the worst prime minister in history?  The answer is, "Well, probably."  He's a work in accelerated progress, though it must be said that he had immense help along the way: a compliant Parliament, an appointed Senate, a complicit Judiciary, and a bought-and-paid-for media have been loyally riding shotgun.  Trudeau is perhaps the most disappointing, unctuous, and injurious prime minister ever to occupy the seat of power in Canada.

It's Time To Bring Back Citizen Militias.  The most common retort you will encounter from skeptics and dishonest people when it comes to discussing the issue of economic decline, social breakdown and the PROVEN conspiracy of globalist institutions to centralize power under the formation of a worldwide financial system and a world government, is that "It's all well and good to talk about the problems, but unless you can come up with solutions your analysis is irrelevant."  This is a classic disinformation tactic:  Suggesting that the person who identified the problem must also solve the problem, otherwise they should not be taken seriously.  This is called "deflection."

You loot, we shoot" is Americans' answer to the left's plot to enslave them.  Governor Ron DeSantis is a very good governor.  He may or may not out-debate the California pretty boy governor if that debate actually happens, but he sure out-governs him.  The guy can run a big state, which historically suggests he could run a big country.  See, Reagan, Ronald; but see, Carter, Jimmy.  DeSantis gave a speech the other day about the aftermath of a hurricane that barreled through Florida.  Concern had been expressed about looting in the wake of the disaster. [...] He all but said "Make my day."  I don't advocate shooting looters.  But I find it very understandable.  I used to own some firearms myself until that tragic boating accident sent them to the bottom of a lake whose name I've forgotten.  Until that happened, it's quite possible that an intruder into my home would have been confronted with the business end of them.

BRICS is fake.  This somewhat odd organization began life 22 years ago as an investment strategy created by Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O'Neill — basically, a grouping of large developing countries he thought would grow rapidly. "BRICs" was an acronym for that list of countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China.  Later, the four countries actually got together and decided to turn the Goldman Sachs acronym into an actual economic forum, where they'd meet periodically and talk about how to speed economic development, create new financial institutions, and increase developing countries' general influence in the world.  In 2010 South Africa joined, and BRICs became BRICS.  The BRICS kept meeting and proposing economic initiatives, none of which went anywhere.

The flip side of 'I, Pencil'.  [Scroll down]  In 1958, our fear was that foolish western governments would copy the Soviets and the Red Chinese, issuing five-year plans to compel manufactures, gumming up the works in the process.  In 1958, we never dreamed that our greatest risk would be the reverse.  Today, the Western economies — once called market economies; if only it were true — are shutting down industry after industry, for the most outrageous reasons.  We ban oil drilling, creating unnecessary shortages of energy and plastics.  We ban smelting and other metalworking, creating a dependence on failed third world economies or the use of substandard materials.  We ban any form of manufacturing that's labor-intensive at home, leading to the unspoken reality of furthering miserable child labor conditions abroad.  In the generations since Leonard Read wrote "I, Pencil," in fact, governments have mastered the deviant art of thoughtlessly banning whole industries "for our own good."  This has made us dependent on "foreign low-cost-countries," primarily Red China, for not only finished products, but a huge percentage of the components for the products we manufacture here.

Left-Wing Rage:  Don't Pretend It Doesn't Exist.  The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats' June survey of 3,543 adults has produced a lot of data noise but it also includes some useful information.  Of course the media want to ring the bells over one finding in particular:  an increase in the percentage those who agree that "the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency."  According to the project, in early April only 4.5% of those polled agreed with that statement.  By late June, though, it had risen to (a rounded-up) 7%, "the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults."  The media-wide implication is that the growing support for using force to put Trump back in the White House is fueled by the extremism (and dare we say "semi-fascism"?) of Republicans and MAGA followers.  A prime example of this bias is found in the headline over a story in The Hill.  It reads "More say violence could be necessary to restore Trump to White House."  A closer look at the data, however, show both Democrats (4.5%) and independents (7.8%) agree with the statement.  So it's not just Republicans who would be sympathetic to the use of force in favor of Trump.  Isn't that a point worthy of highlighting?

The Decline and Fall of a Once Great Company.  On August 25, 2023, the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) will convene its annual members meeting to re-elect the CEO and Board of Directors.  For over 100 years, USAA has provided insurance and banking services to the military community and relied heavily on this symbiotic relationship to promote its business model.  But since 2020, when Wayne Peacock became USAA's only non-veteran CEO, the corporation has embraced diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and environment, social, and government (ESG) programs.  Soon after Mr. Peacock's appointment as CEO, USAA renewed its exclusive sponsorship with the National Football League, disregarding pushback from many of its members, who objected vehemently to players taking knee during the playing of the National Anthem.  USAA executives dismissed these concerns, framing the disrespectful display as a freedom of speech issue.  The implication was that USAA's financial support of unpatriotic, controversial behavior is compatible with the company's mission.

American Self-Government is Falling Apart.  The American system does not require unanimity.  In fact, its design presumes deep disagreement on matters of morality and policy.  This is why questions like religion are left to individual conscience, and why most policy is left to states or even smaller units, where the law's touch will not be felt as harshly, because it reflects the more similar values of a smaller group.  Finally, regardless of who has the reins of the federal government, the Constitution renders a great deal of substantive activity off limits, as exemplified by the Bill of Rights.  The theory is sensible.  Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other.  Because one does not know if his side will be in power or on the receiving end of the power of others, government is limited. [...] This system requires some minimal degree of national unity and national identity to function.

The Frame of Reverence.  In the end of the Obama Era, a trend began to germinate in the bibliosphere of a certain social cohort — here to be called the Liberal-Identifying Bourgeoisie (LIBs) — wherein more conventional themes of liberal discourse — themes such as skepticism of war, protection of civil liberties, and economic justice — were superseded by what amounted to a collection of tropes, such as Decency, Empathy, and Compassion. [...] The LIBs are consistently the most eager to suspend or attenuate constitutional guarantees, and the most vocal proponents of "emergency exceptions" to constitutional protections.  This erosion of liberal principles among the LIBs is traceable to a sociological fact — namely, that this is the cohort that has most thoroughly "transcended" the Mythos of Civic Americanism.

Al Gore, his legal team and I tried to find uncounted presidential votes, lobbied officials and fought in the courts in 2000.  Electoral challenges have long been part of American history.  Only now are they being criminalized.  I was one of the lawyers involved in objections to Florida's presidential vote in 2000.  A margin of less than 600 ballots determined that Governor George W. Bush rather than Vice President Al Gore won the state and, thus, the electoral college vote.  I was convinced then and I am convinced now that this result was wrong.  No one was indicted, disbarred, disciplined or even much criticized for those efforts, yet here we stand today.  President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants has been charged with election fraud, conspiracy, racketeering and more, under a law designed to take down criminal organizations, known as the RICO Act.  Should Al Gore have been charged in 2000?  What about me?

The Impeachment Chorus Needs to Cool It.  Politics is not a sporting event to entertain fans of opposing teams.  It is a strategic battle to effect change, accomplished by winning elections.  Which requires attracting crossover voters, not pandering to an existing base.  Those demanding prompt impeachment need to consider how this impacts the upcoming election.

Who will go to prison, Biden or Trump?  President Biden and former President Donald Trump are now in a legal death match, where, for either one to stay out of prison, his opponent will probably go to prison.  The Biden Democrats have made no secret that they are willing to do almost anything to put Mr. Trump behind bars.  The necessity of locking up Mr. Trump for Mr. Biden and his family to remain free has become even more acute given the added evidence of wrongdoing by the Biden family.  Mr. Biden has to be reelected to be certain that no member of his family, including himself, is convicted of any felony with prison time or, if convicted, pardoned.

Will Dems mysteriously turn red Iowa blue?  Bet on it.  The Wall Street Journal this week ran a compelling story entitled, "Why Democrats Lost Iowa," pointing out that Iowa was a "key state that helped elect Barack Obama president."  It observes, "Iowa was once a center of gravity for both political parties during presidential elections and a key swing state.  In recent years it has turned so red that Democrats have little political power in the state and the party's candidates have few reasons to go."  No doubt, Democratic Party leaders read the story and reached the same conclusion about the suddenly red, inconvenient flyover state.

Ron DeSantis jumps the shark.  I've been a fan of Ron DeSantis for a long time, given the great job he's done as Florida governor and the results of it leading to Florida becoming a red state.  I've been willing to overlook his errors, e.g., too much emphasis on the trans issue, the extended fight with Disney, the flip-flopping on Ukraine, the idiots on his campaign staff, the ill-timed and unwinnable campaign against President Trump — because his successes outshine these stumbles.  But he's gone over to the dark side in his recent remark that the election of 2020 was fraud-free.

Did FDR Bait the Japanese to Attack Pearl Harbor?  In 2021, U.S. Navy veteran Douglas P. Horne published a masterfully researched book, The McCollum Memorandum: a Story of Washington, D.C., in 1940-41, that takes a microscope to the available historical facts in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor and concludes that FDR not only knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance but had wanted it to happen.  Now, Horne has a fascinating podcast discussing the McCollum Memorandum, a foreign policy action memorandum authored on October 7, 1940, by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence's Far Eastern Section.

Vivek Ramaswamy:  Not Constitutionally Eligible to be President.  The Constitution should be no "respecter of persons" and should be upheld as the supreme law of the land, period.  Moreover, this article is meant to clarify, not vilify.  Unfortunately for the Constitution, we've already seen a man elected to the presidency who many believe wasn't a natural born citizen:  Barack Obama.  That doesn't mean that we should abandon the natural-born citizen eligibility requirement.  As with any other error, once discovered we can take steps to prevent its reoccurrence.  As for Ramaswamy, although he refuses to directly answer questions critical to determining whether he is a natural-born citizen, the public record provides enough information to make the call without his help.  We know that Ramaswamy was born in 1985.  We know that his mother and father immigrated here from India about 40 years ago, according to information revealed in a Washington Post article from April 3, 2023.  The process for becoming a naturalized citizen typically takes about five years.  I worked for several years as an immigration attorney and can personally attest to the truth of this.  If we subtract 40 from 2023, we get 1983.  If allow a range of two years on both sides of the estimated year of immigration of Ramaswamy's parents — 1983 — that gives us a range of 1981-1985. Regardless of where the actual date of arrival in the United States falls, that range does not provide sufficient time for Ramaswamy's parents to have completed the necessary steps for naturalization before his birth in 1985.

Does America Need a New Authoritarian President?  Given the highly-publicized histories of certain authoritarian leaders, younger readers may be surprised to learn that America has already had several authoritarian presidents.  Theodore Roosevelt stands out as one of the best-known, revered by many, with John F. Kennedy running a close second.  Donald Trump was and perhaps will be again, a strong authoritarian president.  And don't forget about Woodrow Wilson either, who very much fits the definition.  Why are we afraid of the word authoritarian?  Well, because there are notorious authoritarians too, men like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The Editor says...
I would have put Lyndon Johnson in the list ahead of Kennedy.

Yellow Freight and an economy on the margin.  Yellow Freight, a massive, almost century-old LTL carrier, has gone out of business, and the "spin" of the business world will likely rival the spin of the political world in covering this news.  First, some background.  LTL refers to "less than truckload freight," so an LTL carrier is one that picks up relatively small loads, usually 1 to 5 pallets' worth, and consolidates them at terminals with other such freight with similar destinations, in what is called a "cross-dock" operation. [...] Yellow has had multiple restructurings and acquisitions since the 1970s, each time hoping to emerge stronger, while arguably digging itself a deeper hole.  Gradually, Yellow had to lower its prices to keep business, reducing opportunities for profits, bleeding cash year after year as a result.

Reining in Regulatory Agency Fiefdoms With a Dose of Democracy.  This fall, the Supreme Court will hear several cases affording promising opportunities to rein in the federal administrative state.  The court has agreed to decide cases that challenge the practice of federal courts showing judicial deference to agency interpretations of the laws they are charged with enforcing as well as the constitutionality of an agency funding scheme that's free from the congressional appropriations process and regular congressional oversight.  The court also has agreed to hear a case that may restore one of the greatest innovations of free people — the jury trial — to a whole class of civil cases currently prosecuted by administrative agencies and presided over solely by judges employed by those agencies.  The potential of SEC v.  Jarkesy to instate the right to a jury trial in administrative civil cases could make it one of the most consequential cases of the upcoming term.

New Poll Makes a Compelling Case for Stripping Power From the Federal Government and Returning It to the States.  Does this make the case for more federalism and focus on states with a weakened or nonexistent centralized government? [...] The most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that only 40 percent approve of President Joe Biden's performance, while 54 percent disapprove.  At the end of former President Donald Trump's presidency, approval rating was at 34 percent, while 62 percent disapproved.  The data seems to show that Americans have far more trust in their state governments than in the federal government.  While some presidents have enjoyed net positive approval ratings when they left office over the past five decades, it is doubtful that Biden's will be much better than Trump's.  The trend seems to show that the federal government's popularity has eroded considerably since 1789, doesn't it?

Vivek Ramaswami is not my pick for POTUS 2024.  Things may change, and 2028 is right around the corner.

Will the European Union Devolve into a Group of Third-World Countries?  For 30 years, the E.U. bought cheap natural gas from an adversary, Russia, to fuel its nations' economies.  The cheap gas allowed them to maintain cost parity with their Asian and U.S. competitors in the world export markets for manufactured goods like machinery, vehicles, and chemicals, all energy-intensive manufacturing processes.  At the same time, they shut down fossil fuel power plants and even nuclear power plants, although the latter emits only heat and water vapor as byproducts of their operations.  In doing so, they abandoned 79 billion tons of domestic coal reserves across the E.U., further placing their manufacturing sector at the mercy of foreign energy producers.  Then, when the E.U. placed an embargo on the import of fossil fuels from Russia due to the latter's invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, administered the coup de grâce:  he cut off the supply of Russian gas to the E.U. from the Nord Stream One pipeline.  Parties unknown sealed the fate of the E.U. when they blew up the undersea pipeline, ensuring that the supply of cheap natural gas to the E.U. had ended.

Carbon Fascism, Where it Came From.  As the saying goes — the same ones who sell the panic sell the cure.  Reinventing government allowed for the most powerful corporations, NGOs, private equity companies, non-profits to help design and manufacture every modern crisis we've faced, only to follow up with the remedy to what ails us as a society to increase the globalist control apparatus — exponentially.  Look no further than the Covid 19 pandemic as the perfect example for that.  Who funds all of this?  We do.  As consumers, what choice do you have other than to pull up to the pump and buy gas from Chevron, BP or Exxon?  Who can resist the convenience of Amazon?  10 companies control most of the food we buy.  Apple iPhone — surveillance, convenience, connectivity, control you NEED to function in today's society — shut up and take my money.  Big banks, investing YOUR pensions and retirement to achieve the global goals, and as long as your business conforms to the agenda, BlackRock will grant you a hefty loan.  Who profits off of the wars?  Reference Carlyle Group and how they made all of their money and continue to gobble up companies at breakneck speed — namely defense contractors.  How much did Halliburton rake in at the behest of ex CEO and Vice President Dick Cheney?  Who do these large corporations and private equity companies praise their allegiance to?  The United Nations and World Economic Forum.  The "stakeholders" are no longer the customers.

Meet the Threat that No One Saw Coming.  Have you ever tried to warn people about something, only to be told repeatedly that there's nothing to worry about?  That you are not a serious adult for even broaching such issues?  Ever wonder how things would have gone if people shouted out their windows for Paul Revere to shut up, the king's army is on the other side of the ocean?  Ever started to feel like Cassandra?  What if there were substantial evidence that shady operators currently inhabiting the U.S. have the determination and connections to pose a threat to free speech, starting with the press and the internet?  Suppose these individuals are known to have connections in U.S. and in international political, charity, and think-tank circles?

Biden's minions target gas generators.  Is there anything Joe Biden and his greenie paymasters won't try to take away from us?  Issues & Insights has found a doozy of a new item they're targeting for taking away from us — gas-powered generators, which are used in the event of blackouts: [...] The legality of this is amazingly questionable.  They're literally ruling by "rules" to enact vast declines in our standard of living, taking away our freedom of what we can buy for our basic energy needs because of global warming.  It's [nonsense].  In places such as California, the grid has been so battered by greenie requirements for energy production blackouts are expected and inevitable. [...] Generators, in particular, are a bad one to target as they are used in emergencies, that's right, emergencies, and as emergencies, that means people die if they don't have them.  That could be the electricity needed to power a life-saving medical device, or the electricity to keep a resident from baking in his own home during a heat wave or freezing to death in some mountain redoubt during a snow-in and Arctic-cold swoopdown.  They may be the difference between food in the fridge or no food at all.  But none of these factors seem to bother the Bidenites, who are already on record as wanting to take away our flush toilets, our incandescent light bulbs, our gas stoves, our meat supply and, now, our generators.

You'll Have Blackouts and You Will Love Them.  When the power goes out, most of us just have to wait until it's restored to get back to our normal lives.  In the meantime, as we wander through a dark house flipping useless switches out of habit, we make sure we don't open the refrigerator and we put off anything we had planned that requires us to burn electricity.  The more-prepared among us, though, buy fossil-fuel-powered generators to avoid interruptions[.]  Their future, though, is in doubt.  The Biden administration wants those generators to go the way of the incandescent light bulb.

The Editor says...
Here's the impression you may get from this:  Unelected government bureaucrats are out of touch with the rest of us, and they keep coming up with regulations like this to "save the earth."  Here's the big picture:  The people who run the government (and I don't mean the voters) are engaging in a war on self-reliance.  When the power goes out, they don't want you to make your own electricity.  They want to tell you what to eat.  Of course they don't want you to have guns.  They want you to be "vaccinated" with whatever (untested) drugs they choose, they want every car to have a breathalyzer and interior cameras*.  You must smoke cigartettes but smoking marijuana is okay.  Driving your own car is bad for the earth, but public transportation is good.  The cops never see an offense they can overlook.  The government is both a nanny and a tyrant.

America's Degradation Is No Accident.  What happened?  In a single word, the answer to the question "What happened" is "Hijacked."  The government we inherited from the American Founders has been hijacked and turned against us.  George Washington characterized America as "an experiment in ordered liberty."  The experiment promotes liberty, but liberty requires order.  Every society has a criminal element.  Supplying the order sufficient to suppress this criminal element calls forth the police power of the state.  To fulfill its purpose, this police power must be considerable.  Washington accurately described this power when he stated, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

The Last Election.  Political polarization in the U.S. is a fact.  "According to the Pew Research Center, members of both parties who have unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have doubled since 1994, while those who have very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party are at record highs as of 2023 ... American Facebook users on the political right and political left shared almost no common interests."  Not only are two camps emerging, they are fighting, even at the expense of governance.  GOP senators are rattled by a radical conservative populism that is taking rhetoric beyond mere talking points to its logical conclusions. [...] The Democrats and Republicans are being pulled apart by the new Woke conspiracy attractors reshaping the scene.  The old axis is being disrupted by a second dimension perpendicular to it.  It's interesting to watch the political parties try to cope.  On the GOP side, it produced a plethora of outsider candidates.  On the Dem side, it created a Brezhnev-like inbred stagnation.  This is why RFK is shaking up the Dem primaries by running as a conspirator and why the GOP establishment candidates are languishing.  The parties can only grow in forbidden directions, and the pressure to transform is plunging them into crisis.

The Global Constitution for the World.  The call for a Constitutional Convention of States under Article V of the U.S. Constitution grows louder.  The pretext used is the desire to reign in the out-of-control government spending and corruption in Congress.  Governments across the globe are nudged by globalists to institute digital currency and, in the U.S., the Constitution stands in the way and it must be modified.  Proponents of such a convention even found escapees from communist regimes like Cuba and Venezuela and are using them to make public statements that such a convention would prevent communism from taking hold in this country, a ludicrous idea.  Aside from the fact that communism has not been defeated but adopted in the U.S. and grown exponentially thanks to academia, public schools, and the main stream media, people fail to mention the real possibility of a runaway convention where the Constitution would be replaced with one already written, waiting to be adopted and deployed.

What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits.  As a matter of habit, the Administrative State formed Fanny and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants which now underwrite 90% of all home mortgages in America.  This government interference in our once free enterprise system first led to skyrocketing home prices, then it led to the housing and stock market crash of 2008.  Today, the government "commands and controls" 100% of the home mortgage market.  At the same time the housing and stock markets crashed in 2008, the federal government set out to "help those who cannot afford to go to college" by taking over the student loan industry.  It was once one of a family's proudest moments, to go to the local bank, take out an affordable loan, and send a family member to college, so their life might be afforded greater opportunities.  That was until our federal government, exercising an old vice that has become a habit, decided to take control of another sector of our once free economy.

The Amazing Accomplishments of Adam Andrzejewski and Open The Books.  When Congress approved and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, it became the law of the land that the public business of the United States is the business of the American public.  Just because the FOIA had become the law, however, little immediately changed in the dominant culture of secrecy, self-serving, and cover-up that always and everywhere pervades bureaucracies, but especially the sprawling bureaucracy of the federal executive branch.  That suffocating and constantly expansive culture would only change when millions of individual citizens and activists (plus journalists devoted to "the public's right to know") made continuing use of the FOIA and insisted that the law be respected and followed, even if doing so required persistence and insistence to the point of hiring lawyers and heading into court.  When the authoritative history of the succeeding 56 years is written, one individual and the non-profit group he founded will stand out — Adam Andrzejewski and Open the Books.

'Not My Concern" Narrows the GOP Field.  One of the best responses was from Vivek Ramaswamy, the young ferociously articulate candidate who, I think, will not be president this time, but who truly gets it.  Asked about the origin of January 6, 2021, the little contretemps at the Capitol in 2021, he said, "Well it was probably because of censorship."  Tell people they cannot speak, he said, and they will scream.  Tell them they cannot scream, and they will start taking things apart.  There you have it.  I love Vivek.  Maybe he will be president someday.  Not this time, I think, but maybe soon (how about a Trump Vivek ticket?  I am just saying).

The Editor says...
There are those who say Vivek Ramaswamy is a Hindu and a vegetarian, so he doesn't understand the Judeo-Christian princlples on which this country was founded; therefore he should not be the President.  To that I say, most of the residents of this country do not understand Judeo-Christian princlples well enough to vote wisely, and anyway, we're voting for a President, not a religious leader.  (That's what some said about Trump, too.)  As for myself, I would almost vote for Louis Farrakhan, if I thought he could
  secure the southern border
  deport all 30 million illegal aliens, preferably to countries outside of North America
  bring back two-dollar gasoline
  send the  fifty  100 most corrupt politicians to prison, or at least the top 10
  end all subsidies for windmills, solar panels, and ethanol
  let the people vote on all the restrictions imposed on household appliances
  eliminate all the do-nothing federal bureaus, and sacred-cow cabinet-level agencies that benefit only themselves (for example, the EPA, the FBI, Department of Education, and NASA)
  confine elections to Election Day (and remove the dead people from the voter rolls, require photo ID to vote, eliminate electronic voting machines)
  designate English as the country's official language
  eliminate non-English broadcasting
  remove all unreasonable restrictions on coal-fired power plants
  allow any single company to own a maximum of 15 broadcast stations, and no more than two in each market
  round up homeless bums and re-educate or deport them, depending on their citizenship
  lock up career criminals for life
And then, if he accomplishes all that, I'll have another list ready for his second term.

America: Land of the Free, Home of the Deluded.  A severe mental and emotional breakdown on a mass scale is taking place.  Or, as my closest friend recently put it, "America is going insane."  The issues we face are not only those about which reasonable people might disagree, but delusional concerns lacking a basis in reality.

Incorporating Out-of-State Regulations is Unconstitutional.  Besides Washington D.C., as many as 14 states — the CARB states, so called after the California Air Resources Board — apply the bluebook, California's stringent air pollution control laws.  In most of them, lawmakers have neither legislated on the matter nor consulted citizens.  This anomaly is being challenged as unconstitutional by Peters Brothers Inc., a trucking firm based in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania.  The family business owns a fleet of refrigerated trucks.

Artificial Intelligence: The Facts.  Artificial Intelligence was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." Turing had first proposed computers in the 1930s and then played a role in building the earliest working models for the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park. [...] Turing had originally dismissed notions of machine intelligence due to the fact that machines lacked intuition — the human facility that enables us to skip step-by-step procedures and go immediately to the heart of a problem.  There exists no way to quantify intuition — along with other related human capabilities such as imagination.  Though Turing ignored this factor in his 1950 paper, it remains true today.  There is no means of breaking down intuition, imagination, or simple common sense to make them programmable.

Our Nation Was Not Founded in 1776.  On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence that established separation of the colonies from England.  The Declaration did not establish new rights but simply re-affirmed the old rights that all Englishmen had under law.  The rights of the colonials were already codified into English law.  The Crown and Parliament were ignoring those rights and, through government force, were actually curtailing them.  The Colonials were only fighting to keep their rights for themselves and their descendants. [...] The colonies would become "Free and Independent States," equal to the State of Great Britain, and free to form their own governments.  They were not bound together as a nation, but "unified" solely for the purpose of defending themselves against invasion by the British. [...] The Declaration of Independence simply established the secession of thirteen colonies from Great Britain, each of which would form its own "nation."

Say, Looks Like That Supply-Side Stuff Works After All.  Bidenomonics has been, and will continue to be, a disaster.  This is what happens when lawmakers manipulate economies.  No one should ever expect a different outcome when politicians enact ideas that they believe are so brilliant that they will overcome the laws of economics.  The way out of this mess is to make a policy U-turn to both unleash the economy and expand precious liberty.

What the Fourth of July Was Not.  [Scroll down]  In other words, so-called white males established a foundational document whose inherent logic was that the millions of Americans not yet born — who would not necessarily look like them, or share their ancestry — would become their political equals.  Most nation founders do not envision the future of their country in terms that might not privilege those of their own tribe.  In contrast, today it would be difficult for a foreign national to become a full-fledged Chinese, Mexican, or Iranian citizen, with full equal rights, who either did not look like, or embrace a religion different from, the majority population.

Don't Look Now, But Utter Chaos Is Being Unleashed All Over The World.  The relative peace and tranquility that we had been enjoying for several months has been shattered.  All of a sudden, chaos is erupting all over the globe.  Rioters are setting fires in cities all over France, the IDF just conducted the largest military operation in the West Bank since 2002, and the Russians and the Ukrainians are both accusing one another of wanting to attack the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.  If that facility is bombed, it could potentially cause a nuclear disaster far worse than the one that we witnessed at Chernobyl in 1986.  Unfortunately, I believe that global instability will be the norm throughout the remainder of 2023 and beyond.  Much more civil unrest and war are ahead, and that has very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

The Controlled Demolition of Nation-States.  [Scroll down]  Additionally, because central banks have encouraged borrowing, they have pumped more money into the greater economy.  With the supply of money artificially increased, some individuals are willing to pay more now than before for the same goods or services.  Consequently, the prices of goods and services increase, producing inflation.  There are two important effects stemming from inflation:  (1) a middle-class citizen on a fixed income must now pay more for living expenses, while (2) a higher-class citizen who owns stocks, homes, and other assets will see the currency-denominated value of those assets increase.  In other words, inflation acts as a tax on poorer individuals who own little and a supplement for wealthier individuals who own much.  While a middle-class citizen living paycheck-to-paycheck will effectively have less income, a higher-class citizen whose principal wealth exists in the form of assets will have increased net wealth.  Inflation effects a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

The coming collapse of commercial real estate.  The climate changistas have long dreamed of a virtual business environment, one in which people in white-collar professions work from home.  For them, the lockdowns were the perfect catalyst.  At the macro level, telecommuting ends traffic jams and stops the need for vast building complexes that despoil possibly more attractive natural environments.  It theoretically lowers the cost of doing business because companies no longer need to pay mortgages or rents on office facilities, as well as attendant costs (e.g., insurance, janitorial maintenance, etc.).  For white-collar workers, there are upsides, too.  Not having to commute to work can save them hours per day, as well as cutting back on the costs of bus fare, fuel, and car wear and tear.  Latchkey kids are no longer an issue because one or both parents are home when the kids come home.  You also don't need to spend money on a work wardrobe or expensive lunches downtown.

UFOs or not — something is up.  [Scroll down]  And now, in the last couple of weeks, we've seen a wild new development:  The Whistleblower David Grusch.  An experienced, clever, articulate and highly respected American intelligence officer, with a glittering CV, at one point seconded to a new unit 'studying UAPs', Grusch recently resigned so he could come out (under the protection of new UFO whistleblower legislation) and make the most extraordinary claims.  Claims that he has made under oath to Congress, with the support of colleagues.  Here are just a few of them.  The US military is in possession of crashed 'alien' craft (notably Grusch does not use the term 'extra terrestrial', he says 'non human intelligence: NHI').  These NHI craft — or their 'pilots' — have, in the past, injured and even killed humans.  At least one craft is in private possession.  The bodies of pilots have also been retrieved.  And there's more.  The NHIs — the aliens — may not be from beyond the solar system, but existing in a parallel dimension to ours, right here.  Their craft seem to have the ability to bend space and time:  they appear bigger on the outside than inside.  Investigators who go inside them have suffered bizarre ill-effects. [...] The obvious reaction to Grusch's statement is that he is mad.  And yet he does not seem mad.  So then he must be lying.  But if he is lying, why would he lie like this? [...] Perhaps he is doing it all for money.  But what money?  He risks global ridicule, his career is surely over, many have questioned his sanity, and if he is doing it for cash he has jeopardised his entire professional reputation to maybe sell a book and earn a few bucks on tiny UFO websites.

How Trump can team with RFK Jr. to win the election.  Have you seen the latest polls?  Not only is former President Donald Trump winning the GOP presidential primary by a mile in every credible poll, but he's also beating President Joe Biden by a large margin in the general election, too — in both the latest Rasmussen and Harris-Harvard polls.  But there's something else brewing among the American electorate, something utterly remarkable.  Despite all the negative press [...] and indictments, Trump also holds the title of "the most popular politician in America."  Amazing.  But I'm not done with the remarkable part yet.  Can you guess who is tied for No. 1 with Trump?  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. just announced he's running for president a few weeks ago.  There's a total blackout and blacklist of RFK in the mainstream media.  His interviews are banned on YouTube.  The DNC has announced there will be no Democratic presidential debates — denying RFK any platform to reach the voters.  Yet RFK Jr is tied for No. 1 most popular politician in America?  How can this be?

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud.  Never let Deep State defenders such as Bill Barr or Lindsey Graham hypnotize you into believing that criticism of the American government threatens the durability of American institutions.  It is government corruption that threatens those institutions, and only those institutions resilient enough to survive public scrutiny deserve continued life.  Tyranny thrives in the absence of confrontation.  It depends on a conspiracy of silence when good people become too afraid to speak its name.  Do not fear directing an outstretched finger at the unjust machinery of the State.  Those quick to denounce free speech as "treason" are often the most deserving of blame.

Does the Brown hit the fan if UPS walks?  UPS and the Teamsters sat down across from each other in mid-April to start hammering out a deal for a new contract.  The one currently in effect ends 31 JUL, so there wasn't much time to waste.  They'd already come to some accommodations pretty quickly that — having seen our UPS folks around here on sweltering, humid, FL-in-Aug afternoons lugging boxes — seem to have been common sense from the get-go.  But they've been non-starters for the longest time.  Air-conditioning.  Those brown trucks and drivers have never had it. [...] I mean, I was flabbergasted when I found that out, although it never occurred to me to wonder why drivers always had the door open, either.  I do have my braindead moments.  But working at the retail shop downtown for 12 years gave me a new-found respect for our UPS fellow, Tremaine, whom I just adored anyway.  I don't know how he did it.  But it finally caught up with him — heat stroke, hospitalization, and a couple months out of work, it was so severe.  I can't imagine he was an outlier.

Less Freedom.  Politicians claim their bills bring us good things.  Free health care!  Child care!  A cellphone for all!  But government isn't Santa Claus.  Government is force.  Most every law takes away a little of our money or freedom or both.  The Heritage Foundation ranks economic freedom across the globe.  The United States once ranked No. 4 in the world, but we've been in decline.  This year, as my new video explains, we're 25th.

What's Really to Blame for the Canadian Wildfires.  Smoke from forest fires arriving from Canada this summer is choking residents of the United States and millions more Canadians in the prairie and eastern provinces.  Thick, roiling smoke may pose health hazards to the aged and infirm in both countries.  The origin of the fires traces back to late winter and spring.  An abnormally dry winter left Canada's boreal forests in conditions ripe for fire outbreaks from various causes, including ignition from lightning strikes in tinder-dry material.  Forested portions of Alberta and British Columbia have been the sites of pine bark beetle infestations that have left millions of acres of dead trees and combustible residue on the ground.  Beetle-damaged areas in remote locations are ideal places for conflagrations to start, where effective control is almost impossible.  Wildfires in remote areas are often left to burn themselves out or await the arrival of rain.

Senator Fetterman needs to resign and seek the medical help he deserves.  As a stroke victim, Senator John Fetterman has my deep sympathy.  As well, he has my best wishes for recovery, a task to which he should devote himself full-time.  But as he demonstrated yesterday in a hearing covering the damage to Interstate 95 in Philadelphia — a link vital to many of his constituents — he is incapable of representing them in the Senate.  I watched with a mixture of pity and horror as he was unable to form basic sentences in English, much less pronounce simple words correctly, when Senator Carper from neighboring Delaware asked him to comment:  [Tweet with video clip]

Mainstream news outlets want to end Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s primary challenge.  When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his primary challenge to Joe Biden in April, the media shrugged him off as a meme candidate who would soon collide with political reality.  Two months later, Kennedy is polling as high as 20% and his campaign is gaining momentum.  And the media — unwilling to let Biden be primaried by this pedigreed populist — have decided it's time to step in.  And step in they have.  Over the past weeks, major print and broadcast organizations have laid the foundations for a powerful narrative designed to hobble Kennedy's campaign before a single vote is cast.  The strategy is to disqualify Kennedy by labeling him a font of misinformation, out to serve America's monied technocrats.  In other words:  a Republican in Kennedy clothes.

The Republican House Must Make The Senate Offers It Can't Refuse.  One of the promises Kevin McCarthy made was that the House would operate under "regular order."  That means, among other things, that each departmental appropriations bill will come up for a vote by itself. [...] We don't need to argue about whether the Department of Education is constitutional.  It isn't.  But it gets in under the "general welfare" label for the moment.  So, what would happen if the new DOE funding bill includes:
  •   A ban on DEI programs
  •   A ban on LGBT-alphabet soup athletes participating in sports as other than their sex at birth.
  •   A ban on any funding to any school that has any restrictions on speech that is otherwise protected by the First Amendment (pronouns, for example).
  •   A ban on any funding to any school that restricts student groups based on viewpoint or fails to provide adequate security for those groups.
  •   A ban on any funding to any school that teaches "social justice."
  •   A ban on Federally Insured Student Loans or Pell Grants to any school where FISL loan defaults are at twice the national average (currently about 11%).

The Editor says...
That's a great idea, but it would require more backbone than the Republican Party has.

Who else is on board with the Big Guy?  Light bulb: Maybe ole Joe's not the only one "invested" in Ukraine, and China, and other ports of call.  Let's remember that representatives of both Romney's and Pelosi's children were out and about on business in Ukraine during one period in the Biden record.  Let's not forget that Mitch [McConnell] has made a packet off his wife's family Chinese business.

The Pandemic of Nuclear Trash Talk.  After the world escaped a nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, it has been generally understood that nuclear-armed nations did not publicly threaten their rivals and enemies with thermonuclear weapons.  Of course, there were occasional lunatic exceptions to the rule.  Since 2006, when the unhinged North Korean regime acquired nuclear weapons, the world has periodically dismissed the zany threats from the Kim dynasty.  Kim Jong Un has sporadically warned he might strike Japan, South Korea, and the United States — usually in an outrageous and outlandish fashion.  Kim finally was warned of the consequences of his brinkmanship rhetoric, most famously by Donald Trump in 2018. He reminded Kim that the American nuclear button was bigger than North Korea's — an eerie counter-warning that for a time led to the cooling of North Korean rhetoric.

RFK Jr. has the White House sweating, and rightly so.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the White House worried, and rightly so:  Boys who shout "The emperor has no clothes" have an impact.  So far, the Bidenites are relying on their media allies to maul RFK Jr., Politico reports.  Problem is, the reason the challenger's running at 20% in primary polls has less to do with his last name (even Marianne Williamson's at 8%) than with President Biden's incredible weakness.  Biden's record is beyond atrocious, and at 80, he's showing signs of serious decline.  Voters — most definitely including Democrats — know it.  So even someone as flaky as RFK Jr. starts to look appealing.

The Editor says...
RFK Jr. is sometimes called "flaky" (or worse) because he dares to say that his uncle, President Kennedy, was rubbed out by the CIA, which is a lot more believable than the official story claiming Lee H. Oswald acted alone, fired three shots in irreproducibly rapid succession, from a notoriously crummy rifle (leaving behind a brand-new "Magic Bullet" that was first spotted at Parkland Hospital), was caught in a movie theater based on an anonymous phone tip, and was then silenced two days later by Jack Ruby, who also had no connection to anybody.  The fact that any documentation of the Kennedy assassination is still classified, almost 60 years later, is convincing proof that the government's explanation is incomplete, misleading, or just false.

Gitmo's Unsolved Deaths.  If street thug prosecutors manage to railroad President Trump to prison, could he be Epsteined?  Many Americans would be shocked to know that the government has previously covered up horrible prison deaths with outrageous lies.  One of the most notorious incidents happened at a secret CIA facility located just outside the perimeter of Guantanamo. [...] The incidents at Guantanamo starkly reveal how easy it is for the Deep State to conceal crimes of murder.  Instead of being forthright, they spew out nonsense with impunity.  The big question is whether Trump needs to fear being their next victim.

America Is Destined for Dictatorship.  A small internet kerfuffle kicked up several days back when conservative talker Jesse Kelly tweeted out something of an eye-opener, saying we're destined for dictatorship and that it's what we deserve. [...] Kelly is saying that, at the end of the day, America — as defined by its political institutions — is only as good as the Americans.  In President Ronald Reagan's words, liberty's "never more than one generation from extinction."  The people who founded this republic understood human nature — having lived under the misrule of a mentally defective king and the arrogant, corrupt, unaccountable state surrounding him — perhaps better than any revolutionaries in human history.  They got it.  And Jesse Kelly would say that they'd take one look at us now and marvel at how we've managed to stay free as long as we have with the manifest social dysfunction we tolerate and propagate.

Behold the DEI scam in microcosm.  It's a story that could have been written by Scott Adams.  A White person gets on her moral high horse only to be, as she sees it, stabbed in the back for trying to be an "ally."  It never pays to be an ally of people firmly situated on the Left, whether the grievance is race, gender, class, or any other category.  You will get burned.  The DEI business that the two women started made bank during the COVID DEI boom — and that is where the problems started.  Originally their business model was a 50-50 split, with [Melissa] DePino doing the books and keeping things running, and [Michelle] Saahene being the Black face of the organization.  They each did their racial kabuki theatre, but Saahene is probably right that without a Black face to front for the organization, it might not have taken off.  Saahene didn't like the split — she wanted more, because "equity." It's always "equity," isn't it?  From there things went south fast.

Obesity Industrial Complex pushes junk food on children so they grow up to become pharmaceutical junkies.  People might be living longer today on average than they did centuries ago, but does a longer life mean a healthier life?  The answer to that question is a resounding no, and the reason has to do with the machinations of the Obesity Industrial Complex.  In a recent episode of "Breaking Points," journalist James Li presented evidence to show that the food industry is conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry, the media, medicine and the government to keep everyone fat, sick and ultimately addicted to pharmaceutical drugs.  America's obesity epidemic seems to get worse every year to the point that even very young children are blowing up like balloons before they even reach puberty.  This sets them on track for a lifetime of illness and drug use, not to mention the newfound transgender craze that lures them into mutilation and debauchery as well.  According to the "authorities," the nation's fatness problem has nothing to do with unhealthy dietary and lifestyle norms.  Instead, it is all genetic, we are told — but this is false.

A Lot Has to Change Quickly for Republicans to Have a Chance in 2024.  To be clear, I am writing this as a pollster, not as a politician or partisan.  Here's the bottom line.  As it gets closer to the summer of 2023, I would rate the Democrats as more likely to again take/keep the White House.  They might even hold on to the Senate and re-take the House.  This is a tough message to deliver to the Republican faithful at a time when inflation is way up, millions have crossed the border illegally, China and Russia both pose true threats to international stability, and crime has spiraled in many areas of the nation.

What to Do and Why It Matters.  If you have not already done so (or it has been a while since you have), please read and enjoy Claire Wolfe's 101 Things to Do 'til the Revolution, a book she "dedicated to you, the enemy of the state," a full twenty-five years before the federal government declared war on half the country, started taking J6 scalps, and openly embraced political persecution.  In her subversive classic, published during Bill Clinton's presidency, Wolfe begins, "America is at that awkward stage.  It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."  From the introductory dedication alone, she nails our current predicament swimmingly with a few salient points: [...]

Leftist Cancellation is the New Rite of Passage.  If you're on the Right and the Left cancels you, three things can happen.  The first is you lose your job, your platform, or your relevancy.  The most striking examples are people who literally aren't around to defend themselves.  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and of course, Robert E. Lee.  Or more recently, John Wayne and Dr. Seuss.  Anyone could be a target.  This is because their existence or their memory could commit the crime of reminding Americans of their traditional values or history.  The second thing that can happen is that when some try to appease the mob by apologizing or promising to "change my ways," the Left still will double down to totally destroy them.  By apologizing they aided in their own cancellation.  People most vulnerable to this are those dependent on one platform or job to maintain their relevancy. [...] The third thing that can happen is relatively new.  This is where people on the Right are targeted by the Left and for all intents are cancelled, but they re-emerge stronger than ever.  One key to this is that they never apologized.

Don't pay Congress if there's a shutdown.  The proposal in the title is the underlying premise of a new bill that was introduced in Congress last week.  The bill is called the "No Pay for Congress During Default or Shutdown Act" and it has both a Democrat and Republican sponsor.  The title really sums up the legislation.  If Congress fails to pass a budget and keep the lights on, congressional paychecks would be suspended.  It was introduced by Democrat Abigail Spanberger of Virginia in partnership with Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.  The basic selling point that Spanberger is pitching is, if you are a working American, "if you don't do your job, you don't get paid."  So Congress shouldn't either.

The New Cold War.  Russia's targeting of Ukrainian civilians and China's genocidal imprisonment and brutalization of a million Uyghurs shows that nothing has changed here in Cold War II.  For those on the front lines, this so-called "Cold" War is hot, horrific, and massively murderous.  As for Iran, while its genocidal ambitions remain presently unrealized, its state media make relentlessly clear Iran's intent to annihilate every last one of Israel's seven million Jews.  Iran's having surrounded Israel with heavily armed terror syndicates, along with its unceasing rush to build deployable nuclear weapons, makes clear the extreme gravity of this threat.  The readiness of all three countries to unleash and carry out genocides is not just a moral issue of massive proportions.  It is also a geopolitical signal of great significance — namely, that these countries will stop at virtually nothing in their pursuit of global dominion.

The Truth Tellers.  When Fox News unceremoniously and inexplicably ousted its most popular host Tucker Carlson last month, people naturally speculated as to why.  Was it because of his reporting about the events of January 6, 2021?  Or the corrupt relationship between Big Pharma and the media?  Or was it a condition of the Dominion settlement with Fox as revealed this week by the O'Keefe Media Group?  Whatever the reason, one thing was clear:  Tucker spoke truth and had to be stopped.  The clock started ticking the moment he questioned — perhaps one too many times — the institutional narratives meant to herd us into groupthink.  That, coupled with the fact he had a national audience in the millions and was hitting key target demographics — bringing eyeballs and ratings to Fox that its competitors could only dream of having — meant Tucker was the dominant voice in cable news.  In this bizarre, anti-reality age in which we find ourselves, it's frankly amazing that he lasted as long as he did.

Congressional Democrats beg Biden to nullify their existence.  This week, Heaven's Gate came to mind as I watched members of Congress line up to take a step that runs against every assumption of self-preservation in Madisonian democracy:  They sought to make themselves nonentities.  They called upon President Joe Biden to reject their very institutional existence, discard the separation of powers and unilaterally borrow and spend federal money.  At one event, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a letter to Biden on behalf of himself and nine Democratic senators "to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution."  He was joined in this by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), among others.  Obviously, these are not Nike-wearing cultists, but that only makes their actions all the more inexplicable.  These are rational leaders whose desire to nullify their own existence would have seemed entirely implausible to the Framers.

Making state constitutions harder to amend: Good idea, bad timing.  The Constitution is notoriously hard to amend. [...] An article in Monday's Wall Street Journal chronicled how some state officials are trying to make their amendment processes harder.  It is a good idea.  But before articulating why, I also must admit it is a terribly timed one.  As the article relates, the officials wishing to change the state amendment process are almost entirely from one party (Republican) and wish to do so mostly because of one issue (abortion). In state after state, including Republican-leaning ones, voters over the past year have bypassed state legislatures to enshrine abortion rights.  Thus, the attempt to change the amendment process now clearly smacks of a partisan gaming of the system, an attempt to change general rules to protect particular policy outcomes.  It also smacks of hypocrisy.  Conservatives used the same processes in the 2000s through measures banning gay marriage.  Only now, when the rules aren't yielding desired results, do they question those rules' legitimacy.

Does ADHD even exist?  This week the BBC's Panorama programme quite rightly exposed some very worrying private clinics.  In online consultations, staff had diagnosed a BBC reporter with ADHD — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — despite an in-person, and far longer, assessment by an NHS psychiatrist concluding that he didn't have the condition.  The clinics, while charging rather plump fees, seemed to have an extremely relaxed attitude towards diagnosing this increasingly common complaint.  It is a huge issue.  ADHD was once mainly confined to children but is now spreading rapidly into the adult populations of the Western world.  The clinics, one of them working on behalf of the overloaded NHS, were also willing to prescribe powerful stimulant drugs on the basis of this.

Big Pharma's Destruction of American Journalism.  Tucker Carlson was abruptly dismissed from Fox News sometime between Saturday, 4-22-23, and Monday, 4-24-23 (likely closer to Monday).  Many believe the ten-minute segment he made (on 4-19-23) caused Fox News to cancel the most popular news host on national television despite it significantly damaged the network's financial revenue.  Given the importance of what he said here, I hope his firing results in many more people seeing that segment, and I hope if this article speaks to your heart, you will help make that happen.  [Video clip]

Let the Blue Cities Die.  The Democrat cities are urine-soaked hellholes that reek of pot where criminals stalk unmolested while the full fury of what is supposed to be the law hangs over the head of any citizen who dares do something about it, and that's good.  The idiots who live there voted for turning their urban landscapes into petri dishes of social pathologies, and they should enjoy the full benefits of their decisions.  We normal people should avoid these socialist wastelands and elect legislators to Congress who will starve them of the federal funds that enable their decline.  In red states, our legislators should wage warfare on the blue tumors in their midst lest they metastasize outside the city limits.

The Fed Is Broke And It's Cooking The Books.  Behind closed doors, the report is already making the rounds in expert circles: if you follow the rules of sound commercial accounting, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) has lost its equity and is, as common language would have it, bankrupt.  What happened? [...] The Fed currently holds around $8.5 trillion in debt securities on its balance sheet.  A price drop of just, let's say, 5 percent on this debt portfolio would result in an accounting loss (an "unrealized loss") of $425 billion, reducing the Fed's equity capital by the same amount.  (It should be noted here that if the Fed held the securities to maturity and the borrowers repaid them in full, the accounting loss would disappear by maturity.)  Any conventional company would be in dire straits under these circumstances. (By the way, failing to report a loss would be a punishable offense in many countries.)  However, the Fed, like any other central bank, is not a conventional company.  Rather, it has the state monopoly of money production, which makes it truly special.

Tolerance Is Overrated: It's Time To Start Gatekeeping American Society Again.  Leftists argue for tolerance of aberrant behaviors while admonishing normal human tribal and biological reactions.  They have a vision for the world, and certain beliefs are not accepted within that Utopian fantasy.  The basis of the leftist religion is not a deity, it is self perception.  They worship themselves and think the collective is valuable so long as it reaffirms their identity.  Anything that might restrict their pursuit of self aggrandizement is considered oppressive.  This is why they often argue in favor of moral relativism.  They have a delusion in their mind of what they are; they see themselves as a fantastic gift to the world.  But, if people are allowed to judge them on their moral failings then they will always be reminded that they are not all that impressive.  So, they seek to control the views and speech of others.

The War on America's Babies.  Our problems in health care can no longer be framed as Democrats versus Republicans.  It's now the Health Care Swamp versus the rest of us.  That Swamp filled with captured regulators and the jumbo corporations that profit when our children are vulnerable or sick.  Babies reliant on formula for their survival, either because breastfeeding has not been possible or effective, or because they're adopted, are some of the most heartbreaking victims of regulatory incompetence.  You may not realize that the critical shortage of baby formula that made headlines two years ago is still in effect.  Initially the news covered reasonable complaints of parents, and Facebook support groups like "Baby Formula Search and Swap: Parents Helping Parents" cropped up, but these grassroots work-arounds are no substitute for a regulatory enterprise doing its job.

Why I'm Not a Republican.  We no longer have a liberal Democrat Party and a conservative Republican Party.  We have a far-left Democrat Party bullied by Marxist adolescents and a weak divided Republican Party.  There are a handful of good conservatives in the Republican Party but the "leadership" and too many other elected Republicans, are only interested in cashing checks, putting on make-up for the camera, "losing gracefully", asking their donors what they're required to do, taking pictures with birds, confirming leftist justices that don't know what a woman is, fawning over the Messiah, betraying their voters and, of course, stabbing other Republicans, generally the few with a backbone, in the back.

Is The Federal Reserve Trying To Cause An Economic Depression?  Even though banks are collapsing, the commercial real estate market is imploding, home sales are plunging, and large companies are laying off workers all over America, the Federal Reserve just decided to raise interest rates even higher.  This is nothing less than economic malpractice.  They know that higher rates are crushing the economy, but they apparently believe that more pain is needed.  Officials at the Fed just hiked rates another 25 basis points, and they are now the highest that they have been since August 2007.

America's empire is bankrupt.  Empires rise whenever a nation becomes powerful enough to dominate other nations and drain them of wealth.  They've thrived as far back as records go and they'll doubtless thrive for as long as human civilisations exist.  America's empire came into being in the wake of the collapse of the British Empire, during the fratricidal European wars of the early 20th century.  Throughout those bitter years, the role of global hegemon was up for grabs, and by 1930 or so it was pretty clear that Germany, the Soviet Union or the US would end up taking the prize.  In the usual way, two contenders joined forces to squeeze out the third, and then the victors went at each other, carving out competing spheres of influence until one collapsed.  When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the US emerged as the last empire standing.

Did Zelenskyy get Tucker Carlson fired?  There is nothing inherently nefarious about this sort of thing.  It would be odd if he didn't try to influence coverage of the war.  Just as coaches in sports, one of the jobs of world leaders is to "work the refs" in order to get better outcomes for their team.  Of course, one of the jobs of the refs is to ignore the coaches as much as possible because their job is inherently in conflict with the desires of the coaches.  So what is at issue is not Zelenskyy's attempt to shape the coverage at Fox, but rather whether Murdoch was unduly influenced by the pitch.

Kennedy Jr. is a Trojan Horse.  Commentators on the right tend to suffer the Bush Syndrome of wanting love and respect from the enemies of America we call the left.  This explains the praise of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., who is challenging Biden for the presidential nomination.  I warn readers that Biden is not Kennedy's target.  It's Trump.  Democrats want a Pretend Populist to keep him from winning re-election.

On Race and Crime, a Counterfactual Narrative.  On April 13, 2023, at around 10 P.M., 16-year-old Ralph Yarl went to the wrong address in a Kansas City residential neighborhood to pick up his younger brothers.  Yarl rang the doorbell, summoning the 84-year-old homeowner, Andrew Lester, from his bed.  Lester, who lived alone and who appears from photographs to be in the early stages of dementia, grabbed his handgun and went to the door.  He became "scared to death," he told the police, when he saw the larger Yarl pulling at the exterior storm door handle.  (Yarl denies trying to open the door.)  Lester shot Yarl, once in the head and once in the arm, through the storm door.  Thankfully, Yarl will likely survive the horrifying attack.  Every news outlet that covered the shooting led with the race of Yarl and of Lester.  Yarl was inevitably identified as a "Black" teenager and Lester as a "white" homeowner.  The Kansas City district attorney validated the race narrative.  The shooting had a "racial component," the prosecutor said, without offering evidence.  (The DA has charged Lester with assault in the first degree because the potential maximum sentence — life in prison — is higher than that for attempted murder.)

Why SVB's meltdown shouldn't make you panic.  Silicon Valley Bank grew deposits by $100 billion in a year and a half.  That is the first wave in a perfect storm.  The problem or opportunity originated from easy money with which the Federal Reserve flooded the economy (printing $9 trillion via Quantitative Easing).  SVB depositors were high-tech recipients of government spending on ESG and DIE projects.  Those deposits are considered hot, subject to withdrawal at a moment's notice.  SVB's next mistake was to mismatch volatile deposits by investing in long-term bonds.  They invested those deposits in ten-year Treasuries yielding 1.6%.  Then SVB execs and bank examiners were distracted by meaningless woke activity; they spent more time on social justice than on bank fundamentals.

Tucker Carlson is Right: It's about Evil.  Prior to being fired by Fox News, Tucker Carlson spoke to a Heritage Foundation audience.  Carlson's remarks were seminal.  He identified the clash between traditional America and the Left as rising to an entirely new and ominous level.  We've moved beyond mere politics and policy differences, Carlson claimed.  The conflict is with a Left that has increasingly embraced evil.  That's hard to accept.  Most Americans don't want to regard other Americans as evil.  But the evidence is abundant and growing.  Maybe Carlson's bold assertion was a reason why the Murdochs canned him?  The Murdochs are quintessential players.  Their interests aren't served when their network's marquee personality infers that a civilizational clash is underway.

RFK Jr.  Slams Dems for Rigging the System.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to give the Democrat establishment fits, and it's wonderful to see.  Just when the far-Left authoritarians who control the party thought that they had their entire membership (with the partial exception of Joe Manchin) marching in lockstep, along comes RFK Jr., daring to think his own thoughts.  As a scion of the nation's most celebrated political family, Kennedy is hard to ignore altogether, but the Democrat leadership is doing its best.  On Sunday, in what must be a first for a Democrat presidential candidate, RFK even appeared [...] to denounce the Democrat establishment's efforts to sabotage his candidacy and make sure that Old Joe Biden coasts to renomination.

Russia Appears to Be in Very Bad Shape.  Recently Dr. Bastiat initiated a discussion about Russia with this post titled "Pretending to Be Mystified by the Obvious."  Nicholas Eberstadt was mentioned in the post and this reminded me of a podcast that Eberstadt participated in about a month ago.  In that podcast, Eberstadt mentioned that Russia has managed to have a society with European levels of education and Haitian levels of life expectancy, at least for 15-year-old males.

Jack Teixeira Isn't the Only Person Who Shouldn't Have a Security Clearance.  ith the recent arrest of Airman First Class Jack Douglas Teixeira for mishandling classified material, we are all left wondering how such a thing could happen.  A thorough investigation will follow, but we have too many people with clearances who do not need them.  We also have too many programs and operations that are unnecessarily classified, and far too many people with clearances have unnecessary access.  I've listened to the pundits cry out with incredulity at how a 21-year-old could access classified materials.  The truth is that it is more common than rare for a 21-year-old to have such access.  Most recruits for military service are between the ages of 18 [and] 22, and many are assigned to positions that require clearances.  There are not many 30-year-old recruits signing up for military service.

The Very Bad Wizards of the Banking System.  [Scroll down]  [W]hy do banking industry regulators need to reassure depositors that "the U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation" if the U.S. banking system is actually "resilient and on a solid foundation"?  Does the banking system merely appear to be in a state of disarray?  Or are crashing banks and billion-dollar bailouts just the way things go?  It's interesting to note the joint press release doesn't specify which "financial crisis" spurred "reforms that ... ensured better safeguards for the banking industry."  Did they mean the recent SVB/ Signature bank bailouts?  Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX $32-billion crypto exchange implosion?  The 2007-2009 "Global Financial Crisis"?  Bernie Madoff's $80-billion Ponzi scheme?  Or any of the long list of financial crises that have occurred over the past hundred years under the not so keen oversight of the federal regulatory apparatus?

Both American Political Parties Have Adopted Lenin's Strategy for the Destruction of Capitalism.  Ironically, uncontrolled spending and the massive assault on capitalism are the products of our irresponsible democracy.  There are three critical points.  First, the Democrat party made an epochal ideological shift toward egalitarianism.  For years the Democrat elite and party leaders have displayed their distaste for capitalism, fracturing the country's moral consensus.  Second, the Republican Party opted, for the most part, to ignore the ideological challenge.  Third, the American voters, who are dumb enough to elect untutored graduates of American universities that are uninformed and poorly read; a few have even earned notoriety for inconceivable stupidity.  Some of them, aware of self-worthlessness, adopted Marxism and can hardly contain their awe and envy at the American enterprise and question its moral validity.  The others are pedestrian opportunists with no intellectual basis and, as such, going along just to get reelected.  Since 1971 when the gold standard was abandoned, the Democrat and Republican administrations, with the support of the House and Senate, have been replaying Lenin's strategy for the downfall of capitalism, spending, and printing money at unprecedented levels.

The war on those with good credit.  Here's a story that hasn't drawn nearly enough attention yet.  A new change being driven by the Biden administration's Federal Housing Authority will cause new fees and increased interest rates for home mortgages.  Starting on May 1st, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer discounted mortgage rates to prospective home buyers with "riskier credit backgrounds" (meaning people with poor credit ratings) to enable them to qualify for a mortgage.  But that will generate more losses in the system and that money will have to be made up somehow.  So people holding lower-cost mortgages because they have a good credit rating will be charged more, leading to their monthly mortgage payments going up.

What Does Chat GPT and AI Mean for Opinion Writers?  [Scroll down]  One of the biggest concerns with Chat GPT is the potential for misuse.  Because Chat GPT can generate text that sounds human-like, it can be used to spread propaganda or misinformation on a large scale.  Additionally, malicious actors could use Chat GPT to generate spam or phishing messages that appear legitimate, increasing the risk of cyber attacks and fraud.

A Trump-DeSantis Ticket Can Win in 2024.  The Democratic Party and President Joe Biden are wrecking the country.  Their ongoing economic blunders, perverse cultural agenda, and corrupt foreign policy, if unchecked in the near future, will turn the United States into a dystopian nightmare comparable to Venezuela.  This can be averted if former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis run together on the 2024 Republican presidential ballot.  Neither can win in 2024 without the other, even if the Democratic alternative is an unpopular incumbent whose running mate is a running joke.  DeSantis can't win without Trump because the latter is all but certain to capture the Republican nomination.  Trump can't win without DeSantis because his legal difficulties — no matter how illegitimate — will turn off many of the independent voters who will decide the outcome of the 2024 election.

Air Force Academy Cadets Don't Know What Their Oath to the Constitution Means.  U.S. Air Force Academy cadets reportedly don't understand what the oath they take to uphold the Constitution even means.  Apparently, the U.S. military is so busy implementing pro-LGBTQ initiatives and critical race theory programs that it forgot to teach cadets what their job is as American servicemen and women. [...] Of course, a lack of understanding of the Constitution because of bad or insufficient education on the topic isn't, unfortunately, limited to the Air Force Academy.  Many if not most conservatives absolutely believe in unconstitutional programs like Medicare nowadays.  The point is that, whether leftist or conservative, the overwhelming majority of Americans pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they believe in following — most without even knowing that's what they're doing.  America has the greatest Constitution in history, and a significant part of our problems in this nation today comes from the government not abiding by the Constitution.

Confused About MRNA Vaccines in Meat?  That's Exactly How They Want It.  When Holly Jones introduced Missouri House Bill 1169 there was industry pushback.  HB 1169 is a tiny little bill; all it does is mandate reporting on whether or not food products have been treated with gene therapy products.  Nothing is banned.  The bill simply empowers consumers to make the best choices for themselves and their families.  Free markets can't function when people can't make informed choices.  The past three years have made many people deeply distrustful of the expert class; they don't want their food being tampered with.  They feel strongly enough about avoiding mRNA-treated meat to be willing to look around and shop carefully.  HB 1169 would give these people the knowledge to make informed decisions, and that's exactly what the pharmaceutical giants and industry lobbyists don't want.  Industry lobbyists want things to be vague.  They want the general public confused and willing to do whatever "the experts" tell them.

Review of 'Grid Down, Power Up'.  Dennis Quaid went viral in early April after he appeared on Fox News to promote his documentary "Grid Down, Power Up."  So, I decided to watch it, and now I can't sleep.  The documentary, narrated by Quaid, focuses on the vulnerabilities facing the American power grid and the risks posed by failures to upgrade facilities to withstand physical attacks from terrorists and our immediate cosmos.  While it is definitely not the best-made documentary I've ever seen, it is arguably the most important piece of informative entertainment in modern history.  "Grid failure is a real and imminent threat, a devastatingly deadly occurrence leading to life-threatening shortages of heat, food, and water.  If protective measures are not taken, we will experience catastrophic failures leaving citizens in states of starvation, death, destruction, and darkness for months," the documentary's official website describes, and it's spot on.

Treat Student-Loan Borrowing Like Medicare.  Irecently turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare.  Like other medical insurance, Medicare requires providers who accept reimbursement to agree to a set rate for the services they provide.  Since Medicare is one of the largest healthcare payers in the country, it uses its size to negotiate very low reimbursement rates, sometimes even lower than the cost to provide services.  Capping reimbursements for services is one of the reasons people have health insurance; the leverage of a big insurance provider helps to keep costs low.  If Medicare paid whatever the provider billed, the system would soon go bankrupt.  And yet, that is exactly what the Federal Student Loan program does with higher-education institutions.

The Return to Enumerated Powers America.  America must return to the pre-"progressive" era of the early 20th century.  American government must be reduced to the size it was for the first century and a half of its existence, it must be restored to the ideal government that the founders laid out in the Constitution, and must never again be allowed to go outside of the size or scope that the founders envisioned.  Government, in essence, must return to only performing the duties that the Constitution explicitly demands and allows them, and absolutely no more.  It must be a government that looks like the one described by the Enumerated Powers in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution.

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  We must push all the toothpaste back into the tube!  This dream of returning to the government we had in 1910, while admirable, is just not gonna happen.  Too many people have tasted power and won't give it up.  The system is very comfortable for thousands of other people with less power, and they don't want to rock the boat, either.  If the welfare state were dissolved overnight, millions of surly freeloaders would immediately start an armed rebellion.  Even if the federal government could be put back in its cage, every politician to the left of Ted Cruz would immediately start to "push the envelope" back outside its prescribed limits — for personal gain, as usual.  The fifty formerly-united States (in my opinion) cannot be salvaged as a unit.  There is only some hope that a few solidly conservative states can survive on their own.  In any event, it's going to be messy.

Is It Time to Panic Yet Over the State of America?  The economy is a mess with daily news stories about another country abandoning the U.S. dollar for trade and commerce, favoring the Russian ruble, Chinese yuan, or gold, but no longer the U.S. dollar.  What happens as these countries, now making up most of the world population, start dumping dollars?  Today's current inflation will look the good old days.  As these dollars otherwise held and used by many countries flood back into the U.S., "too many dollars chasing too few goods" will go into overdrive, fueling hyperinflation, destroying the savings and pensions of most Americans, leading to economic misery as we see in Argentina or Venezuela.  Politicians are oblivious, those of both parties continuing to throw money into a losing proxy war in Ukraine, adding to a national debt that we soon will be unable to even pay the interest on.  Is that panic time?

A Sober Look at the State of Our Beloved Country.  Young people tend to look to the government because they are less familiar with the virtue of self-reliance, which has been under attack by the left for many years.  Many people believe they can't manage things by themselves.  Democrats and government officials encourage this idea.  A new level of dependency is developing, and a sense of surrender to big government seems to be growing among some conservatives, too.  But rather than a "conservative" program of more government services, what Republicans need to offer — and it's a lot more work — is a re-education in the great American virtues of self-reliance and independence, the stuff of the old western movies, as well as the classical and Christian virtues.

Why a desperate America may soon annex its 51st state.  US government finances are appallingly bad.  The national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, annual deficits run into the trillions of dollars with no end in sight, and major trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will soon run out of money.  Political incompetence is mind-blowing; politicians fail to be able to even identify problems, let alone understand them, let alone reach compromises to solve them.  Ditto for central bank incompetence.  These people simply cannot understand how, by keeping interest rates at zero for nearly a decade and conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air, they engineered record high inflation.  And they also fail to understand how their actions to 'fix' inflation are causing widespread havoc in the economy and financial system.  Social divisions across the country are extreme.  Censorship and cancel culture prevail, and corporations now wag their fingers at their own customers to "be better".  The education system is in pitiful shape, with many politicians and school board officials turning classrooms into activist training camps.  The population is terribly unhealthy.  Obesity and drug addiction are epidemics.  Plus there's an obvious mental health crisis that drives far too many people to commit horrific acts of violence on innocent people, including children.  National security is in decline.  Military readiness is down, yet top officials seem more concerned about diversity and inclusion rather than the ability to prevail in war.  The rule of law has been perverted, including for political purposes and self-aggrandizement.

We send politicians to stop the madness of government, but nothing changes.  Why?  Washington DC is a Potemkin village.  We focus on the visible but the constructs that impact us do not originate from the false facade.  There's something behind that facade, and what we see is — entirely — a facade.  That's why sending the politicians doesn't change the outcome.  To get to the core of the issue, we must first stop looking at the Potemkin village and instead look behind it.  Legislation, rules, regulations and laws are not written by congress.  The paperwork comes from the assembly of legal and lobbyist foot soldiers on K-Street.  That's where the ink is put to the paper and the legislative outcomes first originate.  K-Street is where the corporations, multinationals and financial organizations control the process.  If the corporations behind the DC facade want to shift the money, they proactively write the rules, regulations and laws that steer the actual policy outcomes to their financial target or destination.  Their wealth expands and they reward the participants, the politicians.  Most of the entry level politicians are oblivious to where the corporations have proactively moved; however, a few of the politicians — the leadership groups — know exactly where the destination of the legislative intent is going.  The latter are tenured in the power structure behind the facade.

Australia shows the devastating power that modern banks have over people's lives.  My parents were loyal to Australia's Commonwealth Bank way beyond what was logical.  It took a lot of evidence from the bank's own actions for them even to consider changing banks, and even then, it was emotionally painful for them.  The reality is that banks have been appalling for a very long time, and their pathology has been progressing exponentially lately, as they no longer try to hide their craven intent.  Here in Australia, for a $10.00 "overdraft" that exists for less than 24 hours, banks charge $25.00.  They call this a "fee" because, if they acknowledged that it's an interest charge, that rate per annum would be over 90,000%!  Banks block our accounts for any number of reasons.  My favorite is because a government bureaucracy decides the accountholder transgressed.  As we all know, in the world of bureaucracy, everyone is guilty until proven innocent.  Getting access to the account again is an uphill battle.  You must spend time and money proving that the money you earned and that you put into the bank for safekeeping is, in fact, your property.

Kamala In Africa: What Could Go Wrong?  During the first Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa was red hot with proxy wars.  With China and Russia continuing to increase their footprints in the region, Cold War II looks like a sequel, perhaps with a different ending.  Given the consequences of losing Africa to despotic nations, it makes sense that the United States is strengthening alliances there.  This past week, Kamala promised $139 million in direct assistance to Ghana and $100 million to help counter armed Islamic militants in the region.  Presently, Ghana is experiencing an armed inter-tribal conflict between the non-Muslim Kusasi and the Muslim Mamprusi, who have attracted Al Qaeda.

End of the Republic:  Is the title of this piece apocalyptic hyperbole?  I wish it were.  But everyone in the country and most of the people in the wide world know that Donald Trump has not actually been indicted for the crime of giving hush money to a prostitute.  He has been indicted for the crime of opposing the Leftist elites and challenging their control over the political system.  For the first time in American history, a politician — indeed, a front-running presidential candidate — has been indicted in order to destroy his political chances.  Americans used to take pride in the fact that such things didn't happen in the United States of America.  But that United States of America is over.

On Little Men and Big Men: Donald Trump Is the Next President.  The struggle now being waged for the soul, and likely the survival, of the nation is generally understood as a political and cultural battle between competing visions of the future, a globalist and technocratic dispensation against a national and populist resistance.  It is being fought in the institutions of governance and frequently on the streets.  It involves the diverse agencies of power, legislative interventions, radical interpretations of the Constitution, media censorship, and the weaponization of law on one side; on the other, an originalist reading of the Constitution, the Rule of Law, an impartial justice system, and the defense of the democratic order.  But the issue can also be simplified as a battle between a modest platoon of political actors we may describe as "big men" and a veritable army of "little men."  This is not to suggest that little men are harmless.  A little man can wield "a bow and arrows," brandish a dagger, fire a gun, raid homes, or pass criminal legislation in spades.  Indeed, powerful organizations are replete with little men.

Everyone Is Just Pretending Nothing's Wrong.  The fact is that I just don't care about how the bowels of the system works.  I don't need to care.  All I need to know is that money creation as a method of "solving" recessions can't continue in perpetuity: the dollar amounts necessary for bailouts become astronomical, too quickly, and inflation becomes a pressing issue.  Then, as we are now, Central Bankers get stuck between an "inflation vs. recession" rock and hard place.  It's a flawed system that once exploited a loophole (money printing) to slap band-aids on problems.  We then thought we could do it in perpetuity to keep ourselves and voters consistently comfortable by presenting the illusion that everything had done "back to normal" — and now we're finally going to have to deal with very uncomfortable consequences of our actions.

How Much Longer Can Western Governments Spit on Their People?  Labor strikes and fiery riots dominate French news after King Macron's imperial decision to raise the nation's retirement age without any vote from parliament.  In reaction to spiraling inflation, German transportation workers shut down the country on Monday in one of the largest European walkouts in decades.  In the Netherlands, a new anti-globalist, pro-farmer political party fighting back against the World Economic Forum's climate change — obsessed "Great Reset" agenda just dominated Dutch elections. [...] Clearly, revolution is in the air.  If you thought incendiary political turmoil threatened to combust only in the United States these days, then you have missed the growing protest movements throughout the collective West.  From belated pushback against government COVID tyranny in New Zealand and Australia to percolating hostility across the European continent stemming from the ruling class's "Build Back Better" pipe dreams, State-sanctioned illegal immigration, and costly "green" energy — induced inflation, there is a powder keg of popular resentment against governing authorities just one spark away from a history-altering explosion.

Are rich people dishonest?  Why do so many people believe that rich people are dishonest?  It is because of "zero-sum beliefs."  This is the view that the rich are only rich because they have taken something from the poor. [...] I suspect that a majority of prison inmates are adherents of zero-sum beliefs.  They believed they could only get rich by robbing a bank, breaking into someone's home or cheating someone.  But many intellectuals also imagine economic life as a zero-sum game.  Accordingly, rich countries should give some of their wealth to poor countries, and rich people should give aid to the poor.  From this point of view, it is only because the rich are so selfish and mean-spirited that so many people are still poor.

Tim Burchett Spoke The Truth About School Shootings.  The mainstream media is apoplectic after a Tennessee congressman spoke an uncomfortable truth.  Following the horrific Covenant School shooting, reporters hounded Republicans to get them to support gun control.  Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett gave them the answer they definitely didn't want.  [Tweet]  "It's a horrible, horrible situation," Burchett told inquiring reporters.  "And we're not gonna fix it.  Criminals are gonna be criminals.  My daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me... 'Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'"

The Federal Reserve shot itself in the foot.  By now, most understand that SVB failed due to an extreme mismatch in maturities between its deposits and its assets.  Can you believe that the Federal Reserve has fallen prey to the same mistake?  Further, the Feds' own actions caused its problems.  Ever since the Federal Reserve started printing U.S. dollars in 2008, called Quantitative Easing (Q.E.), we have expressed grave concern that the Treasury bonds the Fed was buying were short-term and therefore subject to a rising interest rate environment.  Further, those Treasuries decline in face value as rates rise.  That has all come to pass.  The Federal Reserve shot itself in the foot: since the same entity that printed dollars (Q.E.) invested those dollars (Treasuries), and then raised interest rates (FOMC), which impacted its income and its balance sheet (the value of the Treasuries also declined when the Fed raised rates), the Federal Reserve is the instrument of its own demise.

The Decades of Evidence That Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings.  Prior to the Covid vaccinations, psychiatric medications were the mass-prescribed medication that had the worst risk-to-benefit ratio on the market.  In addition to rarely providing benefits to patients, there is a wide range of severe complications that commonly result from psychiatric medications.  Likewise, I and many colleagues believe the widespread adoption of psychotropic drugs has distorted the cognition of the demographic of the country which frequently utilizes them (which to some extent stratifies by political orientation) and has created a wide range of detrimental shifts in our society.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have a similar primary mechanism of action to cocaine.  SSRIs block the reuptake of Serotonin, SNRIs, also commonly prescribed block the reuptake of Serotonin and Norepinephrine (henceforth "SSRI refers to both SSRI and SNRI), and Cocaine blocks the reuptake of Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine.  SSRIs (and SNRIs) were originally used as anti-depressants, then gradually had their use marketed into other areas and along the way have amassed a massive body count.

How Will We Know When We're Winning?  American leftist ideologues — those Democrats philosophically aligned with our communist adversaries — have been part of the Democrat Party for decades.  In the last few years, though, these leftists and our communist adversaries have finally made their move.  Leftists have now fully taken over the Democrat Party.  They've purged any Democrat politician holding office who wasn't on "the team" by using the primary process.  The Democrat Party, as we once knew it, doesn't exist anymore.  Further, Chinese connections and money have coerced established, regular politicians into joining "the team," turning them into willing allies of the leftists.  This may even include some Republican leaders, who now seem to be active saboteurs of their own political party.

Count on a Conservative Comeback — in America and Its Neighbor to the North.  As a country with a revolutionary tradition, the United States has always considered the right to own and carry firearms as implicit in the success of the American Revolution, and in the right and ability of all Americans to protect their property.  This was implicit in the Declaration of Independence, in particular in Thomas Jefferson's ungenerous references to the Native people. [...] The constitutional right to bear arms has been indicative and supportive of the muscular citizenship of a very free people.  In Canada, the imperial monarchical state conferred liberties that conservatives and liberals benefit from and exercise in a narrower band of prerogatives, largely defined by rates of tax and the extent of behavioral regulation.  This brings us to the perturbed present, where a glance at both Canada and the United States, and Great Britain also, might incite the inference that the mainly English-speaking countries have lost the capacity for self-government.  But with regime change, as both Canada and America have surely now earned the right to enact, we could slightly replicate the tale of the tortoise and the hare.

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley?  Bank failures tend to come in waves, and we are experiencing at least a mini-wave now.  Banks fail for three basic reasons:  1. Credit transformation:  deterioration in borrower creditworthiness, usually due to an adverse economic shock (e.g., a real estate bust).  2. Maturity transformation: borrowing short, lending long, and then getting hammered when interest rates rise.  3. Liquidity transformation combined with an exogenous liquidity shock, à la Diamond-Dybvig, where idiosyncratic depositor needs for cash lead to withdrawals that exceed liquid assets and therefore trigger fire sales of illiquid assets.  The two most notable failures of late — Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate — are examples of 2 and 3 respectively.  In some respects, SVB is the most astounding.  Not because a bank failed in the old-fashioned way, but because it was funded primarily by the deposits of supposed financial sophisticates — and because of the disgusting policy response of the Treasury and the Fed.

What it's like to live life not trusting your bank or your money.  Now that we are seeing inflation and serial bank failures in the U.S. with few prospects of any improvement so long as Joe Biden is in the saddle, perhaps a look at what that's like when the experience is extended is worth the trouble.  Emily Stewart, at Vox of all places, has written a brilliant, yes, brilliant, piece describing in minute detail just what the hell that kind of living is like.  What is it like for a modern economy and a first world lifestyle to go the way of, well, Argentina?  She describes it from a recent trip very, very well.  It all kind of looks the same as here.  It's first world.  People have kitchens and electricity and flush toilets.  They wear shoes, go to school, and speak English.  But it's not the same, and the changes creep up in the manner of the boiled frog — until they become complete lunacy around the issue of money.

NATO's Perilous Quest to Justify its Existence.  The unraveling of the Soviet Empire was widely perceived as a vindication of American verities and the beginning of an era of universal peace.  Unfortunately, the preservation of the military alliance and its subsequent eastward expansion created an atmosphere of mistrust and trepidation.  Established in April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO's prime purpose was deterring Soviet expansionism.  By 1989 with the Berlin Wall coming down, NATO accomplished its founders' stated objective.  "Mission accomplished," however, was not good news for the military alliance — it needed to be dissolved, find new enemies, or find a new mission for self-preservation.

Did 'Woke' Banking Trigger America's Banking Crisis?  The rising threat of bank insolvency implies that Dark Ages are ahead.  Banking analysts forecast that many "smaller and regional banks could be consolidated or collapse in a manner resembling the savings and loan crisis," which triggered the failure of 1,000 banks from 1986 to 1995.  Rising uncertainty could result in banks tightening credit application rules, thus making it harder for people to get mortgages or credit cards.  This could push the nation into a recession, spurring layoffs and economic decline.  The necessity of assigning blame goes to the heart of the world's current financial problems.  Properly assigning blame rests on two propositions:  first, the failure of regulators and regulations, and second, the imposition of new regulatory objectives focused on social justice rather than sound banking practices.  These two propositions are related.  SVB's failure confirms this claim.  Lessons embedded in SVB's collapse apply to the entire banking system.

The Other Things Fueling Inflation.  The financial sector is still roiling from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.  At the epicenter of factors triggering the collapse is the Federal Reserve's strategy of hiking interest rates.  This would be a good time to ask:  How else might we tamp down inflation?  Rapidly ratcheting up interest rates is intended to "cool down" the economy by inducing unemployment, or at least reducing job openings.  Policies that lower labor demand make it easier for companies to compete for employees without triggering so-called "wage-price" inflation.  And lower employment, in turn, also means there are fewer people with "excess wealth" demanding goods and services and thus driving inflation.  The alternative is an economy that meets or over-supplies goods and services.  Such an economy is disinflationary because it drives competition and thereby lowers prices.

Ferraris and Hungry Children: Venezuela's Socialist Vision in Shambles.  After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by.  The nation of grinding hardship has increasingly become one of haves and have-nots. [...] Venezuela's economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history.  Now there are signs the country is settling into a new, disorienting normality, with everyday products easily available, poverty starting to lessen — and surprising pockets of wealth arising.  That has left the socialist government of the authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro presiding over an improving economy as the opposition is struggling to unite and as the United States has scaled back oil sanctions that helped decimate the country's finances.

Is There A Way To Stop Bank Panics Like The One That Took Down SVB?  In recent years, the U.S. has suffered recurring banking crises almost like clockwork.  Indeed, about every 10 years or so we seem to go through another financial panic, only to be followed by a spate of bad regulations passed to ensure "it won't happen again."  But it always does.  So how do we end this cycle?  U.S. banking disasters plagued the late 20th century and early 21st century.  But of course they go back long before even that, to 1907 and 1929, as two examples.  More recently, there was the 1980s and '90s savings and loan crisis, the 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management and global crisis, the 2007 financial crisis (which also became a global bank crisis), and, now, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, which has already hit both smaller U.S. banks and foreign banks hard, and still remains a threat to the stability of the global financial system.

There Are Compelling Pragmatic Considerations Behind Supporting Trump Or DeSantis.  It's still very early in the cycle, but my guess is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will not run for president.  Many voters do not like a governor who was just re-elected walking away from the job, especially when the election was a few months before the announcement.  In Florida, officeholders running for federal office must resign their position.  It's being reported that the legislature is quietly preparing to change the law.  Although Florida Statute 99.012 has wiggle room, having it changed solely to benefit DeSantis would be seen by many as an unethical perversion of legislative power.  Should DeSantis resign, Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez would become governor.  Those relocating to Florida primarily because of how DeSantis runs the Sunshine state should start researching Nunez.

The government wants you to be terrified of emergency medicine.  Patient safety studies by government agencies and officialdom in general have always been plagued by methodology problems, all the way back to original 1978 study by Don Harper Mills for the California Med Association, intended to evaluate feasibility of no-fault malpractice insurance.  Here's the problem: patient safety bureaucrats are motivated to exaggerate the risks to the public so they can ride the wave as saviors and rescuers.  That's what public officials enjoy a lot:  a role as a savior bureaucrat, scholar, and conscientious public official. [...] Many emergency medicine medical organizations have objected to this effort by the AHRQ to denigrate and vilify emergency care providers, to knife them in the back with a ridiculously biased and inadequate study, and then publicize it for their own selfish bureaucratic purposes.

SVB collapse Shows ESG Is a counterproductive, virtue-signaling scam.  If there is one giant takeaway from the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it is that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores are utterly pointless in assessing the health and vitality of a major financial institution.  On the other hand, as the SVB saga demonstrates in spades, ESG scores are extremely helpful in determining whether or not a bank is likely to receive a government bailout when it goes belly up because it was fanatical with its fidelity to the ESG cult instead of making sound financial investment decisions.  Incredibly, the now insolvent SVB, which held $200 billion in net assets not that long ago, remains in very good standing when it comes to its ESG score.  As the record shows, to this day, SVB is still in the good graces of the ESG crowd.  In fact, all three of the big ESG ratings agencies still give SVB a solid ESG score despite its pending bankruptcy.  So, how did SVB attain such a stellar ESG score while it was making terrible risk-assessment decisions and putting its clients' funds in peril?

What Does it Mean that Our Rulers Didn't Learn from 2008?  If you go by this Bailout Meter, from FRED courtesy of Breitbart Business, we are already in 2008 Meltdown Range. [...] You know, back in the day, Warren Buffett said that he ought to hire a guy whose only job was to tell him not to buy airline stocks.  Maybe we ought to have a law that every banker needs an assistant whose only job is to tell him how far its bonds have to fall to wipe out the bank.  Although I would think this is not that hard.  Yet SVB operated without a Chief Risk Officer for most of 2022.

A Cheat Sheet on the SVB Collapse.  This week, a lot of attention has been focused on the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.  It is, in fact, a story of faulty accounting practices, poor government oversight, and the effects of government micromanaging markets at the same time that it fails in its oversight responsibilities.  And you will be paying for it.  Over at the Wall Street Journal, William L. Silber explains this better than anyone, and in terms anyone who ever purchased a government bond can understand.  They are safe.  The problem is liquidity:  ["]SVB held tens of billions of dollars in long-term government bonds.  On its face, this may seem like a prudent investment for a bank, but Treasury securities are riskless only when held to maturity. [... "]

The Creepy Advent of Digital Currency.  With the recent spate of bank failures, public concern has gravitated to the solvency of our money itself.  Many have raced to withdraw a portion of their savings in cash.  Others have looked to move it into alternate investment vehicles like I-Bonds or Treasury Bonds, commodities like gold or silver, and even cryptocurrency.  With the coronavirus pandemic and government attempts to shutter and then manage a shuttered economy came massive injections of new cash and record inflation.  This inflation resulted from an increase in prices based on an expansion in the supply of money without a corresponding expansion in the supply of goods.  When the Federal Reserve moved to tamp down this inflation by increasing interest rates to retract the available credit supply, it created an inverted yield curve, where short-term interest rates are higher than long-term interest rates.  To write new loans, the banks must borrow at a higher rate than they get in return on existing loans, and profitability tanks.

ESG Will Bankrupt You — Financially and Morally.  Do you believe in cautionary tales or think most things happen without warning?  Your answer might reveal how your psyche processes information to which you are exposed.  Everything you need to make good decisions is readily available, depending upon which sources you rely.  Recently publicized topics should set your spidey senses twitching:
  [#1]   Silicon Valley Bank suffers an abrupt collapse.
  [#2]   Joe Biden resurrects the all-but-dead Willow Creek Oil project.
  [#3]   Biden's Energy Secretary praises China's work on climate change.
  [#4]   The president delivers his vision for his FY 2024 budget, with a $6.9 trillion price tag.
  [#5]   40,000 hours of security footage inside the Capitol on January 6th are released to the public, initially through Tucker Carlson.
All of these bullets connect — ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ideology permeates everything, and it will cost us all.  You'll understand who wins and who will lose when ESG is fully implemented.  ESG is intended to replace the profit motive for large companies with something more akin to a social conscience.  What could go wrong?  Prepare to be amazed!

Putting 'diversity' and 'equity' first nearly crashed the economy.  Several years back I asked what it would take to halt the diversity, inclusion, equity obsession in America.  What would it take to get back to excellence and competence as the only criteria for employment?  Perhaps it would require the bridges to start falling down.  Though I suspect that if they did then certain people would claim they'd only fallen because of "structural racism."  Still, this week we had a good reminder of just how over-tolerant we have been of this insane, anti-excellence agenda.  Because although the bridges haven't yet started to collapse, the banks have.  And one reason is that the banks in question prioritized equity over excellence.

Biden killed SVB. We're next.  The blame game over SVB's collapse is a diversion. [...] The media is not that bright.  James Hickman is.  He is the founder of Sovereign Research.  He looked at the numbers and he found the culprit.  Biden.  He made government bonds worth less which has banks dropping like cockroaches in a Raid commercial.  Using the pen name Simon Black, Hickman wrote, "Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers.  Whereas Lehman bet almost all of its balance sheet on risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.  "According to the bank's annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet only $74 billion in loans."  So where did the money go?  Hickman said, "SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors' money ($99 billion) in U.S. government bonds.  "This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.  U.S. government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most risk free asset in the world.  But that's totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value.  And that's exactly what happened."  SVB lost money on government bonds by the billion and that brought the bank down.  That is like water catching fire.

The John Fetterman Situation Just Got Much Weirder.  Despite a "recovery" from the stroke that is clearly going in the wrong direction, talk of Fetterman resigning has been dismissed as ableism. [...] The New York Times wrote a full spread actually suggesting that it is normal for a senator to co-sponsor legislation that he's not even aware of.  That's the best defense they could come up with for a guy who not only can't perform the duties of his office, but can't even hold a conversation with someone.  The entire point of electing a representative is that they make decisions in the interests of their constituents.  In all my time covering politics, I have never once heard of a Senate staff co-sponsoring legislation for their boss without his or her knowledge.  That's so insane and contrary to the electoral system as to be scandalous all on its own.  We aren't supposed to be a government run by staff proxies.

These are the people who rule the world.  For those of you who don't know what central banks do, all you need to know is that they control the money supply by putting a stranglehold on credit.  In the US the central bank is the Federal Reserve, and if you have noticed mortgage rates jump dramatically in recent months, you can thank the Federal Reserve.  You can also thank the Fed for helping fuel inflation, after pumping trillions of dollars into the economy.  You like inflation, right?  Thank the Fed.  You're gonna like what they are about to do to reign [sic] in inflation even less, I assure you.  Wringing inflation out of the economy is very painful.

The Deadly Incompetence of our Leadership.  [Scroll down]  Given that Iran subscribes to a martyrist view of Jihad, a major loss of life would not deter Iran from a war in order to achieve its aim of destroying Israel.  The Jews however want to live, and given Israel's diminutive size — where 1 nuclear weapon could wipe out a large part of the country — Israel has no options but to preemptively attack Iran.  This is not avoidable by negotiation.  President Biden would not be able to stop the war, and Israel would go ahead with or without American approval.  Israel has no choice.  When that attack comes, it may require Israel to use nuclear bunker busters to demolish Iran's well sunken and fortified manufacturing sites.  The genie would be out of the bottle.  Russia may then decide to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine, citing Israel's use on Iran as a precedent.  All hell would break loose.

Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman Really Are Two of a Kind.  The nation watches in horror as Joe Biden pretends to be capable of being president of the United States, and behind the shell of a man is a woman:  Jill Biden, who most certainly knows better than anyone that Joe Biden is many fries short of a Happy Meal® but pushes her husband along, away from the occasionally inquisitive media that dares to think that the president of the United States should be able to answer a few simple questions. [...] Yeah, it's crazy to think that Joe, who often doesn't even know where he is, forgets basic information, and mumbles words.  How dare anyone even suggest mental competency tests?  Her response is eerily reminiscent of Gisele Fetterman's lame attempt at defending her husband last year from questions about his cognitive health after his public appearances showed severe mental impairment.  When the media honestly reported on her husband's communication problems, she demanded an apology and likened the reporting to an attack on the disabled community.

Just how unjust is our system of justice?  The CIA and FBI have turned away from investigating foreign threats (like China) and against law-abiding Americans, especially conservative and/or Christian Americans.  Turns out the Church Committee did not effectively reform those institutions as promised.  The FBI/DOJ/CIA/DNC complex robbed Trump of his 2020 victory because he was and remains a threat to their personal wealth and power.  Now our blighted and corrupt administration is fighting a proxy war with Russia over the national security of their eastern border which is insignificant to America.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says this is the most important issue on the planet?  China is our most dangerous adversary, not Russia.

Will DeSantis Rescue Republicans or Let Them Down?  Unfortunately for Ron DeSantis, expectations of him could not be higher.  For a critical mass of Republicans seeking to move past Donald Trump, the Florida governor is already the anointed savior.  While Trump still holds the lead in most polling, DeSantis is almost always second choice and is the favorite for many Republicans who want a new standard bearer because they believe Trump can't win.  Though he has not yet launched a campaign, and his allies say he would not until the state legislature completes its session in May, DeSantis definitely wants us all to think he will soon be a presidential candidate.

Fetterman Chief of Staff 'Acting Senator' Adam Jentleson Repeatedly Questioned President Trump's Mental Health.  Adam Jentleson, chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is steadfastly supporting his nmentally ill boss who has been hospitalized because he is an apparent danger to himself, was singing a different tune about elected officials' mental fitness for office during the Trump years.  Jentleson even warned against efforts to "normalize... mental illness".  Jentleson is a sharp-elbow throwing partisan who was deputy chief of staff to one of the dirtiest Senators in recent history, the late Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)[.]  Fetterman suffered a debilitating stroke last May and has struggled to do his job as Senator since being sworn in on January 3rd.  Fetterman has been hospitalized twice this year after assuming office because he is unable to take care of himself and because his chief of staff, who should have been looking out for his boss' health and well-being, ran him into the ground.

The names of some of the 51 anti-conservative American businesses may surprise you.  The major retail giants are also pushing leftism.  We've seen it with Target, which has been in the forefront of Gay Pride for decades, but it may surprise you to learn that Walmart and Home Depot are also using their economic power to push leftist policies. "For example, 1792 Exchange notes Home Depot 'advertised flyers to its employees about confronting their 'white privilege, Christian privilege, heterosexual privilege, able-bodied privilege,' etc.'"  The leftist madness continues with food and beverage companies.  We already knew about Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Kellogg's (with a history of weird progressivism spanning more than 100 years), but you probably didn't know that McDonald's and JM Smucker were also on the leftist bandwagon.  Again, they sell their products to everyone but use their profits to advance leftist political goals.

Injustice of the Court.  I was encouraged to look at sacrifice for my nation as the highest honor.  I saluted the flag, got choked up at the sound of the national anthem.  Now, I have to ask what purpose would my sacrifice serve?  Would it be to keep Hunter's diary a secret?  Would it be to hide all the crimes of pedophilia among our representatives, senators, presidents and judges?  Would my sacrifice be to see drag queens in Kindergarten?  Would it be to keep political prisoners of the current regime?  Would it be to fund extortion and brutality of parents concerned about their children and the schools they go to?  The problem that has been created is that as a patriotic son of the founding ideals, I would have to fight against all of that, against the crooked institutions of today.  I could not, in good conscience fight to sustain this treason.  It's a paradox created by their lies and deceit that I could not fight for the government of my nation, but am forced to try and bring it to heel, to bring it back under control.

How to save ourselves from Chinese, Democrat Party communism.  The Biden regime's support for socialists throughout Latin America is aiding China's efforts to dominate the region.  We must recognize and counter the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) imperialist ambitions or lose our liberty.  We cannot do so with an antiliberty regime in the White House that hates America and all it stands for.  We must survive the next two years with Biden in the executive and recover our government from those whose goal is to transform the federal government into a dictatorship.  One step in this direction, which has begun, is congressional Republicans investigating the Biden regime and informing the public of the truth.  Even though meaningful legislation will almost surely not become law, the Republican-majority House must propose bills to counter the Biden regime's harmful policies.

Is the United States Really Ready for Any Disaster, Whether Man-Made or Natural?  [Scroll down]  [W]hat if the United States were to have a large electrical blackout like the one that affected the east coast in August of 2003?  Thankfully, that happened in the summer and in most places lasted no longer than 18 hours.  What would happen if 50, 60, or 70 million people on the east coast were all of a sudden left without electricity in the middle of winter, like in the summer of '03 — but for a longer period of time?  I sincerely doubt the United States government would be able to mobilize quickly enough to help citizens stranded without a basic tool that we take for granted each and every day like electricity.  Without electricity you can't keep food cold, medicine that needs to be refrigerated will go bad, and the gas that is needed to fuel cars to move around will be stuck in the ground because pumps won't operate.

This Is America.  Consider recent news items reporting stories of unusual events, ones growing in frequency.  With the technology and knowledge developed over decades, stupid stuff shouldn't happen nearly as much as it does.
  •   "Balloongate" raised the specter that China or Russia could have been floating nukes over the U.S. for years because someone manually changed the filters on U.S. radar displays to exclude balloons.
  •   Ford halted production of their newest E.V. vehicle due to battery problems.
  •   Southwest Airlines stranded thousands of passengers because outdated scheduling software was not equal to the tasks at hand.
  •   An outside hack crippled Florida's Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.  Surgeries were canceled, manual record-keeping returned to use, and general chaos ensued.
  •   mRNA Vaccines may not be vaccines at all?  Traditionally, vaccines provide immunity from a disease.  Today, we understand that the primary value is not immunity but rather a reduction of symptoms and death.  This is not what was asserted to the public by the CDC, which continually appears to redefine the intent of the shot.
  •   Approximately 9 million Americans receive Federal Disability Benefits, and another 5.5 million former military receive full or partial disability.  An additional million plus receive private disability.  These numbers are the highest in history and call into question the legitimacy of the process, which seems to offer government-funded disincentives to work.
  •   Is our education system failing?  Today, 65% of children can't read at grade level.  Reading ability has been on a downhill trajectory since 1992, but the government and teachers' unions underplay that obvious and disturbing failure all too easily.

The Editor says...
The writer goes on to blame incompetence and "woke" nonsense, but I think he's on the wrong track.  All of the above is, in my opinion, the result of malfeasance on the part of our government, or cyber-attacks from other governments, most likely China.

The Institutional Pathology That Took Down James O'Keefe.  Was this really due to the long arm of Pfizer as so many assume, or was it just old fashioned jealousy and fragging which has cleaved James O'Keefe off of the "Project Veritas" organization which he built to support his passionate activities?  I have seen versions of this sad story play out time and time again.  Yet another version of the very human social forces that prevent our species from reaching its full potential.  Whatever his personal character flaws may be, my heart goes out to James O'Keefe.  From where I sit, this appears to be yet another case of an innovative, hard working, highly motivated leader brought down at the very moment great achievement by the pettiness of the small minded.

The Curse of the One-Sentence Paragraph.  The once-mighty paragraph that adorned our best writing in history and politics, as well as literature, is getting shorter by the day, often settling into the one-sentence fragment.  Not only a block of print on a page, the paragraph is a unit of thought, a means of conveying a description, a theory, a report, an impression, a complex idea, or a rhetorical flow with a degree of authority.  It is holistic by nature and, as such, an aid to contemplation.  It is not merely a stylistic tic or a passing literary convention that can be denatured for convenience.  A paragraph properly leads to another when the mental trajectory it favors and permits is complete.  It is, in its way, like a cerebral lobe that serves a particular function.  One-sentence paragraphs are like lesions.  Of course, a standard paragraph these days may run to two or three sentences, but the difference is not significant.  The sense of continuity is stunted.

Meeting Military Recruitment Goals.  Recently we've heard arguments that the failure of the military to meet its recruitment goals is a product of recruitment policy. [...] Does the media shout our servicemen's bravery, their commitment to national pride and support?  No — they are shown as failures of our politicians, failures of our foreign policy, stupid for even joining and ignored at home.  Returning soldiers commit suicide at record levels because of lack of public and political support.  There is no end to the wars in far-off lands where politicians bloviate and big business grows wealthy.  I spent 26+ years in green, so I know what the military can do for you and how it can help make you a better person.  That military is gone.  It died as we went to war in Iraq.  Vietnam was bad enough for politicalizing foreign wars.  The Middle East is worse.  There is no end to battling a religion.  As long as one person believes, the war rages on.  Especially when some areas are off limits to attack, as were Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos.  Or Pakistan and Iran.  We never seem to learn that war is either all or nothing.  The military knows this simple fact; politicians don't.

Educating for Freedom.  How do we educate our students for freedom?  After all, many of them arrive in college today believing that the United States is systematically oppressive, hopelessly unjust, and that there is not much worth celebrating or defending about our country (or so they have been taught).  So I often start my class by asking them a simple question:  "Out of the world's twenty largest countries, in which country would you rather live?"  I pick the world's twenty largest countries because size matters.  The larger a society's size, the more complex will be its social, economic, and political problems.  There is also the difficulty of maintaining freedom and representative government in the midst of sharp political differences and quarrelling factions and interest groups.  Each country's character as a free society must be judged not by reference to some abstract ideal standard but by reference to societies that actually exist in today's world.  This is not a trivial point.  The most horrible atrocities committed in the last century, numbering in the hundreds of millions of victims, were carried out by people enamored of some beautiful future vision of perfection.

Who Killed Philip Haney?  The Mystery Continues.  February 21 will mark three years since Philip Haney, 66, was "found deceased" in Amador County, California, killed by a gunshot to the chest.  The victim was not the typical Sierra foothills resident.  Philip Haney was the author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad, first published in 2016.  The DHS whistleblower also authored Frontpage articles, "Deobond Attacks in San Bernardino, Sri Lanka," "The Terrorist Ties that Bind," and "The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America's Ominous Post-Election Statement."  The expert on Islamic jihad had been punished for doing his job at a high level.  This is the man found deceased in Amador County.  In Haney's RV, the sheriff found numerous thumb drives, a laptop computer, and other materials.  Sheriff Martin Ryan turned these over to the FBI, which did not reveal what the devices contained, and the bureau remained silent on the case through 2021.  Last year, the Amador County sheriff's office told Frontpage there was "no new news" about Haney and that the case was closed.  A month later, in March, 2022, more than two years after Haney was found deceased, the case was proclaimed a suicide.  Claims that Haney killed himself had appeared from the start, but were steadfastly denied by Haney's friends, family and members of Congress.

A counterintuitive take on the risk that China poses to the world.  David Archibald, an Australian scientist and analyst, counterintuitively argues that China is weaker than we think.  I don't agree with everything Archibald says, both factually and theoretically, but I thought his essay is interesting enough to bring to your attention.  The premise of Archibald's claim that China is not as forbidding as Xi Jinping makes it appear is summed up in a single sentence: "China has a lot of structural problems that make it a fragile state, a frail state and even potentially a future failed state."

The Shameless Abuse of John Fetterman Comes to a Head.  As RedState reported, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is back in the hospital for a second time since taking office.  According to a statement put out by his staff, the senator recently checked himself into Walter Reed to receive treatment for severe clinical depression.  That should be news to Pennsylvanians given there was never any admission during the 2022 election that Fetterman suffered from depression.  Apparently, this has been a long-running issue, separate from the stroke that has left him unable to perform the basic functions of his office.  Where do things go from here?  Who knows.  Pennsylvania elected a man who was clearly not capable of doing the job, and now they are stuck with him until he resigns, at which point the Democrat governor will appoint the replacement.

CVFC PAC: Chinese War Planners Are Ecstatic with Biden's "Opens Door Policy" Allowing for Chinese Sabotage.  Communism China poses an existential threat to the United States and all Mankind.  Over the last two years the Biden/Obama administration has had an open-door policy with Communist China which has been predictably disabling the military defenses and disarming intelligence defenses of the Republic.  In this article, read what China Expert Gordon Chang writes Chinese sabotage at the Gatestone Institute, where he is a senior distinguished fellow and an Advisory Board Member.  While Biden recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia, he incoherently stated we are not adversaries, there is no need for a Cold War.  He said the US and Communist China are friendly competitors.  However, one would have to be brain dead to believe that the US and Communist China are not in a Cold War.  The Chinses Communist Party (CCP) is conditioning the population of Communist China to expect a coming war.  Yet the Biden/Obama administration is ignoring the continued threats by Communist China to Taiwan, and the repeated outright warnings to the United States not to defend Taiwan.

New Report Reveals the Depths of Fetterman's Problems.  It was a shameful thing that Democrats were so concerned about power and holding onto the Senate that they kept John Fetterman in the race despite his medical problems. [...] There's a new report that among the issues he's dealing with is the depth of his cognitive issues.  According to the report, he hears people speaking like the way you hear the voice of the teacher from the "Peanuts" cartoon. [...] Fetterman has to carry around a closed captioning device to have conversations since he can't understand what people are saying on his own.  They've wired his office and the Senate chamber so closed captions can be typed out for him by professional broadcast captioners.  Even with all that help, he's refusing to take questions from reporters in the Senate hallways because he can't understand them.  His fellow Democratic senators also tried to downplay it, with folks like Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) saying, "There are a lot of people out there who understand disability, and understand struggle."  Yes, there are, but you also want to have people in the position who can fully serve.  If you can't even understand what people are saying in the hallway, that's a big problem.

Julie Kelly of American Greatness could just be our George Smiley.  Joe Biden has numerous shortcomings as a political leader; apart from apparently being challenged by a severe shortness of brainpower, the commander-in-thief regards the people of MAGA not as fellow citizens to be respected, but as political foes to be destroyed.  Applauding a charlatan's State of the Union address throughout, not just politely at start and end — as Speaker McCarthy did — assumes geniality and kinship.  Such a speaker needs guidance in Political Reality/USA 101.  The person to provide such guidance, I submit, is Julie Kelly; Ms. Kelly's exposés regularly blast openings in the media's Iron Curtain around Biden to keep Americans informed about the repressive conduct, particularly post-Jan. 6, of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the federal courts, and the maltreatment of detainees as if they were political prisoners in a ruthless dictatorship.  Significantly, Ms. Kelly does not say, as did the Speaker, that the Capitol cop who shot the late Ashli Babbitt was "just doing his job."  To the contrary, every member of Congress, not just the panel on un-American practices by the federal government, should read this very important disclosure by the one and only Kelly on Capitol Hill brutality:  January 6 Was the Worst Incident of Police Brutality Since Civil Rights Era.

Has The State Of The Union Ever Been Worse?  [Scroll down]  In answer to our own question, yes, the state of the union has been worse.  There was a bitter war between the states that ripped the nation apart in the 1860s, Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the Great Depression was egregious, and there were moments in the 1960s when it appeared the country had lost its way.  The 2020s so far are more like the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter, having no idea how to leverage America's immense advantages, used the office of the presidency to try to soften a national crash.  Except in the case of Biden, the decline is by design.  He's not trying to minimize the damage of a wreck he could avoid.  He's accelerating as we head for the ditch.  Why voters chose Biden over Trump might forever be a mystery.  Yes, the Democrats did all they could to fix the election for Biden, working within a cabal that changed election rules and laws in ways the hurt Trump, manipulated media coverage so that it was more favorable to Biden, and controlled the gates of information.  But even with that advantage, voters should have easily seen the difference between the candidates:  one who might appear crass but believes in the American people; the other wants to subjugate them to the authority of the ruling class that has helped cover up his lies, failures and corruption — the one who will tell us tonight to trust him because he's been doing such a good job.

Cancel the State of the Union.  ow did the State of the Union — which owes its origin to a one-liner in the Constitution instructing the president to "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the state of the Union," become an annual political carnival that requires an UltraMax security cordon to be cast over the Capitol Building, swallows hours of live TV coverage on a half dozen networks, and goads reams of pre- and post-analysis out of the typing press — become such an all-consuming gala?  The Constitution's authors didn't think the SOTU was essential, giving presidents the wide instruction that they must only address remarks to Congress "from time to time."  If the president stiffed Congress on the SOTU, no constitutional crisis would ensue.  Nor must the president present his remarks in person.  Every president from Thomas Jefferson to William Howard Taft produced remarks for Congress and then mailed them in.  And the State of the Union wasn't even called the State of the Union until the 1940s during Franklin Roosevelt's reign.  Previously it went by the more humble name of the "Annual Message."

They're Not Worried About 'Russian Influence', They're Worried About Dissent.  Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of "Russian propaganda".  I know I'm not a Russian propagandist.  I'm not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia.  My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind.  I'm literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.  Yet for years I've watched people pointing at me as an example of what "Russian propaganda" looks like.

Everything They've Told You About Russia Is A Lie.  I'm going to show you why I always thought it was lunacy to start in with the Russians.  [#1] Russia Is Not Iran, Iraq or North Korea.  It's not just Americans who misjudge Russia.  The United Kingdom — America's faithful lapdog — is utterly delusional when it comes to the Russians. [...] There's nothing in Europe or North America that Russia absolutely needs.

Guilty Unless Proven Innocent is the Army Norm.  For most of the history of the Army, what would in the 21st century be known as Equal Opportunity (EO) and Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention (SHARP) programs were sorely lacking effectiveness.  Soldiers could face bias, harassment, even sexual assault, with little or no real recourse.  Soldiers could report the offenses, but leadership often swept accusations under the rug.  In the mid-2000s a female senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) was raped by a male officer.  She would not file a complaint against the man because, "nothing's going to happen about it."  This was all too common.  Forward to the early 2010s and things began to change.  The Army threatened commanders that if EO or SHARP were not properly investigated, and a blind eye was turned, their careers would be endangered.  EO and SHARP complaints began to be taken seriously.  Investigations occurred.  Guilty perpetrators were held accountable.  Accusations soared because soldiers felt more comfortable reporting.  But the pendulum continued to swing away from the do-nothing of the past towards the #metoo and #trustallwomen knee-jerk reactions of the late teens where accusations equal guilt.

The biggest, most ignored demographic in electoral politics.  The majority of non-voters are independents who do not identify with either party.  Most have no higher than a high school education and also make less than $40K/year. [...] Here are potential remedies to the real or imagined disincentives for non-voters to participate in the Great American Experiment:
  •   Break the two-party duopoly.  The American Conservative published a thorough article on how to accomplish this.
  •   Term limits.  The McCarthy refuseniks actually pushed for a vote on this issue as a precondition to elect the new House speaker.
  •   Spotlight the corruption.  Require politicians to wear an insignia on their $1,000 suits for every corporation that has funneled money into their campaign, directly or indirectly, like NASCAR drivers. [...]
  •   Transparency.  Declassify all the documents currently hidden from the public that do not have a legitimate national security justification to remain classified, as determined by some truly independent panel empowered to make such judgment calls.  By the government's own admission, up to 90% of these documents would not adversely affect national security if they were released.  Their status as classified does not serve "national security"; it keeps the Deep State's dirty secrets hidden from those of us who pay for their dirty deeds to be performed in our name.  JFK expressed the essence of this wild notion, and he was rewarded with a bullet in the head.

To Save America, Abolish the Civil Service.  Over the past few months, we've been considering the wholly negative history of the so-called "Progressive"-era constitutional amendments, none of which did anything to improve the nation but did much to undermine its founding principles.  Until the end of the Civil War, the constitution had only been amended twice since the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791:  the obscure, jurisdictional 11th Amendment, (1795), which had to do with lawsuits involving state and federal courts, and the 12th, (1804), which partially clarified the procedures for presidential elections.  Then, between 1865 and 1870, came the three Reconstruction amendments, abolishing slavery (except as a punishment for a crime, such as a prison chain gang) and giving African-Americans citizenship and voting and other rights.  And then after a 43-year break, came the Progressive Era and its assault on Americans' money and personal freedom, the radical changes in how the Senate is selected, Prohibition of a formerly legal substance, and finally the extension of the franchise to women, in defiance of all historical norms going back to the ancient Greeks, on the theory that it wasn't "fair."  All have been proven disasters.

The Real Great Reset.  The year 2023 is shaping up to be the start of long period of destruction and renewal.  The old global world is collapsing under the impact of the war in Ukraine, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, high energy prices, supply chain disruption, and a declining public confidence in authority.  The coming year will see the demolition continue until perhaps the point is reached when it is simply easier to start over again.

Weaponization of the DOJ by the Chinese Communist Party.  In a shockingly direct conflict against the interests and security of the U.S., the CCP has weaponized the DOJ to pursue "dissidents, political rivals, and critics" who have trusted our government's laws protecting asylum seekers from hostile foreign governments.  U.S. law firms doing business in and on behalf of China are subject to the malign influence of the CCP through the "unrestricted warfare" tactic of lawfare.  In 1992, the CCP began allowing foreign law firms to establish practices in China, requiring, as FBI Director Wray explained, "the law be interpreted according to the CCP's orders, directives, and interests, and... uphold the leadership of the party."  No one understands CCP lawfare tactics better than Chinese dissident, Miles Guo,because he's been their primary target.  According to The Wall Street Journal, "Some U.S. national security officials view Mr. Guo, who claims to have potentially valuable information on top Chinese officials and business magnates and on North Korea, as a useful bargaining chip to use with Beijing."

We Can Have A Federal Spending Cap.  When We the People get to the point in our personal finances where we are at risk of not even being able to pay the interest on our credit cards and loans, that's a wake-up call at the cliff's edge of bankruptcy.  Most of us never get there.  When we do, it's time to (1) stop spending and (2) get those bills paid down, if not completely paid off.  Such personal responsibility needs to be manifest at our national level too.  It's time to stop funding every seemingly good idea that comes along.  Fiscal restraint is required.  We need a spending cap, one that comes with such strong cables attached that they cannot be sawn through.  The spending cap must contain reductions by a fixed percentage every year for the next ten years.

Parsing an Ungrateful Generation.  [Scroll down] Quitting your job without giving the standard two-week notice (or more if you are in a critical position) is considered by molly-coddled younger workers to be nothing more than leveling the playing field.  The prevailing thinking seems to state that companies are exploiting their workers through the very requirement to show up for work.  Many of those young believe they have better things to do than punch a clock or make money for someone other than themselves and detest the inconvenience of having to work for money.  To them, this is literal proof of White Supremacy. [...] Millions of our young live with a profound distrust for America, its systems, fairness, and perhaps, even a question of how long the America of their parents and grandparents will continue to exist.  These issues constitute the root cause of our current predicament and where we must collectively make our stand.

It's Time To Try A Different Approach To America's Drug Problem.  As deaths from illegal drugs rise, many people recommend more stringent law enforcement.  The basic thrust of this argument is simple.  In the last few years, we have seen overdose deaths rise from sixty-odd thousand to over a hundred thousand per year.  The drugs they die from are brought into the US illegally and typically contain fentanyl.  We need more cops and so on to stop the flow.  Full disclosure: I am a retired anesthesiologist who administered fentanyl extensively throughout most of my thirty-six years in medicine.  I have literally given gallons of the stuff, so I'm intimately familiar with it. [...] If I take you into the manufacturing process, you'll discover that these drugs cost almost nothing to manufacture.  That's right, they are no more expensive to make than aspirin, and you can buy that cheap.  So why are we seeing inexpensive safe drugs killing people and criminals like El Chapo becoming as rich as Croesus?  I'll give you a hint.  It's not the drugs.

Should You Raise Chickens?  Yes.  That's it.  That's the article.  Well, it could be, because IF you have the means and IF you have the space and IF you're physically capable of raising chickens, then you definitely should consider buying and raising them.  I was saying this before eggs became so expensive in the United States that people started smuggling them from Mexican supermarkets.  Now, it's really a no-brainer.

How the world works (for dummies).  Poverty in America is so bad that some people can barely afford their cell phones.  In much of the rest of the world, poor people starve to death, or die of what in America are ordinary, survivable diseases or injuries.  In America, injustice is so bad that many lawyers appointed by the court cannot get their clients acquitted of the crimes they committed, and must settle for a plea bargain.  Elsewhere, to be accused is to be found guilty and imprisoned in hell-hole cellars, innocence being irrelevant to the courts of so-called justice.  In the U.S., police sometimes bruise a resisting felon and get fired for excessive use of force.  In some parts of the world, the main difference between their police and their criminals is a badge.

Are Americans Still Capable of Self-Government?  In a 1789 letter to the British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson observed that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government."  By that standard, it's no longer clear that the American electorate is equipped for the task.  Jefferson was, of course, an ardent advocate of a free press whose primary function would be to provide the voters with enough information about the government's actions to assess the soundness of its policies.  Unfortunately, it's unlikely that he would dignify today's corporate media with the appellation "free press."  Jefferson's definition of the term would not, for example, apply to "news" organizations that collude with government officials to suppress debate on important national issues such as the COVID-19 lockdowns.  Nor would it include the major broadcast networks that collectively refuse to report a major government-censorship scandal like the Twitter Files.  This kind of story is why First Amendment protections for the press exist.

On National Security, Can the Center Hold?  China and Russia are explicit concerns.  The NDAA establishes a defense modernization program for Taiwan.  This includes up to $10 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants over the next five years and up to $2 billion in loans.  It would create a regional contingency stockpile, allowing the U.S. to place weapons in Taiwan for use if a conflict erupts.  To strengthen U.S. capabilities, construction of nine warships and two support ships is to begin this year and $1 billion is directed to improve the shipbuilding industrial base.  The Navy will need to build more warships, faster, if it is to maintain naval superiority against a China that has the world's largest shipyards dedicated to expanding its battle fleet.  The NDAA would extend and modify the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, authorizing $800 million this fiscal year.  The program provides funds to pay the American defense industry to produce weapons to send to Ukraine, rather than drawing from current stockpiles which American forces may need.

Good riddance to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.  One of the most obnoxious wokester players on the world stage surprised everyone Wednesday by saying she was calling it quits. [...] It couldn't have come soon enough.  She was a wokester fanatic whose gun-grabbing, China-kowtowing, sneeriness at conservatives, softness on crime, and draconian COVID lockdowns ran New Zealand's economy into the ground and it all just caught up to her.  Despite the international plaudits that brought from the international left, the reason she got out was that she was loathed at home, and wouldn't have been able to win re-election in the general election in October.  She didn't want her name attached to the loss to her entire party that was coming.  In the last month, her popularity fell to a stunning 29%, from an initial high of 70%. [...] These leftists have made a hash of things, and New Zealanders finally got tired of it.  Ardern could no longer deny what was going on with that 29% popularity rating that just kept moving lower.  It goes to show that a progressive leader, with dictatorial tendencies, doesn't take long to grow very unpopular, even from an initial base of good will.  Ardern leaves her office as a failure, despite the fakey-fake words of praise even from her (undoubtedly delighted) opponents at her exit.

Comedian Konstantin Kisin's Oxford Debate Speech Was Epic.  At 40, Kisin is an early Millennial (or Xennial, as they are now being categorized).  So, he has lived some life, had a taste of career success, and has a family.  Some of the things that indicate that your views on how life and the economy works is not merely theoretical.  Kisin also was born in Russia and emigrated to Europe, domiciling in Great Britain.  So, he has not always benefited from living in the Western petri dishes where WOKENESS germinates and takes hold.  Which is what makes him, and this debate speech he gave at The Oxford Union Society so compelling.  [Video clip]

Joe Biden and the CIA Worked to Install Current Communist Regime in Brazil — This Was All Planned.  As The Gateway Pundit reported on Saturday — The US began deporting Brazilian opposition leaders back to Brazil this week and the Lula Gulags.  This is taking place at the same time that as evidence was presented that the January 8 riots in Brazilia were staged.  US journalist Glenn Greenwald is now complaining about the Communist takeover he helped support and enable.  Greenwald was an outspoken critic of President Jair Bolsonaro the past several years.  He got what he asked for — criminal Lula is back in charge, the communists are fully in charge and the iron boot of Marxism is taking control of Brazil.

WATCH: Sheriff Mark Lamb on Upholding the Constitution Instead of the State.  Sheriff Mark Lamb joined the program  [What program?]  to discuss his new children's book titled "The Adventures of Seymour Clues and Mr. Mouse," and why it is important for people with conservative values to create competing alternatives to the progressive ideology being pushed in the school system.  In this episode, Lamb also discussed the proper role of a sheriff and how people in these roles have a duty to uphold the Constitution even when it goes against the wishes of state governing authorities.  Most people are not aware of a sheriff's true role in the community and believe they are only another enforcement arm.  But these officials are also tasked with ensuring that the rights of their communities are not threatened by government and civilians alike.  It was quite an enlightening conversation.  [Video clip]

A Reminder to Doctors about the Meaning of Life.  Many people now know of Damar Hamlin, who suffered a similar event on national television.  After COVID politics, under which the physician's first obligation to provide the best care for his patient has frequently been ignored (e.g., mandated vaccines for patients with immunity), millions of Americans were again reminded what real medicine looks like, as a medical team revived Damar.  Illustrative of a true doctor-patient relationship, the focus was solely on Damar's health.  There were no legal consent forms, no administrators detailing which procedures could be billed, no food from a salesman pushing the "best drug" for a patient in cardiac arrest, and no complex codes required prior to chest compressions.  Patients have the right to expect from their physician a relationship free from the influence of power, money, and anonymous third parties.

The Editor says...
Yes, but surely all NFL players have given written permission for any NFL doctor to do anything necessary to   protect the NFL   save the player's life.

Do We Need a Department of Transportation?  [Scroll down] Government regulators have no real track record at improving anything, let alone system performance.  Regulators typically make things worse.  Let's take a look at the Department of Transportation (DoT).  It's stated mission is "To deliver the world's leading transportation system, serving the American people and economy through the safe, efficient, sustainable, and equitable movement of people and goods."  The DoT was established in 1966 and combines thirteen agencies that cover all aspects of transportation from air, road, and rail travel to the administration of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.  Its FY23 budget is $105 Billion, up from the FY21 budget of $87.6 Billion and it employs over 58,000 personnel.  What has the DoT done for us?  In addition to the failures listed above, there is plenty more where those came from.  First off, the Federal Aviation Administration, one of the DoT agencies, failed miserably in certifying the 737 Max jet, causing two major crashes and the loss of many lives.  While spending over $16.9 billion (FY23) on mass transit the U.S. has failed to modernize its system.  The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 removed much of the price controls and red tape in the railroad industry, resulting in a 159% increase in productivity and a real price decline of 44%.  Now, the Surface Transportation Board is starting to regulate reciprocal switching agreements.  The net effect will be to bog down the rail industry and increase prices.  With the ongoing failures of the Department of Transportation, is it fair to place the blame on one person?  No.  This is a system problem that needs to be dealt with in a different way.  What needs to be done is to start to dismantle the DoT, agency by agency.  Let's start with the FAA.

Trump Era Officials Say Americans 'Should Be Insulted' By Mexican President 'Lecturing' US On Border Wall.  Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who has a history of speaking out against Republicans cracking down on illegal migration, talked to Biden about migration issues on Tuesday at the North American Leaders' Summit, and thanked him for not building "even one meter of wall" despite pleas from Republicans.  López Obrador made the remarks because he does not want to be held "accountable by America for his and Mexico's responsibility for the human and drug trafficking running through his country," former Deputy DHS Secretary and Senior Fellow for Center for Renewing America Ken Cuccinelli told the Caller.  He has historically been against the wall for "political reasons," but Trump "prioritized the safety and well-being of the American people over the opinions and perceptions of Mexican leaders," Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS and executive director of the America First Policy Institute, said.  "It's clear that President Biden does not share that same view, and the President of Mexico has taken advantage of it."

Investigating the Investigators.  Of course, the very name of the subcommittee — the "Weaponization of the Federal Government" — suggests a wide-ranging inquiry that could look into the actions of a number of federal agencies — the FBI/DOJ, Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and NSA, etc.  It would include efforts by the Biden Administration and FDA/CDC to eliminate unapproved speech about COVID-19 and how the FBI made sure social media companies, including Twitter, took down alleged misinformation about the 2020 election and had a part in the suppression of the Hunter Biden story.  And that's just the more recent history of governmental abuses.  What else is out there, still waiting to be uncovered?  There is sure to be more.  We just haven't heard of it yet.  Then there are the federal abuses of their investigative powers, starting with the Russiagate fiasco.  Yet even with Russiagate there's much we don't know.  It's either hidden under layers of classifications or kept secret as part of federal investigative steps.  Or the evidence remains with the DNC and Crowdstrike, assuming it hasn't been destroyed.

Trump Was Right On Tariffs, And Biden Knows It.  Free traders on the left and the right routinely excoriated Donald Trump for his willingness to implement tariffs on foreign imports.  With the election of Joe Biden in 2020, many hoped the incoming president would reverse the former president's "protectionist" trade policies and return to free trade orthodoxy.  This, however, never happened. [...] President Biden has, time and time again, skirted the issue of tariffs.  Instead, he has opted to quietly continue his predecessor's America-first tariff hikes, despite having forcefully criticized Trump's trade policy with China in 2019:  "President Trump may think he's being tough on China.  All that he's delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more."  Biden must have conveniently forgotten this previous stance.  By keeping in place the Trump tariffs, he has successfully frustrated economic liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Elitists' Communications Counterrevolution.  In sum, the communications revolution is an historically unprecedented technological boon for personal empowerment, growth, enrichment, and self-government.  It is this last that alarms the elitists.  The elitists believe they are entitled to wield power for the purpose of governing their inferiors (i.e., the rest of us).  To facilitate this inversion of our free republic's design, the elitists require the complicity of a significant amount of the citizenry who, through acquiescence, apathy, and/or dependency, are more than willing to submit to the elitists' control over their lives, be it wholly or in part.  Thus, for the elitists, the communications revolution is an existential threat.  The empowerment of sovereign citizens to self-govern and, be it singularly or collectively, increase their ability to control and curtail — i.e., to subordinate — the power of public and private sector elitists, had to be blocked through co-option and coercion; through a communications counterrevolution.

Are All Politicians Liars?  It is not for Democrats to pass judgment on Rep. George Santos; they have no standing to do so.  Neither is it the purview of Congressional Republicans to remove Santos, as he was duly elected by his constituents.  But he can be sanctioned in other ways: shunned, humiliated, and otherwise disgraced.  The sanctioning of Santos should be done very publicly, in-house, by Republicans and other conservatives, as an example for all the world to see because there is so much at stake.

Reality bites: We don't currently have a House of Representatives.  As the clown show in the House of Representatives stretches into its fourth day, a disturbing reality has begun to set in.  By any functional definition of the institution, we currently do not actually have a House of Representatives.  Under the long-standing rules of the House, no business can be conducted without a Speaker.  That includes the swearing-in of all the members.  (Not just the newly elected ones.)  The terms of all of the previous members have ended, so until they are sworn in, there technically are no sitting members of the House.  And until all of the non-members can figure out how to put someone in place as the Speaker, there will not be a House.  The Senate is unable to do anything except internal housekeeping chores without the cooperation of the currently non-existent House, so the country currently does not have a legislative branch.

A Little Rebellion in House Speaker's Race Is Good Thing.  Unlike how the Left now defines "democracy" — which vacillates between pure mob rule and rule by a bureaucratic, woke priesthood — the Founders understood that democracy had a limited, but important place in our federal republic.  In the debates over the Constitution, George Mason of Virginia called the House the "grand depository of the democratic principle of government." The Framers created it to more directly represent the interests, temperament, and immediate concerns of the people — certainly by comparison with the Senate.  If democracy was the only element of our government, as with the Greek democracies of old, we would quickly obliterate ourselves.  However, if democracy is entirely shunted aside, we end up with other forms of malignant government, such as oligarchy.  Democracy can be brutal and unthinking, but it can also provide a quick and necessary course correction when conventional wisdom is wrong and "elites" have become corrupted.

What Happens If Some House Members Start Voting 'Present'?  A few months back, the Congressional Research Service prepared a useful report on how the speaker of the House is chosen.  The CRS report, relying on authoritative House practice manuals, explains that the speaker is elected by a majority of members voting "for a person by name."  Translation: 218 votes are not necessary if (a) fewer than 435 members attend the vote, or (b) members who are present opt not to vote for someone by name — i.e., if those latter members vote "present." [...] According to some reports, a number of the dissenters have warned McCarthy that they don't care whether their opposition to him leads to the election of a Democrat.

Taking a Roller Coaster Ride with the Fed.  The monetary policies pursued by the Fed over the past 20 years have contributed to economic instability.  The 0 percent federal funds rate policy, holding interest rates artificially low, motivates malinvestment, i.e., investments that result in unsustainable credit expansion.  These investments cease to be profitable once reasonable interest rates return.  Malinvestment became clear during the Great Recession in 2008, as artificially low interest rates combined with Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities fueled an unprecedented housing boom and bust.  Congress also contributed to this economic instability by financing the purchase of mortgage securities through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  During the Great Recession, the federal government bailed out government lending institutions as well as private corporations and financial institution.  These bailouts created a new generation of "zombie enterprises" that now depend on government subsidies and bailouts to keep them afloat.

10 Scandals To Keep Your Eye On In 2023.  [#2] Intelligence Agencies' 2020 Election Interference:  A related scandal to track in 2023 concerns intelligence agencies' interference in the 2020 election.  Even before Musk took over at Twitter, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed the FBI's role in prompting the censorship of the Hunter Biden story.  As I previously reported, during an August 2020 interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg revealed that before the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped, the FBI had warned the Facebook team to "be on high alert."  According to Zuckerberg, the FBI told Facebook, "[W]e thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election" and that "we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump similar to that so just be vigilant."  Based on the FBI's warning, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden story, Facebook treated it as potential misinformation and limited the visibility of the scandal.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

Why Congress Can't Refuse to Seat Santos.  he Democrats and the Fourth Estate have finally found, in congressman-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), a Republican who is genuinely guilty of lying to the voters.  Having thus discovered themselves — for once — in possession of the moral high ground, they have made the welkin ring with cries of outrage and calls for his resignation.  However, if he ignores those calls, it may be difficult to stop him from being seated in the House and even harder to expel him once he takes office.  But surely the Speaker of the House can simply refuse to administer the oath of office to Santos, right?  Wrong.  This was attempted in January of 1967, after Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.) was re-elected despite allegations that he had misappropriated funds as Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.  At the opening of the 90th Congress House Speaker John McCormack (D-Mass.) refused to swear Powell in and the House passed a resolution that denied him his seat while a bipartisan committee investigated the charges.

10 Steps to Save America.  In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform."  More commonly remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials.  The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts — along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps.  Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission's blueprint died.  But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion — with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade.  Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse.

Sam Bankman-Fried is not the only fraudster in America.  Sam Bankman-Fried was shuffled off to his new digs in the Bahamas, where it seems likely that he will be spending a great deal of time.  That his "mortal coil" might be shuffled off as well is an open question in the era of Jeffrey Epstein.  Who are the bigger fraudsters, though?  A spoiled kid who bilked his investors for billions or a bureaucracy that prints and spends public money with reckless abandon?  It would take an eternity for SBF to graduate to the level of these government and quasi-government scammers.  At the time of his bankruptcy filing, FTX's liabilities were in the neighborhood of ten to fifty billion dollars.  Compare that to the greater than $31 trillion in debt the U.S. government has rung up.

Deep State Suspicions.  Sixty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the National Archives and Records Administration has finally released over 13,000 records in its possession relevant to that tragic event.  Some 3% of the records are still being hidden from us.  Why?  So many years have passed and so many of the key figures have passed away it seems hard to imagine a benign explanation.  The event was always the subject of theories critical of the official line.  Truth to tell, one need not have been a conspiracist to question it.  To take just a single example, the single-bullet explanation never stood up to analysis in my view.  And that's just one part of the story.  After the record release, Tucker Carlson reported that someone with "direct knowledge" of the still-withheld records states the CIA is connected to the assassination.

A Life Beyond the State.  A free people should live confidently beyond the control of the State, conscious of their own rights and careful to preserve them.  They should exercise their own common sense, not rely on Harvard experts to decide what is best.  Unfortunately, we are now a long way from this ideal of freedom.  Government spending at all levels has risen to $10.3 trillion out of total U.S. GDP of $21 trillion.  Much of that spending is directed toward "educating," shaping, and intimidating individuals so that they become enthusiastic supporters of the State.  There is no reason why the federal government can't exercise its specified powers on 2% of GDP rather than the current 33.4%.  Government spending not only deprives individuals of their earnings, but provides government with the means of controlling them.  Freedom is impossible when the State spends half of the money that should be in the hands of individuals.  An obvious first step would be the elimination of both the individual and corporate income taxes, coincident with the elimination of many government departments.

Does ESG Violate America's Antitrust Laws?  Over the past few years, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics have become ubiquitous among the biggest Wall Street investment firms and Fortune 500 companies.  From BlackRock to Vanguard, almost all of the nation's largest financial management companies have hopped on the ESG bandwagon, along with the trillions of dollars in assets under their control, which in actuality mostly belongs to everyday Americans in the form of public pension plans and various retirement accounts.  While much has been made over whether or not ESG is a sound investing framework that prioritizes left-wing ideological ends over profits, an even greater case can be made that ESG, as currently practiced, violates America's age-old antitrust laws.  The argument that ESG violates America's antitrust laws is certainly gaining momentum in the House of Representatives, which will soon be controlled by the GOP.

Harden the Electrical Grid, or Suffer the Consequences.  Almost 50,000 Duke Power customers in Moore County, N.C. were left in the dark on Sunday night in what has been called a domestic act of terrorism. [...] While the liberal media immediately started blaming "right-wing militants" because of a nearby gay pride march that afternoon, the broader implications of the attack have been largely ignored:  our power grid is completely vulnerable to anyone with a gun and the knowledge of where to shoot.

The Editor says...
At this point, nobody knows who the shooters were.  The news media presumes that the incident is an act of domestic terrorism, "because of a nearby gay pride march that afternoon," but wouldn't Muslims be (even more) offended by such an event?  One must also consider the possibility of a false flag operation, since the current regime is bent on finding an excuse for "gun control," which ultimately means outlawing guns.

Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack's Magic Coffee Shop.  According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a "national security risk" to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state.  Now, think about that carefully.  What is it about a social media app that allows short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk? [...] The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

Where's the Antiwar Movement?  I can't recall a truly powerful and effective antiwar movement since the Vietnam War days, when the draft was still in force and American troops were dying in the tens of thousands in a useless and atrocious war in Southeast Asia.  And those are, of course, two key reasons why America lacks a strong antiwar movement today:  there is no military draft, and Americans are not dying in large numbers in a deeply unpopular war. [...] America spends roughly a trillion dollars a year on wars and weaponry and an imperial military presence, so that's what we get.  We're not spending a trillion a year on peace and diplomacy and conflict resolution.  We reap what we sow, and what we sow is almost entirely favorable to more war.

Advice to DeSantis: Wait for '28.  Reports surfaced two weeks ago that Florida Republicans are considering changing the state's "resign-to-run" law so Governor Ron DeSantis could throw his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential nomination without losing his governorship.  It is one sign among many that DeSantis, or those close to him, are thinking about taking on Donald Trump in the primary.  A word of warning and wisdom to DeSantis:  Don't do it.  DeSantis is a promising politician with a real future on the national scene.  He should want to be president.  But not yet.  DeSantis needs to understand his true self-interest.  Running for president in 2024 isn't it.  I can save DeSantis and his team a truckload of money and an embarrassing performance in the primaries by stating the obvious right now:  There is no way to win against Trump in 2024 for the GOP nomination.  Period.

Global Health and the Art of Really Big Lies.  In a former role I had a boss who lied a lot.  The lies were pure fantasy, but massive in scope and delivered with sincerity.  They were very successful.  This success was based on the reluctance of most people to consider that someone in a position of authority in a humanitarian organization would completely ignore any semblance of reality.  People assumed the claims must be true, as fabricating information to that extent in those circumstances seemed to defy logic.  The principle of Really Big Lies is based on their being so divorced from reality that the listener will assume their own perception must be flawed, rather than the claims of the person speaking to them.  Only an insane or ridiculous person would make such outlandish claims, and a credible institution would not employ such a person.  Therefore, given that the institution was apparently credible, the statements must also be credible, and the listener's prior perception of reality therefore flawed.  Lesser lies, by contrast, are likely to be perceived as sufficiently close to known reality to be provably wrong.  Inventing truth can be more effective than bending it.

I'm sick and tired of video-chatting.  I trust my toaster, but I don't take orders from it.  Nor do I let my microwave micromanage my affairs.  My TV's bossy, constantly telling me to vax and mask and I'll be saved, but I ignore it. [...] I bring this up because of the seemingly ever-present tyranny of technology these days.  It's hard even to meet a friend in a different part of town if you don't bring your phone.  And I do not like to carry a phone.  What's the need?  If I get in trouble on the street, they'll capture it on camera and decipher the footage six weeks later.  Out of a concern for safety in a defund-the-cops era, we're constantly being filmed and photographed even walking on the street.  Frankly, that camera on us everywhere is discomfiting.

Parents pay a high price for the privilege of owning their children.  [Scroll down] Any play by the government for rights in the nation's children can only be successful if the government pays for all these real and intangible expenses.  In theory, parents who live comfortably only because welfare payments for their children provide an income will be more compliant.  In fact, though, those parents who do receive welfare payments will still be unhappy with government overreach.  The state is and always has been a poor substitute for the mother or father who is asleep in the next room.  Officialdom will never be there to comfort the crying child.  Let us not take an efficient system of raising physically and mentally healthy children and sour the milk that feeds them by adding politics to their diet.

The Insanity of 'Zero Covid'.  China believes they can "test and interdict" Covid.  False, as now proved by more than two years of them literally welding people into their apartments or forcibly relocating them to "quarantine camps."  The virus hangs out patiently and then infects people; all you've done is change the time to infection and the build of natural recognition of the virus and thus protection, not the outcome.  So why do they keep doing it?  That's predicated in their social-political system.  China's leader, in this case Xi, is seen as being effectively "God" who cannot be wrong.  To admit that he was wrong means he loses his "stick" and thus his claim on the leadership!  This has been a feature of China's social and political system for millennia. [...] In short China can't change its position in this regard as they've gone "all-in" publicly early on and to make said change is to admit they were wrong, which they will not do.  Were Xi to do so he would lose his position and quite possibly his head.  That's why they are even now building more isolation "camps" and quarantine facilities — despite it being known that their policy in this regard is epidemiologically bankrupt and it is physically impossible for it to succeed.

We Are Trapped in a Truman Show Directed by Psychopaths.  Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver. [...] The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth.  As Plato contemplated twenty four centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Rights Here, Rights Now.  Excessive emphasis on individual rights always ends up jeopardizing the political conditions that makes them possible, a lesson brutally retaught by the French Revolution.  As Tocqueville noted, among the three main revolutions of Western modernity, only France's failed to install a sound and durable regime, because it was the only one which refused to make any concessions to premodern principles.  The British attachment to monarchy and traditional jurisprudence, and the American attachment to associative life and religious piety, fostered individualistic ideals revealed through and compatible with human experience, not revolutionary will or conjecture.  To realize how far the French Revolution strayed from human experience into philosophical abstraction, one needs only look at some of the laws passed by the revolutionary regime.

Anti-Xi protests should end American left's China envy.  Xi Jinping, just starting a third term as head of China's ruling Communist Party, is having a bad week.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  In his first two terms, Xi cracked down hard on opposition to government policies, cut back on his predecessors' economic liberalization and purged rivals to consolidate power.  But now he faces grassroots protests across China, with large groups of demonstrators even calling for him to step down and Communist Party rule to end.  Protesters aren't just denouncing Xi, the party and the government's heavy-handed COVID policies — they're also objecting to rampant censorship by holding up blank sheets of paper.  The government has tried to keep the public from figuring out what's going on, but it has failed.

Big Trouble in Little China.  The Peoples Republic of China is a slave state boasting a record of military ineptitude unrivaled by any other large nation on earth, and is entirely of a piece of nearly all Chinese governments that have come before it.  It has no affinity with the West, nor does it desire one.  Almost congenitally incapable of creativity, innovation and exploration, it has instead adopted financial colonization as a central instrument of its foreign policy, using its own people as pawns in an international chess game only one side is playing.  Today, having scorned them as an undifferentiated mass of coolies led by a handful of mandarins, we fear them, but for all the wrong reasons.  As I've often observed, based on the historical record, the only people the Chinese can defeat in combat are themselves, as the stupefyingly high body counts of the Taiping Rebellion and Mao's civil war attest.

Joel Osteen and Deceptive Prosperity Preaching.  When one of the most popular Christian leaders in America focuses more on self-improvement, personal finances, and positive thinking than on the essential doctrines of the faith such as repentance from sin, sanctification, and the atoning work of Jesus Christ, there's a problem.  The prosperity gospel preached by men such as Joel Osteen has been described as biblically anemic theology.  And millions have fallen for it.  It's like a caffeine or sugar high with the nutritional value of cotton candy, but make no mistake:  it can be quite lucrative for those preaching it.  A friend of mine visited his church and said there were no crosses and there was no mention of Jesus.  He may be sincere, he may be naive; but he will be held accountable by God for what he preaches.  Lakewood Church in Houston church rakes in about $70 million a year.  For his latest book, Joel Osteen received a $13 million-dollar advance.  One book.  He and his wife have a fortune estimated at $60 million.  His 17,000 square-foot mansion is listed at $10.7 million and has six bathrooms, five fireplaces, three elevators, a swimming pool, guest house, and parking for 20 cars — including his $230,000 Ferrari.

A High Noon Showdown for America.  We may well be living in some of the most interesting times in the history of America.  After President Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024, Merrick Garland announced late last week the appointment of a special counsel to continue, in yet another form, the same Democrat/RINO witch hunt that has wrongfully hounded the former president in different mutations for the last six years. [...] [We] should take as an advance warning the events the world is now witnessing in Brazil as its unlawfully elected dictator is now tightening the noose he has placed around the necks of those protesting his fraudulent election.  Just this last weekend, that beneficiary of election fraud informed his adversaries that if they don't stop protesting, go home, and stay quiet — i.e., elect to become submissive and obedient to his tyranny — the government will seize their children.  For how long will the children be detained?  Who knows?  One might guess that will be decided later by the tyranny that ordered them to be taken hostage in the first place — much like those J6 hostages our present government is holding indefinitely without due process for petty offenses.  Such are examples of a government's weaponization of law enforcement at its finest.  Except for those who willingly choose to remain blind to reality, the parallels between these events in Brazil and what appears to be evolving in America is becoming frighteningly uncanny.

Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities.  As a treatise on constitutional government, The Federalist is and will always be a classic work of political science, with many enduring insights.  But in terms of supplying a guide to how our federal government works, The Federalist has become the owner's manual to a car that no longer runs, or was stolen long ago.  What Publius describes about the functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches — as well as the countervailing powers of the states — has almost no connection with current reality.  Congress doesn't write, the executive does not enforce, and the judiciary does not interpret the laws.  Power and wealth have become massively centralized in Washington, D.C. Federalism, judicial review, executive authority, the legislative process, appropriations — none of this remains operational in a way James Madison would recognize.  And now, the country's most powerful corporations are in active collusion with the federal security apparatus to enforce the regime's authority.  That's practically the definition of fascism.

The White House can end the energy crisis by next year if it wants to.  Power the Future is an American energy advocacy and research organization that promotes solutions to energy-related crises currently facing the United States.  In a report simply titled Energy Policy Roadmap, the group sets forth ten basic steps that President Joe Biden and/or Congress could begin taking immediately before we run out of diesel, experience more rolling blackouts, and all the rest of the very real threats America is facing because of the current destructive energy policies that are now in place. [...] Here is the bullet list, and every item on here could be put into motion tomorrow if Joe Biden has the will to take action or if the new Congress is willing to stand up to him and put corrective measures in place.
  •   Repealing Joe Biden's Natural Gas Tax
  •   Ending Biden's Oil and Gas Leasing Moratorium/Return Power to States
  •   Approving the Keystone XL Pipeline
  •   Blocking Biden's ESG Regulations
  •   Repealing the California Waiver
  •   Ending Activist-led "Sue and Settle" and "Citizen Lawsuits"
  •   Banning Use of the "Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases"
  •   Issuing Automatic Approvals for LNG Export Terminals
  •   Overturning Massachusetts v. EPA
  •   Stopping Biden's War on Coal

The US economy is at the mercy of Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen.  While Americans struggle to pay their bills amid soaring inflation, the institutions we rely on to wrestle the economy back to stability are engaged in a secret power struggle which only worsens the impending crisis.  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are engaged in a tug of war over interest rates, sources say.  On Yellen's side are liberal members of the Fed, including the ambitious, climate-obsessed Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard, who spearheaded the stealth takeover of the board by progressives over the past year.  While Powell is determined to bring down inflation by hiking interest rates, as central bankers around the world traditionally have done, sources say Yellen has been counteracting his efforts with the assistance of progressive "doves" of the Federal Reserve, who background journalists that there might be a slowdown in rate hikes, leading to roller-coaster market rallies.

The Upside-Down World of Currency.  [Scroll down] It is no accident that the biggest and most widespread global bull market in history has coincided with interest rate suppression to zero and even lower over the last four decades.  Equally, a trend of rising interest rates will have the opposite effect.  Unlike bull markets, bear markets are often sudden and shocking, especially where undue speculation has been previously involved.  There is no better example than that of the cryptocurrency phenomenon, which has already seen bitcoin fall from a high of $68,000 to $16,000 in twelve months.  And in recent days, the collapse of one of the largest crypto-exchanges, FTX, has exposed both hubris and alleged fraud, handmaidens to extreme public speculation, on an unimaginable scale.  For any student of the madness of crowds, it would be surprising if the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies actually survives.

The Digital Revolution Has Destroyed the Usefulness of Telephones.  I remember when telephones were useful as telephones.  Today they are used to surf the Internet and for text messages.  Most people don't answer the ring unless they recognize the number.  Many never set up their email or message functions on their cell phones.  I keep my cell phone off and only turn it on when I have to use it in order to report Internet or power outage or to receive a security code so I can sign on and connect with an Internet financial or payment site.  I have ceased answering the house phone unless I am expecting a call.  95% of calls are intrusive scams or robo calls.  The digital revolution has made it possible for your privacy to be invaded by scum from every country who assume they have a right to invade your space and use your time in an attempt to take advantage of you.  Despite the destruction of privacy, a Constitutional right, people are being forced to have a cell phone and endless apps just in order to function.  Telephones are useless in other ways.  Businesses are no longer set up to answer phones or to let you speak to a person.  You get a robot that gives you a menu unrelated to the reason for your call.

Congressional Hearings — Do Them Right or Not at All.  At the Federalist, Jordan Boyd offers up a proposed agenda for the new House of Representatives.  Boyd's agenda is the following, not necessarily in the order he ranked them:
  •   Impeach Joe Biden
  •   Impeach Merrick Garland.  Impeachment is something McCarthy said earlier he would not want to start with.  I hope he will change his mind, because I think it essential.
  •   Defund the FBI
  •   Disband the J6 Committee
  •   Probe the Biden family business
  •   Subpoena COVID Tyrants — Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, former CDC Director Robert Redfield "who lied about the origins, research, effects and mitigation of COVID-19."  (In this regard we have learned that the odious FTX crowdfunded studies "through TOGETHER Trial falsely claiming hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin weren't effective Covid treatments.")
  •   Impeach Myorkas and others over failures to secure the border.
I'd add to his list an investigation of FTX and how the regulators and investment houses and media (which apparently also got FTX funds as they were acting as touts for this Ponzi scheme) enabled this hustle which cost investors billions of dollars.

Lazy Voters Enable Democratic Fraud.  The Democrats, buttressed as always by their liberal media allies, recognize that today's lazy voter will never press the matter of voter fraud.  So, the fraud continues and Democrats will forevermore "win" every close election.  The anti-Americanism of Obama's 3rd Term continues.  The fecklessness and the corrupt, willing complicity of the McConnell-McCarthy Rino/Deep State wing continues.  Unless real pro-American conservatives step up in a meaningful and intelligent way, the country is doomed.

Counting on Votes.  As we adjust to the results of this charade of an election, we must face the depths to which this nation has fallen.  We are no longer in a place where simply voting can change things.  Something terrible is at the bottom of this pit we've fallen into, something that must be dealt with before we can count on our votes meaning anything.

20,000 Vehicles Under the Sea: Inside the Felicity Ace Disaster.  During the pandemic, as cargo ships backlogged outside ports, the phrase "supply chain issues" became occasional shorthand for "lost at sea."  For all of air freight's efficacy, it costs around five times as much to move a product through the air as it does by sea, according to the logistics firm Freightos.  Water remains the chief transport artery for global trade, with around 90 percent of traded goods carried via ship.  And all it takes is one clog to trigger a global panic attack.  That much became clear in March 2021, when the 1,300-foot, 200,000-ton container ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, jamming one of the world's busiest trade routes for six days.  The accident, initially blamed on stiff winds, is estimated to have blocked $9.6 billion in trade per day and marooned more than 300 ships outside the Suez's northern and southern entrances, and those ships carried everything from oil to cattle to cars.  While Egyptian crews worked to dislodge the Ever Given, the vessel gained internet infamy as a metaphor for the pandemic age.  You'd think that a ship the size of the Empire State Building would be able to withstand the stresses of a gusty day.  But in the shipping business, margins matter.  For decades, cargo ships have been steadily growing in size in order to carry more freight on each voyage.  The German insurance company Allianz estimates that capacity for 20-foot shipping containers alone has spiked by 1,500 percent over the past 50 years.  In 1990, the largest ships could hold 5,000 containers.  The Ever Given carries four times that.

Biden and Trudeau Beclown Themselves by Parading Around Asia in Commie Mao Jackets.  Joe Biden and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, North America's one-two punch of Marxism, were filmed happily flouncing around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in matching Mao starter kit jackets.  [Video clip] [...] Biden will meet Jinping for the first time on Monday to discuss, among other things, the tension between China and Taiwan.  What better way for Trudeau and Biden to stand up to the pinkos than by dressing like their exalted, draconian leader?  It reminds me of Jen Psaki wearing a Soviet hat in Russia.

Unreal midterm elections and the search for sanity in America.  The election last week defied reality.  For example, John Fetterman, the Democrat who won the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, promised more inflationary spending, more lenient treatment of felons amid a violent crime wave and more of the left's radical, parent-dissing sexual agenda.  Yet he won.  Do you really believe that a majority of Pennsylvanians voted for a stroke-damaged, hard-core leftist who comes across as a professional wrestling villain?  I don't.  Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz was not the strongest Republican candidate and was perceived by many as a RINO.  But he should have prevailed in an election in which Democrats had to defend the Biden train wreck.

Lauren Boebert Wins Colorado CD-03, Also Arizona and Nevada Solid GOP Wins - Delays Are Media Anti-Trump Narrative Engineering Efforts.  The Boebert lead will continue widening until they "officially" call the race.  The delay is strictly because Lauren Boebert was an identified media/maga target, similar in construct to Marjorie Taylor Green, who won by too wide a margin to be useful for this intention.  The delays in Arizona are for the exact same reason.  All GOP wins.  Kari Lake easily won the Governor contest and Abraham Hamadeh has easily won the Arizona AG position.  Slightly lesser probability, but still likely, both Blake Masters (AZ Senate) and Mark Finchem (AZ Secretary of State) will stand victorious at the end of this narrative engineering delay.  The same applies for Nevada where Republican Adam Laxalt has easily won the Senate Race and Joe Lombardo is the new Republican governor.

ESG Boomerangs on BlackRock.  On January 15, 2020, BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink sent a letter to CEOs saying that he will use its power to ensure "every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change."  The plight of these targeted companies is made worse by investment managers at index funds like BlackRock, who control vast numbers of shares.  They can use the ESG ratings against corporate boards by promoting shareholder resolutions to force management to advance liberal social causes, eco-climate standards, and diversity employment goals.  ESG eco-activists especially target fossil-fuel companies that are slated ideologically for extinction.  BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with index funds worth $10 trillion.  With Vanguard and State Street — all under "woke" management — Blackrock has been using its massive financial muscle to steer Wall Street down disastrous ideological paths.  Wall Street and investors are pushing back.

The Time of the Jesters Honoring Themselves Comes to an End.  [Scroll down] Yesterday's bomb-vest wearing terrorist on TV screaming "Allahu Akbar" may have morphed into middle-class suburban American parents at your local school board meeting opposed to gender dysphoria and CRT propaganda.  They may not know that their names may be part of an FBI file.  But Joe Biden's Justice Department knows who they are.  And now the Jesters take the stage, spinning their magical tales of a dystopian future if the Democrats don't win on Tuesday, and Democrats are in absolute hysterics, with President Biden shrieking threats that Americans who don't vote to keep Democrats in power are destroying democracy in America.

John Fetterman's health and heart condition still unaddressed.  Despite numerous editorials from local newspapers across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well as the Washington Post, Lt.  Gov. John Fetterman's campaign still refuses to release updates on his medical condition.  That includes not just the aftereffects from his stroke earlier this year but also an update on the heart condition that caused it. [...] The evidence of the stroke's impact is now manifest.  Fetterman struggles to speak at his campaign rallies.  He relies on tropes, such as talking about New Jersey, crudites, and banning the filibuster, rather than speaking extemporaneously on current issues.  His symptoms have never been addressed by the medical experts who are treating him.  No doctor has spoken publicly about his condition outside of the letter released by his cardiologist in June.  No doctor has taken questions about him from the media.

The New Collectivism of Big Government Elites.  The sorry record of wealth generation in the Soviet empire and its client states, and the subsequent repudiation of central planning in favor of market-based economic arrangements by the People's Republic of China, mean that no serious observer today believes that economic collectivism "delivers the goods" in a manner superior to that of free-market capitalism.  Similarly, the joy observed in the wake of the Berlin Wall's collapse offered ample evidence of the moral bankruptcy of centralized economic organization as a means of cultivating just and fair living conditions for a nation's citizens.  Since then, the playing field has shifted.  In modern democratic societies (in contrast to high-tech despotisms like China under the Chinese Communist Party's rule), a compelling case must be put forward for any proposed policy or form of economic organization.  As the record of centralized economic decision-making in creating and distributing material wealth is a poor one, those still in favor of big government are largely left with tired, worn-out tropes about "trickle-down" economics and with empty slogans about building an economy "from the bottom up and middle out," along with other non sequiturs.  Language designed to stoke class envy may excite committed class warriors, but it means little to regular people simply trying to make ends meet.

Ben Franklin, the Middle Class, Socialism, and Global Warming.  We forget that in Europe, before and during colonial times, there was an upper class and commoners.  The upper class was made of owners who made the rules, the commoners were workers who obeyed the rules.  If there was a need to be fulfilled the ruling class made that decision.  Commoners stayed desperately poor.  The wilderness of America changed this hierarchy.  Settlers, mostly commoners, learned that if they wanted something done they had better do it themselves.  Mere farmers became masters of many trades.  They didn't wait for anyone's permission.  As the population of the colonies grew, the marketplace grew.  Small businesses began to pop up offering goods and services.  [Ben] Franklin printed a newspaper.  He also formed "The Leather Apron Club," later called the "Junto."  Its purpose was to encourage entrepreneurship and improve society.  People with dirt under their fingernails were proposing libraries, fire departments, hospitals, and even universities.  It was the beginning of the middle class.

Who has really been running our country?  On the day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, he signed dozens of extensively radical executive orders.  Then the Biden administration began populating the federal government and the federal Judiciary — including the new Supreme Court vacancy — with hundreds (probably thousands) of the most extreme anti-American people imaginable. [...] This has all the fingerprints of the Soros organization.  The people there are extremely intelligent and proficient, they passionately hate America, they've been leading up to this for several decades, and they have access to untold wealth and influence.  Everything mentioned above is something they are more than capable of organizing and carrying out.  But most of this couldn't have been accomplished during Biden's first two years without the cooperation of the 50 Democrat U.S. senators and the Democrat majority in the House.  And then there are the cowardly Republicans in both houses, including the leadership, who consistently put up a "gentlemanly" fight that is destined to lose.  Right now, job number one is openly exposing the "shadow government" that is really running America, and doing everything possible to drive them completely out.

John Fetterman Is Getting Worse.  Since John Fetterman rolled to victory in Pennsylvania's Democrat primary for the US Senate, the story surrounding his massive stroke has changed multiple times.  Following his disastrous debate performance against Republican Mehmet Oz, a series of recent media appearances are starting to paint a clearer picture, though.  In short, John Fetterman is getting worse.  Early on, his caretakers (including his wife) insisted that Fetterman was fine and was suffering no ill effects.  Eventually, written reports of his inability to communicate started to leak out, but it was rejoining of the campaign trail that really lifted the veil.  Fetterman made numerous, extremely short speeches in public where he appeared to stumble over his words in ways that weren't normal.  He'd repeat words, forget words, and make up words.  When he started to do media interviews sometime in September, it was impossible to hide his condition any longer.

A proposed MAGA manifesto.  [O]n September 1, Joe Biden gave a bizarre speech outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, whose style and content could have been from the 1930s, in another country.  Its purpose was to denounce a vaguely defined group — "MAGA extremists" — for vaguely defined anti-social activities.  Substitute "Jews" for "MAGA extremists," and you know where Joe is going with this.  Then, [...] on October 21, Joe's writers, finding they hadn't gotten the traction with "MAGA extremists" they had expected, turned the knob up to 11 and had Joe come out with "mega-MAGA" (a million times MAGA — a lot of MAGA).  What is Joe's revulsion of MAGA based on?  What is it in MAGA that Joe hates so much that he wants all America to know it, and to join him in it?  Below is what we are calling the MAGA Manifesto, the list of what policies we MAGAs support, and by extension, what Joe finds so unbearable that the policies on this list must be eliminated from public discourse.  This is a condition we call Democrat Governance.  It is what you get when you elect Democrats, and which Joe has been doing since he took office.

Pelosi Got Hammered.  [Scroll down] Maybe as more details come dribbling out, the events of that night will make more sense.  However, when a gay rights and BLM activist who looks like a New-Age-y vegetarian disciple of the left's murderous hero Che Guevara comes knocking on Paul Pelosi's back door in the middle of the night and Pretend President Biden and his Democrat Propaganda Machine immediately jump into action by blaming Trump-supporters, the whole spin operation reeks of the same odor still choking doubters of Jeffrey Epstein's declared suicide.  Maybe Epstein — the key witness to a child prostitution ring involving unknown perverts and rapists purportedly from the highest ranks of the world's business and political classes — killed himself in a New York jail cell while guards and cameras were conveniently absent, and maybe Paul Pelosi's alleged commie Castro nudist attacker was leading a secret double-life as a MAGA enthusiast.  Maybe the same FBI agents who still can't find the alleged culprit responsible for leaving failed explosive devices near Republican and Democrat party headquarters around January 6, 2021 will miraculously find footage of the San Fran hammerer wearing a bright red cap and suspiciously waving an American flag.

Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman should be held accountable.  My friend Teri Christoph at Smart Girls Politics describes Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman as "enableists."  It's a term she made up and it perfectly captures the abusive behavior of political wives who are overcome by their own desire for power at the expense of the health of their husbands.  It's a play on a favorite word used by the left these days — "ableism."  The definition of enableists is:  "Democrat political wives who willingly subject their ill husbands to public ridicule with the sole purpose of amassing political power.  See: Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman."  Teri says "The Toxicity Twins" have a lot to answer for.

CNN Embarrasses Itself with Documentary Series Slamming Rupert Murdoch.  Fox News first appeared on the scene in October 1996.  In 2001, Fox News first beat CNN and MSNBC (which also launched in 1996) in the ratings.  If you can't beat 'em, then attack them has been the MO of CNN since then.  For most of the next two decades, Fox News has been far and away the ratings leader in the highly competitive, and highly remunerative, cable television news landscape.  CNN's series on the Murdochs premiered last month.  It's a sweeping, technically state-of-the-art examination into the lives of Rupert Murdoch, born in Australia and now a U.S. citizen, and three of his children, unsubtly subtitled "Empire of Influence."  Long-gone Yellow Journalism mogul William Randolph Hearst step aside:  It's the Murdochs, according to CNN, who are the most influential — and the most problematic — media barons in world history.

John Fetterman is physically incapable of being a senator.  I've never seen anything like the Pennsylvania Senate debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz on Tuesday night, and I hope never to have to see anything like it ever again.  It was horrible.  I didn't think I would ever experience a moment as painful in the midst of a political campaign as the Perry moment, but that was like watching Pavarotti sing "Nessun Dorma" compared to this.  The stroke that Fetterman himself said "knocked" him down at the debate's outset has impaired him.  Full stop.  Don't believe anyone who even tries to tell you different, and you should probably not trust any such person to tell you whether you need an umbrella because you don't know whether it's raining.  Seeing Fetterman struggle to answer simple questions and form simple sentences was nothing less than an agony.  There's no sense even in trying to characterize how he did in expressing himself on issues, or how Mehmet Oz did talking about matters ranging from abortion to fracking to Social Security.

Well, That Was Weird.  John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz are contesting for the Pennsylvania Senate seat to be vacated by Republican Pat Toomey.  It's a marquee matchup that has taken on horror-movie elements as Democrats and their media adjunct seek to push Fetterman over the finish line.  Hobbled by the aftereffects of a severe stroke, Fetterman is obviously unfit for high office.  He is fit for the doctor's office.  They met last night for their one and only debate preceding the election.  I watched it live on NewsNation. [...] As expected, Dr. Oz turned in a professional performance.  He makes the appearance of a mainstream politician of generally conservative disposition and reassuring demeanor.  He was a little too ardent in arguing Fetterman's radicalism in response to almost every question, but I thought he made a good appearance.  Fetterman looked like he had wandered in off the set of Night of the Living Dead.

The lunacy of climate activism in Florida.  It would be better for all concerned to pause for a moment and contemplate the reality of Florida.  Whether or not the climate is changing, whether or not any of that change has anything to do with human activity, the truth is that Florida was never a place where God intended man to live.  The first Americans to visit Florida, back in the 1830s, were soldiers who were deployed to harass the Seminole Indians.  The men were appalled by the conditions they found in Florida.  A typical opinion of Florida can be found in the writings of an Army surgeon who recorded, "Florida is certainly the poorest country that ever two people quarreled for.... It was the most dreary and pandemonium-like region I ever visited, nothing but barren wastes." If the soldiers had had their way, they would have left Florida to the mosquitoes. [...] Florida is a paradise today because more than half of the Everglades were destroyed to create a rather dubious living space for humans.  Environmental activists either don't know this fact, or they choose to ignore it.

After the Jan. 6 Committee finishes, maybe a GOP Congress can probe some actual 'threats to democracy'.  How the United States went from an energy-exporting nation with a booming economy, low gas prices and no new foreign wars to an energy-short nation with a stagnating economy, soaring prices for gas (and everything else) facing a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia deserves some looking into.  America has a president who's not all there mentally, a doddering figure controlled by those around him.  He was elected despite hiding out in his basement during a close election season.  Scandals involving his son Hunter — and him — were banned from the media and from tech platforms in the leadup to the election.  Problems with his mental capacity were known to the press and to Democratic Party officials but were hushed up.  Time magazine even ran a triumphant story, post-election, about how a "cabal" — Time's word — of tech companies, political officials and media folks "saved" the election from Trump by ensuring Biden's victory.  We need to find out more about that.  How involved were government officials in this "cabal?"

Government 2.0.  In our lifetimes we have seen productivity improvements that are nearly unimaginable in many public sectors except one, and that would be government.  In fact, a case could be made that whatever advances have been made in the economy, they have been negated if not worse by government.  It's not just that government steals the fruits of the working class' labor, it is now headlong stealing whatever freedoms we have left.  When you have to take a self-threatening but claimed to be a self-protecting 'vaccine' under the argument that you must do it to protect others, you are pretty much at the end of your freedom road.  For some reason, we tell ourselves that our 250-year-old form of government is the best there is and the best we can do.  But that is just old people talking.  There is probably a good reason God designed our world where old people are constantly replaced by new people.  I suspect that it, in its infinite wisdom knew that if that wasn't the case, nothing would ever change or improve.  Accordingly, I direct this article to anyone still able to dream and is willing to consider how it might in fact be possible to upgrade our current form of government to a 2.0 version.

The Midterms.  Look, I know it's tough bordering on impossible to govern from Congress, but the least we can expect from the GOP is no-nonsense and quick investigations into major Democratic scandals which are just hanging out there: e.g., Biden laptop, Biden relations with Ukraine and China, the politicization of the FBI, ATF, IRS, CIA, etc., failure to enforce our immigration laws, "defund" the police disaster, and, of course, holding accountable the hoaxers who perpetuated the damaging Trump-Putin collusion story, and the COVID shutdown of the economy.

The Civilization That Knew Too Much.  [Scroll down] A generation ago, public perception of the interior of institutions was low-resolution, almost pixellated.  The average person could not know the details of what went on inside religious, law-enforcement, educational, corporate, or scientific organizations, he simply saw them through the lens of reputation.  Reputation can be thought of as a kind of data compression process that reduces a vast and complex reality into what in some cases is a single number.  People relying on indexes like the US News ranking of the Top Ten universities often need know nothing about an organization other than that it is Number X in a particular category.  But it was enough for many.  In that old world, people thought law enforcement mostly upright, churches mostly holy, educators largely trustworthy, journalists largely truthful and Washington occasionally honest, not because they knew the details, but because they accepted the Number.

Is Cyborg John Fetterman Really Fit For The Senate?  After suffering a severe stroke in May, Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman now relies on speech-to-text software to understand the spoken word.  The digital interface has become a part of him.  In a recent NBC interview, Fetterman can be seen gazing at his desktop screen, struggling to comprehend the questions asked.  The Democratic nominee will even be allowed to use this software in the Oct. 25 debate with his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.  In a healthy society, Fetterman's own party would urge him to resign for the common good.  This situation is beyond the polarized arguments over immigration, crime, or nuclear war.  Cognitive fitness is crucial for political leaders.  Their job is to engage the public, project competency abroad, and go toe-to-toe with rivals.  But we do not live in a healthy society.  Rather than acknowledge the danger of electing a U.S. senator who, tragically, has been forced to merge with a machine, Fetterman's supporters are framing this as an "equity" issue.  The normal desire to have leaders of sound mind and body is being denounced as "ableism" — i.e., the expectation that people are able to do their jobs.  In a culture that rewards virtue-signaling, even compromised cognition is exalted as a virtue.

Europe's self-inflicted depression.  EU ambassadors held their annual conference last week, and some surprisingly frank things were said for a meeting of diplomats.  Josep Borrell, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, quite openly excoriated the assembled ambassadors.  The European model is no longer working, he said:  'The United States [takes] care of our security.  China and Russia provided the basis of our prosperity.  This is a world that is no longer there.' [...] This marks a clear change in tone from the complacent end-of-history mindset which persisted in the EU even into the late 2000s.  Yet Borrell still remains in a minority.  Too many in the EU are clinging to the idea that the current global turmoil is just a phase, and that a return to the world of the 1990s is just around the corner.  It isn't just diplomats in Europe who suffer from this delusion.  Mainstream economists still seem to believe that the economic crisis we are going through today is just a phase in the business cycle, albeit one exacerbated by the external shocks of Covid and the war in Ukraine.

Pope Francis Uniting Roman Catholics and Muslims Forming World Church!  There are about 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, and faith groups in the world, and Pope Francis is trying to get everyone together; however, each group makes its own pitch for their "way."  Obviously, Francis has to convince everyone to consider their own teaching as non-essential in order to merge with the other groups that are in error.  To leftists, unity is far more important than truth.  The Pope is trying to unite the predominant religions in the world — Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism totaling over 5 billion people.  He also wants to include pagan followers, and all those who worship Satan, snakes, snails, and the sun.  At a religious conflab consisting of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists, he warned against "the temptation to fundamentalism" or the tendency for each group to be true to their foundational truths. [...] Francis thinks he is doing God's work in bringing everyone together; however, the Pope has no heavenly mandate to accomplish this gargantuan task.  He does have religious gravitas that goes with his position, but it will take supernatural help to get the job done.  His help is not coming from above but from below!

What happens if the pope is a heretic?  Church history professor explains.  On today's episode of The John-Henry Westen Show, Dr. Edmund Mazza helps us sift through the confusion and insanity paralyzing the Catholic Church throughout Francis' pontificate and explains what happens if a pope teaches heresy.  [Video clip]

About that genocide of Indians.  A reader in Mexico whose wife and children are descendants of Aztecs wrote to me about my Columbus Day piece.  He wrote, "Not many know it, but I think it was 1569, a new disease killed half (50%) of the surviving indigenous people in the entire nation.  Spanish and Indians often lived in the same houses, and indigenous died while the whites, who often cared for them, were untouched.  "There were many doctors and scientists there, and there was extensive documentation of the illness, and it was NOT anything known in Europe.  Among other differences, the dying person's blood turned green before death.  "There is a doctor in Mexico City, who is worried that it is a disease like the plague that went into remission among humans but is still existing below ground, and only comes out in certain climate conditions."  So I checked it out.  He is right.

Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?  On September 26, 2022, seismologists in Denmark and Sweden recorded underwater seismic activity in the Baltic Sea between 2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale, equivalent to an explosion of several hundred pounds of TNT.  After investigations, authorities in both countries determined that there had been apparent efforts to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.  Both lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one line of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, yet to be commissioned, were impacted. [...] As every fan of detective stories knows, determining the means and motive of suspects is the key to solving a mystery.  Given the geopolitical nature of this issue, it seems that there are four likely suspects: Russia, the European Union (E.U.), the United States (U.S.), and China.  Let's examine each one separately in an effort to determine if they had the means and motive to sabotage the pipelines.

Forget the blame game, Nordstream Sabotage is about the Great Reset & nothing else.  Last night it was reported that "blasts" had damaged both Nordstream pipelines that carry gas exported from Russia to Germany and other nations across northern Europe.  As a result, large amounts of natural gas were leaking into the Baltic sea, and supplies through the pipeline were completely shut off.  The alleged incident has caused a furious round of blame tennis, with accusations flying back and forth across what — for the sake of simplicity — we'll call Iron Curtain 2.0.  The European Union has claimed the pipes were "sabotaged", but doesn't directly blame anyone in their statement.  The Telegraph is already blaming actively the Russians, specifically Western Bogeyman President Vladimir Putin. [...] On the flip side, the Russians have said the idea they would sabotage their own pipeline is "stupid."  Some Western alternate media have pointed to Joe Biden's vow to totally shut down Nordstream 2 back in February as a sign the US was behind the alleged attack.  The former Polish defence minister has come right out and said that NATO forces blew up the pipeline, according to Forbes.  The question — one it seems I keep asking the last two years — is "does it really matter?"

Denmark, Sweden view Nord Stream pipeline leaks as 'deliberate actions'.  [Scroll down] Mikhail Krutikhin, an energy analyst from the RusEnergy consultancy, told DW that initial evidence clearly pointed to sabotage, and said that a key question going forward would be whether the damage originated inside or outside the pipe.  He said the shape of the damaged segments of pipe should indicate this.  If the explosion came from without, "then it was an explosion from outside made by some sabotage group or some underwater equipment," he said.  If the explosion originated inside the pipe, "then it was Gazprom," adding the Russian energy giant "could easily send something technicians call a pig — a robot that goes inside the pipeline."  Krutikhin said it is "very easy to send it in the pipe to a specific point and then have it explode."

How Different Would America Be Today if Trump was Still President?  This is the easiest column I've ever written.  It's so simple to imagine what America would be like today if Trump was still President.  What a tragedy that we allowed a brain-dead, feeble, confused, old man with dementia and diapers, and his radical, anti-American, globalist, communist handlers to destroy the greatest country in world history — in only 22 months.  Let's start with the obvious.  How did this happen?  The 2020 election was stolen.  That's how they removed Trump from office and installed a man who doesn't know who he is, where he is, or what he's doing.  A man who can't put 2 sentences together, and who can't attract more than 20 people in concentric circles to his speeches, yet they want us to suspend reality and believe he got 81 million votes — the most in history.  Bizarre.

It's the Far Left Who Are the Fascists.  Do anti-liberty leftists ever look in the mirror or have a moment of self-reflection that maybe they're the threat to our constitutional republic?  Do they ever consider the possibility that they are the "baddies"?  Do they understand that we of the pro-freedom right really don't have a choice in being inundated with leftist propaganda 24/7?  Even the radio stations that carry our favorite pro-freedom programming tend to lean toward the collectivist side of the spectrum.  Don't even mention National Propaganda Radio, funded by our tax dollars taken at gunpoint, where their idea of "balance" is a gaggle of leftists with an oh, so slightly different viewpoint on the definition of socialism.

Why The Right Should Choose Trump Over DeSantis.  Donald Trump is the kingmaker of the Republican Party, and for that reason alone, he remains the best choice for 2024 despite the firestorm of negative media coverage, censorship, and the looming threat of indictment, which have haunted him since being forced out of office in January 2021.  In the time since Trump has been gone, Americans have watched their economy tank, their freedoms attacked, and we are now disconcertingly close to an out-and-out ground war with nuclear Russia.  Meanwhile, Democrats plan to do irreparable damage to institutions (like the Supreme Court) that have checked the worst excesses of liberal hegemony.  The military industrial complex, having been subdued in the Trump years, is now back with a vengeance not seen since the Bush-Cheney years.  For their part, the Republicans have reverted to their preferred disposition:  that of lovable losers.  The concerted efforts of many Republican establishment types to elevate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump is in keeping with that disposition.  It would be a grave mistake for many reasons.

Army of the Woke.  The Army fell approximately 15,000 (25%) people short of meeting their recruiting goals this year, and some Pentagon officials focused on the tight job market as the culprit.  Though access to civilian jobs and higher pay is a factor, the truth is broader and ignored at our peril.  Rather than confront the reality of what is occurring in the military and the consequences of these actions, these same officials have decided to make blaming anything but the truth an Olympic level sport and our nation's readiness to defeat our adversaries is running in last place.  I served in the military for 28 years, both as an enlisted member of the Army's Infantry, and as an officer in Aviation.  As a former junior enlisted Solider I know what it takes to keep good Soldiers in the military, and because I commanded up to the brigade level as an officer, I know that retention of quality servicemembers is a critical component and signal of successful command.  I never failed to exceed retention goals in my seven years of command, today I don't think I'd sign up to serve at all.

Is The Fed About To Destroy America?  Today The Fed is holding an emergency meeting under "expedited procedures."  The actions to be considered are the discount and advance rate — in other words, interest rates.  The rumored reason is that Credit Suisse may be in trouble — specifically due to writing interest rate swaps, along with a number of other institutions which happens to include pension funds both in the UK and US, none of whom should ever be playing with levered instruments for the simple reason that leverage is everywhere and always speculative.  But of course they are because nobody has ever gone to prison for using leverage as a means to evade requiring the underlying organization to fund pensions adequately with actual money.  Why that would cause both firms and governments to have to behave responsibly and we can't have that.  This sort of act is a ridiculous violation of anything approaching fiduciary responsibility — which is a legal obligation for pension managers, not a suggestion.  After all its not their money — its the pensioners' money and they are charged with prudent management of same, which the use of leverage, especially leverage on a trend 40 years old that cannot reasonably go below zero, is the exact opposite of "prudent."  Of course the same is true for banks; they have fiduciary responsibilities too, including to the nation as a whole since they have a backstop through the government for depositors.  Nobody went to prison last time in 2008 for this [stuff] either, did they?

Blinken: Whodunnit, Who Cares?  It's A Tremendous Opportunity!  Remember Blinken's initial, reflexive, response to the US sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines?  It was to gaslight: Nobody benefits from this.  Get it?  It was all a big mystery, so don't bother asking, Cui bono?  There's no point.  Of course, as economist Michael Hudson pointed out, that bit of gaslighting wasn't going to have much of a shelf life — If nobody benefited from the sabotage, how do you explain the incontrovertible fact that somebody did do it?  This wasn't some teen prank.  This was the sort of state sponsored terrorism that only a handful of countries had the technical means to pull off, and state actors don't do drastic deeds of this sort unless they see a clear benefit.  All an inquiring mind needs to do is to take that short list of capable countries and ask, Which country on the list benefits?  Not Russia, for sure.

The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization.  Civilization is fragile.  It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.  To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home — only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.  Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.  So, the great achievement of Western civilization — consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit — was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.

Did the US (or its agents) blow up the Nordstream pipelines?  Thanks to an open threat issued by President Biden, the question must be asked: Is the United States behind the two explosions that caused a massive natural gas leak into the Baltic Sea?  The incident has cut off Russia's ability to deliver methane gas to Germany and other European nations.  The release of methane into the water and atmosphere is killing marine life and delivering a greenhouse gas pollutant into the atmosphere that would be gravely feared by believers in man-made global warming.  The word "eco-terrorism" comes to mind the describe the act of sabotage, if that's what the explosions were. [...] What raises intense suspicion on the United States is the very specific threat that President Biden issued against Nordstream last February 7: [...]

Donald Trump and the Future of Western Civilization.  The West, in particular the United States, is currently populated with patronizing, oblivious, and callous leaders more concerned about themselves and globalism than the people and the future of their respective countries.  Nor do they acknowledge that Western Civilization, because of its roots in Christianity, has increased freedom, wealth, health, comfort and life expectancy to unprecedented levels throughout the world.  When virtually all Western nations pursue the same ruinous policies, and their ruling classes have the same self-absorbed characteristics, decline and collapse from self-immolation is inevitable.  In the debauched current state of Western Civilization, the sole path of reversing this decline and collapse is for a tenacious and intrepid egalitarian leader from one of the major Western nations to assume the mantle of leadership.  The only experienced and successful current or past leader with these attributes in the West today is Donald Trump, who temporarily stanched and exposed the factors behind the downfall during his four years as president.  With the specter of China/Russia hegemony and the accelerating deterioration of the West looming over the United States and Europe, Trump must seriously consider running for president again in 2024.

A man of accomplishment: Ron DeSantis' pitch for president.  Ron DeSantis is running for president.  He has as much as admitted it, although he hasn't done the obligatory visits to Iowa and New Hampshire.  2024 should be his time and it would be a waste if he didn't run.  Governor DeSantis doesn't have to announce yet.  The contenders for the nominations are former president Trump or DeSantis.  Everybody else is an also-ran.  Trump, should he decide to run, can count on residual loyalty.  DeSantis can appeal to voters as a younger, more vital, less controversial, and arguably more politically savvy alternative.  Trump commands attention, but that attention tends to draw focus to himself.  DeSantis commands attention, but he draws focus to an issue.  He can force the news media to cover anything he chooses, even when they would rather do just about anything else.

Are you better off than you were two years ago?  When the Democrat Party assumed office in January 2020, we were a nation that was essentially energy independent and a net exporter of energy, we had one of the lowest unemployment rates in recent history to include many minorities groups, our borders were secure, inflation was negligible.  President Biden was ostensibly elected to office to "unify" the county and tone down the rhetoric.  In other words, many Americans looked to him to return the nation to "normal" and be the father figure to heal our differences.  If anything, allowing the Democrat Party to assume control of our lives has caused the opposite.  Our borders are porous, causing a mass influx of fentanyl which has killed thousands of our youth, violent crime in our inner cities is at an all-time high, inflation is rampant, and the country is hardly unified — and this happened in just a short two years and yet the Democrat Party is asking you as a voter to give them two more years to try to get it right!  So, when you cast your vote, I would urge you to ask your self are we better off than we were two years ago.  From my perspective the answer is NO, so please make an informed decision based on facts and logic.

Trump or DeSantis?  Why not both?  Gov. Ron DeSantis shattered the elites' virtue with the Martha's Vineyard ploy.  It was delectable, but busing illegal aliens to blue states was originally Texas governor Greg Abbott's idea.  DeSantis took it to another level.  Is DeSantis as creative and clever as he seems to be?  I hope so, but DeSantis's life has not been bombed the way Trump's has.  The way I believe voters are beginning to frame their choice for the "who can save America" presidential candidate boils down to whether candidate Trump or candidate DeSantis is the indispensable choice to overcome the Deep State and the absolutely massive cheating to come.  I do not think Trump is in any way a loose cannon problem that a "tempering" DeSantis would solve.  To allow the media to be arbiters of what is cringe-worthy is old-school fretting that will not be helpful next time around.  Donald Trump understands the battlefield as no one else.  He would help mature DeSantis to be an even greater force for his own eight years.  I think having both in the White House at the same time is the indispensable choice.

This thread explaining why nobody is joining the military is a must-read.  The military is in trouble and its leadership has no clue.  So what's the problem, exactly?  You are about to read a lot of common sense packed into a few short paragraphs.  It's a rare thing to see. [...]

Are Democrats Deliberately Choosing Impaired Candidates?  Once could be excused.  Twice is suspicious.  Three times seems like a strategy.  Are Democrats choosing infirm, intellectually challenged, feeble people to run for office so that they can be easily manipulated? [...] George Soros, the Obamas, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, and many other wealthy, elite, no-borders, one-world Marxist climate zealots have an iron grip on the Democrat Party from bottom to top.  Are the elites deliberately choosing weak people so as to control them from behind the curtain?  We know they have done that with Biden, Kamala, and Fetterman.  Is this their new modus operandi; choose the weak who will bow to the strong because the weak are more palatable to voters than the strong?  After all, why run candidates with minds of their own when you can run a candidate who has a mind that can easily be hijacked for radical leftist causes?

Can the GOP Accommodate Two Rock Stars?  Fresh from his deft Martha's Vineyard gambit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew into Kansas on Sunday to rally support for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, now running for governor against incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly.  Saul Alinsky, the acknowledged master of forcing poseurs to honor their own policies, could not have done better than DeSantis.  No political stroke in memory has succeeded in exposing liberal hypocrisy quite so effortlessly and effectively.  Had the Islanders taken the 50 illegal aliens in, they might have checked DeSantis's move and saved a little face, but they didn't.  They lived up to their most ludicrous stereotypes, calling in the National Guard and deporting the hapless Venezuelans to some sterile Army base on the mainland.  It will be years before "Martha's Vineyard" is anything but a template for a meme or a punch line to a joke.  Both Schmidt and U.S. Senator Roger Marshall had fun with Martha's Vineyard in the speeches they gave preceding DeSantis's.  The SRO crowd at the Olathe (O-lay-the) Civics Center ate it up.  When DeSantis took center stage, the thousands in attendance were primed.  They surged to their feet and roared their appreciation.  If it wasn't clear before this past week, it was clear to everyone in Olathe.  Ron DeSantis has arrived.

Idolatry:
Michael Jordan's '98 finals jersey sells for $10.1 million at auction.  Michael Jordan's jersey from the 1998 NBA finals smashed records when it sold for $10.1 million at auction Thursday [9/15/2022].  The red away-game jersey that Jordan wore in Game 1 of the Chicago Bulls' series against the Utah Jazz was the feature of the Sotheby's auction.  It is now the highest-priced item in sports memorabilia history, according to a report.

Is the media honeymoon running out for John Fetterman?  Let's not mince words: Pennsylvania Lt.  Gov. John Fetterman (D) may not be capable of performing the duties required of him if he wins his race for U.S. Senate against Republican Mehmet Oz.  This perspective comes after Fetterman, who suffered a stroke nearly four months ago, seems to be avoiding a debate with Oz before early voting begins on Sept. 19.  Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV had offered to host a debate between the two on Sept. 6, but Fetterman declined.  "As I recover from this stroke and improve my auditory processing and speech, I look forward to continuing to meet with the people of Pennsylvania," Fetterman said in a statement after the Oz campaign offered to debate in September.  "They'll always know where I stand."  Actually, voters won't know where Fetterman stands if he continues to do T-ball interviews with handpicked media members and avoids being challenged directly by Oz in a debate setting.

Germany Plays Blame Games after '16 Years of Energy Policy Failure'.  Germany's economy and climate minister has angrily lashed out at Angela Merkel's party, accusing it of being responsible for "16 years of energy policy failure".  While the ongoing gas crisis across Europe gets steadily worse, political tensions in Germany appear to be growing, with the country's economic and climate minister, Robert Habeck, angrily lashing out at his political rivals in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former chancellor Angela Merkel.  Despite having been warned by then-President Donald Trump that relying on Russia for energy was endangering the security of both Germany and her allies, Merkel's government presided over a green agenda-fueled shift away from domestic fossil fuel production that made the country ever more reliant on gas exports supplied by Moscow.

America Delira.  Travel abroad and or talk to pro-American foreigners here, and you will be surprised at what they say.  It is not boilerplate anti-Americanism of the usual cheap Euro style.  And their keen criticism is not just that we are $30 trillion in debt, dependent on China, with a corrupt elite, or have gone insane inventing the most lurid crimes to put away the supposedly predetermined guilty Donald Trump.  Instead, they express disbelief, worry, lamentation even, that the one solid referent in the world has gone, well, completely rabid.  They are terrified after the Afghanistan debacle that their old ally or new homeland, the once constant America, is delirious, incompetent, and self-loathing, and now there is no plausible alternative to the old American deterrence.  So, they wonder who will resist China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea — and are silently petrified to go it alone without the United States.

What Drives Government Action?  It is understandable that folks are baffled and dismayed by the news that confronts us each day.  The Babylon Bee can barely keep a step ahead of the nitwittery we see playing out in real time.  For example, California politicians decided to take money from taxpayers in order to buy medical insurance for illegal aliens.  The federal government tossed bundles of COVID relief cash every which way, with over a billion dollars of it raining down on incarcerated convicts, including Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  And we witnessed government spend billions to fight the prospect of climate change, only to create the reality of crushing inflation.  Why are these things happening?  Who benefits?  Which politicians ran on a platform of doing any of this?  And, if we claim to be a government by consent, who is it that consented?

The Great Upheaval Is Almost Here.  [Scroll down] Manufacturers are hustling to engage scarce labor and increase production — but that's to fill backed-up orders.  New demand is stalled, which means when the old orders are filled everything stops.  It stops because when it costs so much to make new things, the resulting price is beyond what the market will bear.  And so comes the crash.  But it could get worse than that.  Look at Europe, where it's less a question of how much it costs to make new things and more whether making them is possible at all.  The lights are literally going out all over Europe.  Two-thirds of the pubs and restaurants in the U.K. could close because utility bills are pricing them out of business.  Natural gas and coal are sky-high.  The energy markets are so roiled by the lack of fossil fuels from Russia that governments are faced with bailing out the energy firms, else a "Lehman Brothers event" wipe out the sector.

A Massive Economic Storm Is Already Overhead And Nobody Seems To Notice.  The biggest recessionary factor that should have alarm bells ringing is new orders for business, especially manufacturing, which are plummeting.  Manufacturing surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Richmond show new orders for business falling fast, in some cases at the fastest pace on record.  The corresponding service sector surveys show similar trends with deteriorating business conditions and declining new orders.  In the New York survey, current business conditions are rated worse than any time besides the depths of the 2009 crash and the pandemic.  In July, future business conditions were worse than at any point besides September 2001, when the survey was taken right after 9/11.  In other words, the coming economic storm is more worrisome to manufacturers than anything besides a terrorist attack.

Can the United States Stop the March to Self-Destruction?  Since the founding of the nation there has been a consensus that the demise of the United States would not come about by being conquered from without but rather by destroying itself from within.  That consensus about the first-of-a-kind constitutional republic with no history of either monarchical or dictatorial authoritarianism is rapidly becoming a reality.  How did this evolutionary process come to pass, and can it be stopped?

November's Choice: The New Aristocracy Or Our Traditional Liberties.  The 2022 election should not simply be a referendum on individual Republican or Democrat candidates; optimally, it should lead to indicting and convicting entrenched politicians and operatives in both political parties who relentlessly rush to surrender America's sovereignty to hostile and corrupt schemers at the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and other odious globalist organizations and profit personally in the process.

Beneath campaign nastiness, [there are] legitimate concerns about Fetterman's health.  Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has not fully recovered from the serious stroke he suffered in May.  His campaign has acknowledged his obvious struggles with "auditory processing" and speech, but the persistence of those struggles has contrasted with the campaign's rosier predictions of a return to the rigors of campaigning, including debating his opponent, Mehmet Oz.  If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator.

Our corrupt elites reveal that what Jefferson feared has come to pass.  If ever there was a time when constructive criticism was urgently required, it is now, in the summer of America's deepening discontent.  One thing to criticize is that we are fast becoming an oligarchy, something hidden behind ostensible political battles that distract us, something Jefferson warned of 240 years ago.  Currently, the shiny object we are being funneled to focus upon is the Mar-a-Lago raid.  We cannot take our eyes off it, even as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray tell us to stop criticizing our betters in government even as they shred the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. [...] Rivals on many issues — progressives and conservatives — likely agree that tyranny under a surveillance state is not an American ideal.  That's why, the more we learn about the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the more all of us should be terrified as tyranny seemingly has come to infect the American body politic.  The assault upon a popular, mega-rich former president was likely another step in the plot to destroy those who reject ruinous unregulated globalism and to stifle a reckoning, through the courts and at the polls, that is long overdue.  What the Biden-Harris administration did at Mar-a-Lago may only be a taste of what it ultimately does to us all, whether we are Trump-supporters or simply proud to be free and independent Americans rather than serfs to the international and fake Illuminati.

In Protecting the KGB, Gorbachev Laid the Foundation for Putin's Gangster-State.  The notorious KGB chairman Yuri Andropov recruited Mikhail Gorbachev, cultivated him, and placed him in the Kremlin leadership to ultimately take power.  Once he led the Soviet Communist Party, Andropov's recruit protected and rewarded the Soviet secret police by making it off-limits to any truth-telling, accountability, or reform.  Gorbachev has died, but the KGB that he nurtured and protected lives on under an ungrateful Vladimir Putin.  Until the day he passed away at age 91, Gorbachev got an international pass for saving the core of Soviet power: the ever-watching secret police and its global spy and active measures networks.

MAGA and the Memory of America.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis [...] is intelligent and articulate, but what makes him probably the most popular Republican governor in the country — and why he brought star appeal to the Keystone State — is that he fights, and wins, political battles for conservative principles.  Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company — one of the largest employers in Florida, and one of the most influential corporations in the world — opposed legislation sponsored by DeSantis that prohibited public school teachers from discussing sexual topics in kindergarten through the third grade.  It was a strange position to take for a business that caters to parents with young children, and an indication of how ideologically deranged corporate America has become.  Not long after, DeSantis demonstrated a rare willingness to inflict pain on his political opponents by signing a bill revoking Disney's special regulatory and tax exemptions.  It was a major showdown, and DeSantis is rightly proud of himself for not backing off.  If only more Republicans in other states, and in Washington, D.C., followed his lead.  DeSantis is proof that political power, like muscle power, grows when it is used.

The O'Keefe Project: Footsteps Getting Closer.  It has been evident that the Biden Justice Department is out to get James O'Keefe and Project Veritas since O'Keefe et al. were raided last year under federal search warrants procured by the FBI.  Although O'Keefe was instructed to remain mum, the authorities promptly leaked news of the raid to the New York Times.  All this in the matter of Ashley Biden's diary. [...] The national security establishment has treated Ashley Biden's diary as a federal case.  They have leaked confidential information to Times reporters including Adam Goldman and Michael Schmidt, both of whom promoted Russia hoax stories that won Pulitzer Prizes.  Ashley Biden's diary is now subject to the Russia hoax treatment, both within the Biden Department of Justice and at its Times public relations arm.  In the latest development yesterday, Florida residents Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.

The Trump Campaign Turned Down the Ashley Biden Diary.  Just the News has the story of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, who entered guilty pleas to stealing Ashley Biden's diary and selling it to James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.  Before they did that, Harris and Kurlander decided to try for a big payday and attempted to sell the diary to a party that they thought would be very interested in it and certainly had the cash on hand to meet a hefty price tag:  namely, the Trump campaign.  But the plan hit a snag.  Not only did the Trump camp reject the offer, but they also recommended that Harris and Kurlander turn it and other stolen items over to the FBI.  Yes, that FBI.

More on the Ashley Biden diary story.  Yesterday I wrote about the two people from Florida who pleaded guilty to stealing Ashley Biden's diary.  As I pointed out in that post, the reason this is being treated as a federal case is that both of them pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property across state lines.  They qualified for those charges because a) the knew the material was stolen, b) they transported it across state lines and c) the material had a value of more than $5,000.  But in order for Project Veritas to be guilty of receiving stolen property, the would have had to know the material was stolen.  And by all accounts, the thieves who brought them the diary claimed it wasn't stolen but had been abandoned in a house where they found it.  But here's where things get a bit more tricky.  Project Veritas, in an effort to verify the diary was real, asked the two thieves to return to the house and gather more material belonging to Ashley Biden.

Ordinarily, The American People Benefit From Viewing Presidential Records.  While the DOJ's and FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago is suspect, and currently seems to be more about protecting the Deep State than about benefitting the American people, we shouldn't forget that, under ordinary circumstances, the American people benefit from gaining access to presidential records.  Since 1992, America has gone from sole superpower to bumbling fool and stupid-power, even more so in the still unfolding horror show that scares most everyone thinking clearly about Biden-Harris priorities and policies.  The downward trajectory of America is undeniable and likely involves grifters in both political parties.  Adjusted for rampant inflation, we are poorer, we are already drowning in debt, and we are less safe at home and abroad.  Along the way, we also seem to have surrendered our "inalienable rights" and constitutionally protected freedoms to unaccountable, unelected, and arrogant bureaucrats.

Why Aren't Our Generals Learning?  A third of the way into his article, "Afghanistan Did Not Have to Turn Out This Way", David Petraeus, former head of Central Command, who led forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and then headed the CIA, admits the war was never going to end.  "Some senior officials, including me, had cautioned that we would not be able to do in Afghanistan what we had done in Iraq — that though we might be able to drive violence down, we would not be able to 'flip' the country, as we had during the surge in Iraq, and provide it a whole new beginning," he writes.  "When we recognized that we couldn't 'win' the war, we did not even seriously consider that we might just 'manage' it," Petraeus complains.  Managing the war would mean a permanent military presence in Afghanistan.  There was never any serious plan to withdraw from Afghanistan.  Nation building, Petraeus argues, "was not just unavoidable; it was essential".

The Point of No Return.  This is an election year.  But the issues this year are not about Democrats and Republicans.  The big issue is whether this nation has degenerated to a point of no return — a point where we risk destroying ourselves, before our enemies can destroy us.  If there is one moment that symbolized our degeneration, it was when an enraged mob gathered in front of the Supreme Court and a leader of the United States Senate shouted threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying "You won't know what hit you!"  There have always been irresponsible demagogues.  But there was once a time when anyone who shouted threats to a Supreme Court Justice would see the end of his own political career, and could not show his face in decent society again.  You either believe in laws or you believe in mob rule.  It doesn't matter whether you agree with the law or agree with the mob on some particular issue.  If threats of violence against judges — and publishing where a judge's children go to school — is the way to settle issues, then there is not much point in having elections or laws.

Is Kamala Harris 'Inevitable' as the Next Democrat Nominee?  Larry Elder Thinks So.  We all watch the painful clips of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking publicly.  It is so memeable that Blaze TV host Stu Burguiere has an entire series called "Veep Thoughts."  In addition to her public speaking gaffes, Harris is a horrible retail politician and has not been able to claim a win on the border, Ukraine, or the voting rights legislation that President Biden gave her to lead.  Yet radio host Larry Elder is confident that she will be the Democrats' nominee in 2024 if Joe Biden does not or cannot run.  Failing that, it will be "her turn" in 2028.

The Editor says...
It's not necessarily "'her turn' in 2028."  If that were true, it would be Mike Pence's "turn" if Trump decides not to run in 2024.  Nobody's interested in "Smarty" Pence.  On the other hand, nobody was excited about Romney or McCain or Dole, either, and they got the nomination.  It's almost as if the decision isn't really left to the voters.

The Church of the Federal Reserve is Here to Save Us.  The Federal Reserve is a fraud and has been from its inception.  Its creation was via dubious means in 1913.  That year was arguably the worst in U.S. history for freedom lovers — 1913 was during the "Progressive Era" and also saw the passage of a permanent income tax.  Oversight of the banking industry is necessary, particularly in a world of fractional-reserve banking.  Banking committees and oversight functions exist inside the Federal Government.  Why was this one created as some contrived hybrid?  G. Edward Griffin addressed this abnormality in his The Creature from Jekyll Island.  To assess the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve, an economic review of general economic performance before and after its creation is useful.  The Fed began operations in 1914.  Shortly after its creation, a boom, the "Roaring 20s," occurred.  That quickly ended with the greatest stock market crash in history in 1929, which preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Final Months of a Bad Employee.  If you work in the business world long enough, you will notice that an employee reveals the most about his own personal work ethic, not when he starts out, not when he's angling for a bonus or promotion, but at the end, when he gets a new job and gives his two weeks' notice, or when he starts training his successor as he reaches retirement. [...] The same goes for political leadership when it has had its walking papers served on Election Day, or even when that eventuality becomes evident, months in advance. [...] In this context, we ask:  how are today's Congressional leadership adjusting their behavior in light of polls that show they are on their way out?  Are the Pelosi and Schumer majorities trying to win back public support by reacting to recognition that the nation desperately needs a course correction in so many ways?  Or are they doubling down on the destruction causing our current problems?  Sadly, there is no indication that they are interested in the concept of working for the public good until the last moment, as the Trump administration did.

Is Anyone Tracking China's Land Grabs in America?  China is doling out hordes of cash to buy American real estate.  Over $6 billion was spent gobbling up American land last year.  One purchase raised eyebrows since the plot of land is near a US Air Force base with military drone capabilities. [...] Chinese land grabs near US military bases are unconscionable.  We all know Beijing's spy network is vast and efficient.  They've infiltrated Congress, cultural institutions, and higher education.  We need to keep an eye on these purchases.  With China smelling the weakness from this administration, they're bound to get more aggressive.  They're already trying to stop an arms sale to Taiwan.  They shared our information about the Russian military buildup in Ukraine with Moscow before the invasion.  They know Joe won't do anything.

Actor Russell Brand calls green energy movement a scam to bankrupt farmers and grab their land globally via the Great Reset.  Actor/comedian Russell Brand tore into the green energy movement, calling it a scam and alleging that it is part of the Great Reset with a goal to bankrupt farmers and grab land across the globe.  Brand hosts a popular podcast where he has been exposing the Great Reset and the plight of farmers.  Especially when it comes to the fertilizer shortage and predators like Bill Gates buying up farmland.  Brand discussed Dutch farmers who have been protesting over climate laws being forced on them that are bankrupting their livelihoods.  That includes being unable to get the fertilizer needed to grow the crops in the first place.  [Video clip]

Globalism and the Georgia Stones.  On July 6, in an act of vandalism for which the culprits are still at large, one of the four "Georgia Guidestones" was blown apart.  The damage was so severe that the entire monument was rendered too unstable to leave standing.  For safety reasons, state officials almost immediately demolished the rest of the monument.  While the Georgia Guidestones are not as well known as, say, Stonehenge, among critics of globalism they had acquired a certain infamy because of the inscriptions on the stones.  Carved into four massive blocks of granite, and rendered in eight languages, this is what was on the stones:  [Text omitted for brevity, among other things.] [...] But what was it about the Georgia Guidestones that made them a target?  To answer this, you first have to wonder — who is more paranoid, those anti-globalists who believe an international elite is determined to erase nationalities and reduce the population of humans to "sustainable" levels, or the Malthusian-environmentalist faction of the globalists themselves, who believe the planet is on the brink of total ecosystem collapse because of too many people consuming too many resources, and this must be corrected by any means necessary?

How To Recognize Civilization When You See It.  What do we mean, as individuals, when we say that someone, not a certain society, is "civilized"?  Can that assertion point to anything solid beyond vague approval?  This idea has proven notoriously resistant to capture.

Brace Yourself for the Biden Housing Bust.  During the final two years of [Jimmy] Carter's term, sales of existing and new homes collapsed because the Fed was forced to raise interest rates sharply to get double-digit inflation under control.  This, in turn, produced double-digit mortgage rates that priced millions of potential buyers out of the market.  Like our current chief executive, Carter was delusional about the threat inflation posed to the economy. [...] If you're too young to remember the Carter era, it may be difficult to imagine double-digit mortgage rates.  If so, consider what you would have said to anyone who predicted two years ago that you would now be paying $5.00 a gallon for gasoline.  Likewise, the possibility of committing to a double-digit mortgage rate to buy a house may seem absurd.  In 1980, however, many had to choose between doing just that and not buying at all.  For some potential buyers, there was no choice.  They couldn't afford the mortgage payments.

Our Founding Fathers weren't the patriarchy, they were heroes.  In our country today, there are people who dismiss the Founding Fathers through the prism of 2022.  If these people had their way, they would remove every plaque, statue or word that celebrates the genius and courageous acts of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.  For example, on July 3, 2019, a journalist from Vox put out this little gem:  "The main benefit of the revolution to colonists was that it gave more political power to America's white male minority."  I suspect that when the 56 men signed the declaration in Philadelphia in 1776 — a literal death warrant for each — "identity politics" was the furthest thing from their minds.  Especially for those who were imprisoned, had their homes burned to the ground, their livestock slaughtered and their wives arrested, simply for daring to add their name to the most inspiring document known to humanity.  Each of the 56 men who put that quill pen to parchment knew they were very possibly signing their own death warrants.  John Hancock not only knew that but purposely increased the risk to himself.  Why?  Legend tells us he upped the ante so King George III "can read my name without spectacles and may double his reward on my head."

To Avoid Civil War, Learn To Tolerate Different Laws In Different States.  Most commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — which overturns Roe v Wade — has focused on the decision's effect on the legality of abortion in various states.  That's an important issue.  It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision's effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal.  After all, the ruling isn't so much about abortion as it is about the federal government's role in abortion.  State governments are free to make abortion 100 percent legal within their own borders.  Some states have already done so.  The court's ruling limits only the federal government's prerogatives over abortion law, and this has the potential to lead to many other limitations on federal power as well.  In this way, Dobbs is a victory for those seeking to limit federal power.

America Is More Fragile Than the Left Understands.  Our elites assume that all our nation's past violent protests, all its would-be revolutions, all its cultural upheavals, all its institutionalized lawlessness were predicated on one central truth — America's central core is so strong, so rich, and so resilient that it can withstand almost any assault.  So, we can afford 120 days in 2020 of mass rioting, $2 billion in damage, some 35 killed, and 1,500 police injured.  We can easily survive an Afghanistan, and our utter and complete military humiliation.  There was no problem in abandoning some $70-80 billion in military loot to terrorists.  Who cares that we tossed off a billion-dollar new embassy, and jettisoned a $300-million refitted air base, as long as our pride flags were waving in Kabul?

The Strange Sequence Of Events Happening Now Are Not Random.  Bear with me here, and get out your tin foil hat, because I have a tale to tell you.  One where I take a step back, or a thousand, and look at the strangest events over the course of the past few years, and "see" dots connecting from one to other, how one event intertwines with another, until we get here.  Here being a moment in time where the man who occupies the White House, supposedly the "decision-maker" needs cheat cards to tell him when to sit, when to leave, and when to talk.  Here being a time when gas prices are at a record high, with no end to the continued increases in sight.  Here being a time where Americans just went through a year of being controlled, threatened and harassed because of a "pandemic," where states were locked down, businesses deem "non-essential" by state leaders and closed, and Americans forced to be masked or banned from everyday events, such as shopping for food.  Here being a time when on the heels of one "pandemic" we are warned of another, and where diseases such as Polio, are supposedly making a comeback.  Here being a time when things look so bad for democrats politically heading into the midterms, and BOOM, "coincidentally" there are a rapid series of "mass shootings," so democrats and republicans in name only (RINOS), take yet another step towards violating the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

View of Cleveland Fed Reserve Bank President Shows Massive Economic Disconnect in Causation.  Loretta Mester is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and appeared on CBS Face the Nation to give her opinion/analysis of the US. economic condition.  The disconnect in her viewpoint is alarming and should signal to everyone how the Federal Reserve Board, just like every institution of government, has become a political agency.  In her mind Ms. Mester appears to believe what she is saying, but the disconnect between her view of our status and the reality on Main Street is alarming.  In this interview Mester says emphatically that current inflation is being driven by consumer demand that is outpacing supply.  Not only is this view of inflation origination wrong, and has been wrong for well over a year, it is dangerous.

To Fight Marxist Education, We Need a New Kind of School.  What is the antidote to "wokeism"?  Knowledge.  How do ordinary people resist the growing tyranny of State power?  By questioning everything they're told.  How can people being controlled fight back?  By remembering that they alone control their thoughts.  You knew these answers without my help.  Variations of them are entwined with our cherished cultural beliefs.  Knowledge is power.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  The truth will set you free.  In the past, perhaps, these idioms were too often seen as nothing more than inspirational bromides one might find embroidered on a decorative bookmark.  Now their gospel truths are strikingly clear.  Stupidity breeds weakness.  Obedience kills critical thinking.  Ignorance invites enslavement.  Wisdom ameliorates suffering.  Imagine how much stronger America would be today if America's children understood these vital lessons.

Andrew Sullivan:  The scolds are in retreat.  Sullivan's latest piece on Substack is titled "The Vibes They Are A-Shiftin'" and that actually undersells the case he makes that the woke left (or whatever you prefer to call them) appear to be in retreat.  He opens by noting that it was only 2 years ago that the world was figuratively and sometimes literally on fire.  Activists were demanding police be defunded and Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo were seemingly anointed as our foremost public intellectuals.  Jump forward two years and things look very different.

Sorry, Democrats:  Other Opinions Exist.  This week, my company, The Daily Wire, premiered a blockbuster new documentary starring Matt Walsh.  Titled "What Is A Woman?", the documentary investigates radical gender theory and its peculiar hold on the elites in our society — and how the insane proposition that men can become women and vice versa has become so well-accepted that even normal Americans now live in fear of questioning it.  The film has been the single largest success in the history of The Daily Wire; hundreds of thousands of Americans have subscribed to view it.  Yet Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator for film and television, has not a single traditional review of the film.  That's because, according to the legacy and entertainment media, the film doesn't exist.  When the Daily Wire press team sent out invitations to reviewers to watch the film — knowing, of course, that the vast majority of reviewers are left-leaning and would undoubtedly pan the film — reviewers began responding with insults and declarations of preemptive hatred.

Biden's America resembles a Soviet era hellhole.  I'm old enough to remember watching news reports about the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states describing electricity blackouts, showing stores with empty shelves and people standing in long lines at shops to purchase scarce necessities.  Commentators explained how only government officials had access to nice homes or cars and how only government employees and Communist Party members were exempt from the rules they established for the populace.  I saw it for myself in the early 1960s when I visited East Germany, crossing through Check Point Charlie, into East Berlin.  I visited again 20 years later in the early 1980s before the "Wall" came down.  Nothing had changed in that 20-year interval.  The city was still drab, people on the street dour and scruffily dressed, and store shelves still empty.

The dystopian state of our nation.  The signs of decline are everywhere:  violent crimes, corruption, riots, all with little or no consequences for the perpetrators, election fraud, and medical mandates for vaccines that do not work. [...] All of this is part of the left's grand plan to "transform" American society from the free nation of our founding into something resembling communist China.  The one thing they did not plan on was the presidency of Donald Trump.  His four-year term in the White House was unexpected because the Democrats were certain that they had that election in the bag.  Hillary was on board with their globalist/Marxist plan, and they just knew that all their plans were a go.  But they underestimated the America First movement and were gobsmacked by Trump's thoroughly unpredictable victory.  That is how blinkered they are.

What is a woman?  I worried that the just-released Daily Wire documentary on the topic, What Is a Woman?, produced and directed by Justin Folk and starring Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh, wouldn't offer anything new.  In a sense I was right.  My mind wasn't changed.  I went in knowing that transgenderism is deranged and dangerous, and the film confirmed my point of view.  But what confirmation!  Folk, Walsh, and company have put together a serious and definitive piece of work — at once a comprehensive survey, a chilling indictment, and, strange though it may sound, an often laugh-out-loud piece of entertainment.

Guns Are Not the Problem.  Americans have owned guns since the founding, but it wasn't until comparatively recently that mass shootings became a concern.  Guns are not the problem.  Our culture is.  Broken cultures produce broken human beings.  For every school shooter, there are thousands of other weak, confused, mentally disturbed men who are drifting away from society.  They aren't dating, aren't working, and they spend most of their time in their bedrooms playing video games, smoking weed, watching pornography, and stewing in social media echo chambers.  None of this is healthy or normal, but we have been desensitized to dysfunction. [...] Your average school shooter spends months writing the script of his own little action movie that he wants to force society to watch.  They are living out a fantasy of glory.  The childish, sadistic theatrics of these spectacles bear the imprint of a childish and sadistic popular culture.  It is absurd to suggest that the man who dresses up like a "Call of Duty" character to go kill children has not been influenced in some way by gratuitous violence in mass media.

What about packing the House of Representatives?  In the first U.S. Congress, the members who represented the largest number of people were the Senators from the most populous state, Virginia, who represented about 750,000 people.  For the current Congress, the median district of the House of Representatives includes about 750,000 people. [...] The reason congressional districts have grown to have such a large population now compared to the early Congresses is that the number of members of Congress was frozen at 435 by statute in the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.  In 1929 the U.S. population was about 120 million.  Today, the U.S. population is around 330 million, meaning that with a fixed 435 House members, district population has grown and will continue to grow until the number of House members is increased or, better yet, linked to population. [...] Having congressional districts the size of the largest state at the founding and growing means that members of Congress are more and more removed from the people they are supposed to represent.  A not too surprising result of this is that members of Congress now think and act more like senators.

Uvalde and the Problem of Evil.  What do people who don't believe in evil do?  They blame inanimate objects.  Guns.  19 years ago, a middle-aged unemployed taxi driver carrying two milk cartons full of gasoline walked onto a South Korean subway and started a fire that killed 192 people.  That was not a milk carton problem.  Nor was it a gasoline problem.  6 years ago, a Muslim terrorist drove a truck into a Bastille Day event in Nice, France killing 86 and wounding over 400 other people.  Body parts were being pried out of his wheel wells.  That was not a truck problem.  Across the long stretch of human history, millions of people were killed long before the invention of firearms, in often cruder and far more brutal ways.

'Top Gun' Is Much Better Recruitment Than That Lesbian Wedding Cartoon Ad The Army Made.  When "Top Gun" came out in 1986, it helped drive a surge of interest in flying for the U.S. military, including a 10 percent spike in service academy applications. [...] The Pentagon collaborated with producers on the movie, as it has with myriad other military flicks.  Now, from ads lined up to accompany the movie to recruitment tables set up outside theaters, the Navy and Air Force are making no secret of using "Top Gun:  Maverick" as a recruiting tool, as well they should.  It's a far better promotion for the U.S. military than the embarrassing, woke garbage that equity consultants have been churning out. [...] It's painfully obvious that the point of the ad was to check boxes in the Army's department of showing how much the Pentagon loves lesbian weddings.  The animation is reminiscent of a B-list kids TV show, and so is the sugary tone of the voiceover.  There is zero in the video to inspire any kind of bravery, sacrifice, duty, honor, integrity, excellence, teamwork, or respect.  Like the short-lived "Army of One" slogan of 20 years ago, this ad is all about being your best self and fulfilling your personal needs and desires.

The real replacement.  Nigerian immigrants replacing white natives are not a problem.  Welcome aboard, I say.  The real problem is replacing God with government.  The country's values have changed mainly for the worst over the last 70 years.  That coincides with a nation that has gone from being 90% white to one that is 76%.  But don't blame non-whites because the change in race is casual, not causal.  America is not changing color.  America is changing values.  We are replacing God with communism.  The little old ladies in tennis shoes were right.  There was a plan to defeat the nation from within.

There is a way to stop school shootings.  Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money was.  Shooters target schools because that's where the easy targets are.  If we truly want to stop school shootings, it's past time we hardened our schools so that our children are no longer easy targets.  We could learn a lot from Israel, a country that takes the protection of children so seriously that there have been only six attacks on schools since 1974.  While Israeli law focuses more on repelling terrorist attacks than school shooters, their security measures work well on both threats.  There are armed guards in Israeli schools.  There are limited points of entry to schools.  There are shelters and fences at schools and reinforced school buses.  Armed guards might even accompany students on field trips.  Nor do the Israelis rely on security at the school site.  They also engage in behavior profiling, including monitoring the social media of potential shooters.  Such measures are controversial and would no doubt encounter resistance in the United States.  However, there have been 2,052 school shootings in America since 1970 (although only the smallest percentage are mass shootings of the type pioneered at Columbine; most are extensions of or the same type of violence seen in urban neighborhoods).

I Wish Our Government Understood Memorial Day.  I wish we had leaders who unflinchingly defended the Bill of Rights.  I wish we had a Congress that respected the constitutional limits of its enumerated powers.  I wish we weren't saddled with a century of errant Supreme Court jurisprudence that has habitually refashioned the plain meaning of the Constitution's words in service to the partisan bents of its members.  I wish the 16th Amendment hadn't made it permissible for the federal government to tax the fruits of Americans' labor.  I wish the 17th Amendment hadn't transformed the Senate from a legislative body representing the individual states' interests into a national House of Lords representing the national security state's interests.  I wish our fifty state governments fought ferociously against the federal government to protect their inherent sovereign powers.  I wish the American people understood more broadly that the federal government has slowly but surely stolen from them rights and liberties that were once strictly protected from government infringement.  I wish we were not represented by presidents who disloyally insist on ceding American self-determination to international governing bodies stocked with unelected bureaucrats who believe their "expertise" outweighs Americans' priorities.

The word no one mentions when discussing school shootings.  [Scroll down]  No one asks the central question; why are kids shooting up schools?  Schools are the target.  Schools are the objective.  Schools are the focal point.  What are schools doing that makes them so hated?  You can go to any website and see the open and growing craziness within the teaching profession.  There are too many cotton-candy haired narcissists who only preach a cause to their captive audience.  They might preach about homosexuality.  They might preach about Critical Race Theory.  But it's all about their personal cause.  These spokesmen for the Cause are creepy because the Cause trumps all other knowledge.  Look for reading scores on the bottom shelf, just below basic math.  Narcissists' teaching budding narcissists' is not a healthy diet for the soul of our country.  Even the books students read are self-centered, crafted so that the reader "can relate" to the subject.  So they learn not to relate to others.

Cannabis causes psychosis.  Psychosis causes violence.  Yep, there it is, the first reference to cannabis use by Salvador Ramos, the Texas elementary school killer.  In the New York Times.  Took 24 hours, give or take.  ["]And Ms. Rodriguez recalled he would often talk about how much he despised his mother and grandmother, whom he told her did not let him smoke weed or do what he wanted.["]  [Source]  This is only one case.  Except it's not.  Nikolas Cruz, the Florida high school shooter, was a heavy user and told the police detective who interviewed him that he heard voices.  Devin Patrick Kelley — who shot up a Texas church and killed 26 people in 2017 before blowing his head off — had THC in his system when he died.  (Kelley had anti-anxiety drugs too; a lot of heavy cannabis users wind up using Xanax or Klonopin to try to tamp down their paranoia.)  Darrell Brooks Jr., last seen allegedly racing through the Waukesha Christmas Parade, is a self-described stoner.  Meanwhile, cities like Portland, Oregon have suffered an explosion in violence following the legalization of cannabis.  Portland had 16 murders in 2013, the year before voters in Oregon approved full legalization.  Last year it had 90.  It's on pace to have even more in 2022.  It has gone from being one of the safest medium-sized cities in the United States to one of the most dangerous.  Denver has seen a similar trend.

4 Steps Every School Can Take to Help Prevent Shootings.  [Scroll down]  In almost every one of these shootings, and now apparently in this one as well, there have been signals that the shooter has given, mostly on social media, sometimes to friends, family members.  And the problem is people see these things like pictures of him with guns saying he's going to go do a shooting.  Apparently, this young man had some friends that he used to cruise around the neighborhood [with] and shoot BB guns at people's cars or at people walking on the street.  Behavior like that is a signal.  It doesn't mean always that there's going to be a big tragedy like this, but it's the kind of signal that somebody needs to respond to.  And you cannot pass [it] off ... "Oh, well, that's just Johnny blowing off steam.  He really doesn't mean that."  We can't say that anymore.  We have to respond.  We have to get authorities involved.  There has to be an intervention.

Bush Dynasty, Its Influence Fading, Pins Hopes on One Last Stand in Texas.  His famous name shadows George P. Bush, the only member of the dynastic political clan now in public office, as he enters the final days of an uphill campaign to unseat Texas' attorney general.  To some Texans, the Bush family name is a badge of integrity, harking back to a bygone era of rectitude and respectful political debate.  To others, it is the disqualifying mark of a Republican old guard that failed the party and betrayed its last president, Donald Trump.

GOP voters and Attorney General Ken Paxton.  On Tuesday, GOP voters will choose AG Ken Paxton over George P. Bush, the challenger serving as the commissioner of the Texas General Land Office since 2015.  The Bush campaign has focused on the stories and allegations regarding AG Paxton's ethics. [...] So why are GOP voters looking the other way?  I see two reasons:  First, AG Paxton has done a good job.  He has been a tough advocate for Texas and on attacking the Biden administration over the border chaos; and, Second, I think that a lot of GOP voters are very skeptical of the media.  They see all these anti-Paxton stories and wonder if it means anything.

The Editor says...
Maybe Ken Paxton is guilty of something, maybe he's not.  If you have courtroom-quality evidence against him, bring it. 

What the Blue-State Left-Coasters Don't Understand about Culture.  Yesterday, I met a man from Mumbai.  He happened to mention that he was new to Idaho, so I asked how new, and it turned out he'd been here for only a month and a half.  He spoke good English, and I learned he'd gone to an English-speaking school, which made his getting a job here in Idaho possible.  I asked him what he thought about Boise, and he said he loved it here better than Mumbai.  People don't care about you in a big city, he said.  Whether you live or die makes no difference to them.  But here in a little-big city like Boise, he said he could stand outside a store with a large purchase, and people would ask if he needed help.  He'd already done this the day before and been asked by eight people.  He'd never seen anything like it in his life.

The Editor says...
Very obviously, the man has never lived among Christians before.  The people who are commanded to love their neighbors are a whole lot more neighborly than the people who think random animals in their city might be their reincarnated relatives.

Goodbye Jen Psaki — no one condescends quite like you.  So long Jen Psaki!  As White House press secretary, you were indeed very informative:  every day you provided an example of how today's Democratic Party turns normie soccer moms from Greenwich into reality-denying attack machines sputtering insults and cheering on lawbreakers because they can't face up to the unpopularity of the far-left agenda.  As blathering Joe Biden retreated into the background and suggested to the world that America was in the hands of a man who should be shuffling around Sunset Acres in a bathrobe, Psaki became the face of an administration that is determined to head into the midterms like Thelma and Louise.

The return of Vindman, clamoring to start World War III.  Among the most fervent war hawks in America today is Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former member of the NSC, who now works at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute.  His previous claim to fame was as a witness who testified about former president Donald Trump's call to Ukrainian officials in the second impeachment trial of Trump.  He became an instant hero to the crowd at MSNBC and other anti-Trump major media (is there any other kind?).  Vindman also reportedly claimed that Trump "bears an enormous burden of responsibility" for the Russia-Ukraine war, even though Russia's aggression against Ukraine has occurred during the Obama and Biden administrations.  There was no Russian aggression against Ukraine on Trump's watch.

Party like it's 18-94!  Democrats are in deep trouble 6 months away from the midterm election.  How bad will it be?  2010 Tea Party bad?  1994 Gingrich Revolution bad?  Try 1894.  In 1894, West Virginia had 4 congressmen.  All were Democrats.  All lost re-election.  It was part of a sweep in which Republicans gained 130 seats in a 357-seat House of Representatives.  Democrats lost more than half their seats as Republicans re-gained the House — and would control it for the next 16 years.  West Virginia was not alone in wiping themselves clean of Democrats.  Illinois went from an 11-11 split to a 22-0 shutout by Republicans.  Indiana went from an 11-2 advantage by Democrats to a 13-0 shutout by Republicans.  Michigan went 12-0, Minnesota 7-0, Nebraska 6-0, New Jersey 8-0, and Wisconsin 10-0.

A Mexican cave disgorged a massive pre-Columbian crime scene.  One of the left's useful narratives is that Native Americans lived in idyllic, pastoral harmony, only to have this paradise brutally destroyed by the invading Europeans and their Christian God.  There's some truth (some Native American tribes were peaceful and some Europeans brutal) but that's not important for the left.  Angelic indigenous people and evil Whites are the core story for them.  That's why it's intriguing to learn about the fate of 150 people whose skeletons were found in a cave in Mexico.  The skeletons were actually found a decade ago.  Now, though, Guatemala's Institute of Anthropology and History has determined when and how these people had died.  It turns out that they were victims of human sacrifice around 1000 years ago.

The World Does Not Run on Magic.  At a recent hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, the CEO of Colonial Pipeline made an admission which illustrates quite well our negligence and improvidence.  The company paid out nearly $5 million in blackmail money to an unknown hacker when the pipeline was shut down for several days.  That, of course, was bad enough, and most of the man's testimony had to do with the technicalities of which government agency was notified and when, and what the company's computer experts did to remedy the situation.  But there was another piece of his testimony, one that you had to look hard to find in the news reports.  He testified that most of the men who could operate the controls on the pipeline have died or retired, so that the 5,500-mile line must rely almost wholly upon computerized systems for its operation.

5 Ways Democrat Policies Work To Destroy Children's Lives.  Americans who would sacrifice anything to protect their children may be surprised to learn that their inclination is a rather modern phenomenon.  For most of human history, the most dangerous period of any person's life was childhood.  Only if a newborn survived the first decade of disease, warfare, hunger, and all the other mundane threats to ordinary human existence would the survivor gain any type of social recognition.  O.M. Bakke explores this reality in his book, "When Children Became People:  The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity."  Before the spread of Christianity transformed prevailing cultural beliefs, children had no legal standing in the pagan societies of the Roman Empire and elsewhere.  In human history, it has been normal for unwanted babies to be aborted, smothered, or abandoned to wildlife.  Parents could beat or kill their children at will.  Children were routinely sold into slavery.  And it was quite ordinary for adults to use low-class or enslaved children as sexual playthings.

They Can Print Money, But They Can't Print Food.  Whenever there is some sort of a major crisis, our politicians normally attempt to solve it by spending money.  But in this case, that isn't going to work.  Our leaders can try to throw billions or even trillions of dollars at the global food crisis, and they may even convince themselves that they are making a difference.  However, the truth is that they simply cannot create food out of thin air.  As I discussed last week, we are facing a worldwide nightmare of epic proportions.  Fertilizer prices have spiked to absurd levels, extremely bizarre weather patterns are playing havoc with crop production all over the planet, and the war in Ukraine has caused a growing supply crunch that will not be resolved any time soon.  There simply is no "magic wand" that our politicians can wave that will make this problem go away.

What To Do About China.  1937 was the year in which if you were in Europe or America, you could sense the trouble.  If you were in Asia in 1937, you would be even more worried, because that year saw Japan's second invasion of China that decade.  No matter where you lived, however, you could not be sure that the worst would happen, that great armies and navies around the world would clash.  There was still hope that the situation could be managed.  As we now know, the worst did happen.  In fact, what happened was worse than what anyone thought at the time.  We are now, thanks to China, back to 1937.

Revocation of Disney's Special Privilege Does Not Violate the First Amendment.  In 1967, when the Florida legislature gave The Walt Disney Company a special district, it did so to help Disney create a family friendly entertainment mecca.  Walt Disney put it this way:  "Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child.  So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that may be the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall."  Disney intended to avoid programming that would embarrass.  He meant to preserve youthful innocence — to inspire wholesome interests, imaging, and values, indeed to celebrate them — and to thereby support and uplift families.  "The important thing is the family," he said.

Mounting U.S. Debt and Misguided Foreign Policy Risk a Dollar Doomsday.  The U.S. dollar is getting perilously close to losing its status as the world's reserve currency, and there is less room than ever for error on the international stage.  Blunders in U.S. foreign policy are likely to have more harmful effects on both our allies and our enemies than in the past given the sorry record of the Biden administration.  Should the U.S. dollar be knocked out of its position as the reserve currency, hell would break lose across global markets.  With recent memories of Biden's humiliating and bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is less confidence in the reliability of the United States from our allies, and far less respect and fear of the United States from our enemies.  It's self-evident that the powers behind Biden favor prolonging the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than promoting an expedient end to hostilities, because the ongoing conflict dominates U.S. media and diverts Americans' attention away from disastrous domestic policies and breaking high-stakes scandals and prosecutions of Democrats and their deep state operatives.

Hypocritical Disney makes money in countries that ban homosexuality.  Florida lawmakers voted to end the Walt Disney Company's special, self-government privileges, which it never should have received.  Since 1967, Disney has operated its own mini-state, surrounded by Florida — much as the Vatican is encircled by Rome.  The Reedy Creek Improvement District exempts Disney from certain taxes and regulations that burden other companies.  This arrangement also empowers the Magic Kingdom to establish its own levies, ordinances and emergency services in and around its Disney World theme parks.  Let's hope Disney enjoyed this cushy 55-year ride.  Too bad its rotten corporate citizenship cost it these precious goodies.

A Fix For The Regulatory State.  [Scroll down]  Congress has decided that it doesn't need to take the time to read multi-thousand-page bills before passing them, so its members cannot claim lack of time as an excuse not to take up multi-thousand-page proposed regulations for ratification.  To that end, a very simple statute should be put in place as soon as possible.  Every new regulation by any executive agency should be ratified by a (super-?) majority of both houses of Congress and signed by the President before becoming effective.  Don't complain that Congress doesn't have enough time.  All that means is that they have their fingers in too many pots. [...] The Constitution was designed to limit government.  Over time it has become a behemoth that swallows up everything.  Every step to take a bit back is a good one.

American Churches are Killing Christianity.  [Scroll down]  [Matt] Walsh asks us to imagine that a "heathen horde" comes to America from a foreign land, looking to vanquish Christians and Christianity, so they look for a church where they can slaughter some Christians.  A man directs them to one but the heathen are confused because the church looks more like a post office or a medical clinic.  They go inside and find what looks like a "rehab center for wealthy drug abusers."  The heathens enter and find people in casual clothing sipping coffee:  ["]They had pictured an America filled with pious, modest, prayerful believers, but instead they find silly, shallow, oversexed nihilistic zombies who live vicariously through their phones which they have stocked with photographs of their own faces...  They hear a band performing a pop song.  Nobody is demonstrating anything approaching reverence.  There is no sign that anything sacred is happening here, or that anyone believes it is.["]

Trickle-Down Racist Antiracism.  Elected governments were rare in the past.  They did not appear until over four millennia after civilization first emerged in the Near East.  Constitutional systems were fragile at birth.  And they are on the wane today.  Nation after nation seems to be devolving into autocracy.  Multiethnic, multiracial consensual governments have been even more brittle and sporadic in history.  The Roman, Ottoman, and Soviet empires were multiracial.  But they were not consensual.  Instead, they required a degree of force to ensure calm among rival tribes and warring peoples — violence that we would find incompatible with our notions of modern democracy.  Today, India and Brazil are large multicultural and multiethnic democracies.  But neither, so far, has guaranteed their citizens either prosperity or security.  So present-day multiracial America is a great experiment in the unknown.

Confessions of a Disney writer.  [Scroll down]  Disney's recent commitment to "add queerness" wherever possible can't be explained as just trying to teach tolerance and inclusivity.  The executives know that by showing "queerness," they are modeling queerness and encouraging kids to imitate that behavior.  In fact, Disney has had issues with sexualizing children for a long time.  Cole Sprouse, a former Disney Channel star, recently noted that he and his co-star brother both suffered trauma from their acting career.  He added, "The young women on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from an earlier age than my brother and I that there's absolutely no way we could compare our experiences."  You only need to witness the spectacular flameouts of Disney child stars Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan to wonder what traumas changed them from adorable ingenues into hypersexual vixens.  Tracking the endless legal troubles, destructive addictions, and mental breakdowns of former Disney stars has become almost a parlor game, as in this depressing article, "20 Child Stars Ruined By Disney."

If You Want to Punish Disney, Take Away Mickey Mouse.  In 1998, Congress passed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.  In a classic case of bipartisan corruption, the bill brought together Republicans, along with Barney Frank and John Conyers, to do a special favor for Disney and for other entertainment industry companies.  The Mickey Mouse Act (formally the Copyright Term Extension Act) was one of a series of measures that took the original copyright system, meant to protect an author's rights, and instead turned it into a permanent monopoly cash cow for Hollywood studios.  Mickey Mouse, a character created in the 20s, will only become public domain in 2024.  That is if Republicans don't once again decide to do a special favor for Disney, Warner Bros, and a number of other massively woke and wealthy entertainment industry monsters.  In response to Disney's support for pushing sexual indoctrination on kindergarteners, Rep. Jim Banks has sent a letter warning that the free ride was over.

The Editor says...
Good.  And while you're at it, eliminate the subsidies for Sesame Street.

Is the Federal Reserve lying about our country's fiscal health?  The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States that is supposed to promote actions that benefit the U.S. economy and serve the public's interests.  Yet, some are suggesting that the System is failing the U.S. and its citizens, and others go further and say it is purposely lying about our country's financial health.

Thank Pence for Biden's Trainwreck.  There can be little doubt that former Vice President Mike Pence thought he was doing the right thing.  There are certainly many pragmatic reasons for his decision to not intervene in the electoral processes during those fateful days in January 2020.  We're a year and a half into the geriatric Biden regime and those pragmatic reasons are quickly losing their luster.  The nation is suffering — not from the constitutional crisis feared by the establishment but a systemic, methodical, sadistic infliction of pain and loss resulting from disasters of policy that are breathtaking in scope and frequency.  It's almost as if Biden and his administration hate Americans, our Constitution, and want to extract a pound of flesh from anyone they think supported President Trump.

The Editor says...
Yes, it's "almost as if" that's the case.  The time to figure out what the Vice President can and can't do in the event of a stolen election is before the election is stolen.  Even if Mr. Pence had grounds to invalidate the election, he probably wouldn't have, because the country was unstable enough already, and the news media was not on his side.

The Debasement of our Professional and Political Classes.  Will Republican magnanimity suffice to shame the Democrats to be more professional in the future?  Or will tit-for-tat deterrent reciprocity alone ensure a return to norms?  Specifically, will Biden be impeached Trump-style, after losing the House in November?  Say, to give just one possible example, for deliberately not enforcing and, indeed, undermining U.S. immigration law?  Will Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in Pelosi-fashion, start yanking troublesome radical Democrats off House committees?  Will a conservative Robert Mueller-like "wise man" head a $40 million, 22 month-long special counsel investigation of the Biden-family influence-selling syndicate — arrayed with a "dream-team," "all-star," and "hunter-killer" right-wing lawyers to ferret out "Big Guy" and "Mr. Ten Percent" quid pro quo profiteering?  Would a Republican-led House set up a special committee to investigate the racketeering and "conspiracies" across state lines that led to a near "coup" and "insurrection" marked by "the riots of 2020?"

The Editor says...
Don't count on any of that happening.

Garland Feels the Heat.  Attorney General Merrick Garland's swan song, we can presume, isn't exactly turning out how he had hoped. [...] According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn't yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.  "[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.," the Times reported over the weekend.  Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue.  By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed.  His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn't exactly been a secret.

Convention of States gaining ground.  America's Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention knew any form of government they created would become corrupt.  They had already seen it happen in numerous states.  That and other failings were what led to the need for a new form of government to replace the confederacy.  Those known abuses that would arise were the reason for the Amendment process being able to take two distinct routes.  One through Congress, before proposed Amendments reached the states.  The other was strictly through the states, giving Congress no role other than calling for a Convention of the States.  The Founders, in essence, gave a third option they did not have when rebelling against Britain:  The power of the states to curtail governmental abuse.

Opposing viewpoint:
Against the Convention of States.  Many folks calling for a Convention of States (COS) to solve our country's current political problems are making a fatal assumption about the purpose of COS.  They see this as a powerful mechanism for undoing political corruption at the federal level.  Unfortunately, a COS is not the tool to handle this particular problem and, under current conditions, could easily lead to a very different US Constitution that actually supports rather than prohibits common government activities.  First, what we want changed is typically not clearly defined.  Are COS supporters hoping for term limits (congressional and judicial), the abolition of federal agencies, changing the interstate commerce clause, or altering the 2nd Amendment?  Let's assume these are just some examples they would cite.  I won't go into them here, but each of these and many other issues were thoroughly considered and documented by the Founders who had very clear explanations for why they chose to write the Constitution the way they did.  Second, the several states have not surrendered these powers to the federal government.  This is a very important point.

Walt Disney Company is infested with perverts — is this why the company opposes Florida's anti-grooming legislation?  It is becoming clearer than ever that the Walt Disney Company, at least in its current iteration, is infested with perverts.  Disney has a serious pedophile problem (among other things), it turns out, with more than 35 employees at Disney World alone having been arrested for child sex crimes since 2006.  Back in 2014, CNN, of all sources, highlighted the issue.  At the time, a total of 32 pedophile perverts at Disney had been convicted, and the remaining cases were pending.  "Disney ... has been plagued by employees arrested for a variety of sex crimes against children, including trying to meet minors for sex and possessing child pornography," reported the National Pulse in a recent article, shedding light on why the company today is vehemently opposed to Florida's new anti-grooming legislation.

FWIW at Least Someone Said It Out Loud.  While the jackboot on our neck doesn't seem to be getting any lighter, at least someone says what's going on out loud.  House GOP representative Jim Jordan delivered a speech on the floor today [4/6/2022] that essentially encapsulates most of the current issues that have become the collective weight from the jackboot.  Insofar as congressional speeches have value, this summary from Jordan is quite succinct.  [Video clip]

The 'Don't Say Gay' Contagion Is Killing the Left - Good.  I've never seen the left so completely misread the room.  This issue isn't about compassion or saying "gay."  Everyone feels compassion for children.  I do hold visceral revulsion for adults who want to sexualize children.  Thankfully my position seems to be the dominant view.  But the left won't let go.  Now the City of New York has produced a digital ad campaign to entice Floridians to move to New York City. [...] "Come to the City where you can say whatever you want."  What?  Say whatever you want, as long as you're children are still wearing masks.  You can say whatever you want — unless you say what you want and use the wrong pronouns of a nonbinary-two bear dude dressed like a poodle — then you can't say what you want.  Or if you complain about men in women's restrooms — in that case, you can't say what you want.  Or if you're offended by people who want to sexualize children — keep your mouth shut.

The Fed Is Going to Trigger a Recession Within Six Months.  The bond market is telling us that the Fed is in very serious trouble. [...] The Fed ended its Quantitative Easing (QE) program through which it prints new money and used it to buy assets from Wall Street in early March.  Since that time, the Fed has also begun raising interest rates, implementing its first rate hike of 0.25% on March 17th.  Historically, when the Fed begins raising interest rates, it looks to the 2-Year U.S. Treasury for guidance: the Fed tracks the yield on this bond as a proxy for where rates need to go.  With that in mind, the yield on the 2-year Treasury, is exploding higher.

The New Financial World Order — The Intent of the Digital ID That Follows the Vaccination Passport.  The World Government Summit 2022 took place on March 29 and 30 in Dubai, hosting more than 4,000 individuals from 190 countries including senior government officials, heads of international organizations, and global "experts."  The invited participants presented ideas and worldviews from within their various fields of specialty.  One presentation that needs to be highlighted was from Dr. Pippa Malmgren, an American economist who served as special advisor on Economic Policy to President George W. Bush.  Her father, Harald Malmgren, served as a senior aide to US Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford.  In this segment, Mrs. Malmgren says the quiet part out loud.  Yes, they are no longer hiding the construct; indeed, as you will hear they are saying quite openly what the future will look like.  [Video clip]

Were You Better Off with Trump?  [President Trump] won over ten million more voters than in his previous 2016 victory, won almost every traditional bellwether county in the country by double digits, and expanded his share of the electorate with women and minorities.  But for Biden being declared the winner by the press after four days of counting in a handful of battleground states, Trump's impressive gains in 2020 would have been heralded as a resounding endorsement from the American people.  That is the part of the 2020 election story that has always bothered me most.  If it were stolen, and I obviously believe it was (sorry, thought police), then the theft not only denied the American people their say in their own governance and saddled the country with a dangerous, corrupt, and cognitively declining stooge, but also unfairly recast widely successful Trump policies as having been rejected by the people.  That rewriting of history is as dangerous and consequential as the election fraud itself.  In tort law, there's a doctrine known as res ipsa loquitur — "the thing speaks for itself" — which permits the inference of a negligent act even without direct evidence because no other plausible explanation exists.  The thing speaks for itself is how I've felt about the 2020 election.

The Six Best Conservative Governors In America.  [#2] I don't think I'm overstating the situation when I say Ron DeSantis has quickly become a political superstar.  Not only is DeSantis redefining what it means to be a Republican governor, he's redefining what it means to be a conservative.  On his current trajectory, Ron DeSantis could well be the most important conservative voice of this generation.  And keep in mind, at 43-years-old he's the youngest governor in the country, Democrat or Republican.  Pick an issue and DeSantis is not only conservative, he takes an in-your-face stance on it.  DeSantis didn't just call out the absurdity of the recent Lia Thompson, transgender swimmer issue, he accurately called the second place swimmer the rightful winner.

Tom Cotton Destroys Brown Jackson Over Support Of Suspected Terrorists.  Tom Cotton would already have earned an A+ for his digging into Joe Biden's affirmative action nominee Ketanjio Brown Jackson and her disgusting leniency toward and support for consumers of child pornography.  She is vile.  As if Cotton hadn't done enough already, now he's going after the judge and Supreme Court hopeful for her almost-as-bad representation of suspected terrorists and detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Kudos to Cotton for having the stones to do what few GOP seem willing to anymore.  Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, and Marsha Blackburn have been impressive throughout the hearings as well.

The chaos that is about to be unleashed is unlike anything that the world has ever seen before.  [Threat reader]  The technocrats that had an incremental change in store for all of us but... The Canadian Trucker protests and the massive protests all over the world against mandates frightened those who have planned this disrupting and dismantling of our world.  Not to mention, it became common knowledge who was behind this attack on humanity: @wef  Personally, I have been relieved that many now understand what @wef and @OpenSociety have been doing for the last 30 years.  But this frightened them:  for the first time, @wef was commonly understood as the enemy of humanity.  So what was going to be incremental is now going to be a blitzkrieg. [...] There is no way — even with all of the cheating and scheming — that the DNC and RINO Republicans can hold on to the House and Senate in 2022.  And there is no way that they can hold on to the Presidency in 2024.  So it is now that they must begin to introduce
    A New World Order
    A New World Religion
And to live in this order of the world a new version of humanity is necessary:  a new obedient humanity that will live in their hyperreal simulacra that will be governed by their AI God[.]

Turn On The Spigots.  President Trump quickly and radically reversed the focus and direction of America's standing on the international stage.  Yet even more quickly *President Biden has tanked America's position, drained her of her leverage, and seems content to literally have no say in events that the entire world will be shaped by.  None of this to mention that in cutting off our energy production Biden's administration personally funded Putin's war machine.  The solution to all of this is pretty simple, but the American people need to express the collective will that we tell Washington what to do — not the other way around.  Turn on the spigots.  Sell our energy to Europe and watch the price drop here at home.  We can bankrupt Russia and Iran in the process.  We can reduce the financial pain for every American who drives a vehicle almost overnight.  We can re-employ all the pipeline workers, and leased drilling operators immediately.  And we can alert the world that America is not diminished but potentially stronger than ever.

DuckDuckGone?  To some users, it feels like another Big Tech bait and switch.  To others, it's a case of getting half a loaf.  But to many, it's a betrayal of a principled promise.  The search engine DuckDuckGo will now begin making judgments about the accuracy of the information produced by its search algorithms.  As Breitbart reports in "Diet Google:  DuckDuckGo Will 'Down-Rank' What It Decides Is 'Disinformation,'", the company's CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, posted a Twitter thread announcing that, as part of standing with Ukraine, the search engine had been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.  In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.  In justifying his company's decision to wade into determining which information is "disinformation" and "misinformation" — a.k.a., censorship — Weinberg carefully reiterated his company's promise to users (and plugged his search engine): [...]

The Fed Has One Job To Do, And Blew It.  Along with President Joe Biden and Congress, the Federal Reserve has a responsibility to manage inflation, a job it was established to do.  And just like Biden and Congress, the Fed has failed at its job.  At the Fed's own website, it states clearly what its primary job is, by law:  "Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices."  Well, today, we have neither "full employment" nor "stable prices."  On Tuesday, the government reported that wholesale prices, that is prices just a step before retail, surged 10% in February.  As bad as that number was, it didn't include the huge jump in energy prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  Consumer prices rose "only" 7.9% in February.  So expect them to go even higher next month.  This inflation came thanks mostly to absurd policies — paying people to stay home while spending trillions of dollars of "stimulus" on federal programs not related to COVID — pursued by the Democrats who control both Congress and the White House.

Biden and Obama Must Answer for Russiagate.  What did Barack Obama and Joe Biden know about the Russiagate collusion hoax their fellow Democrats ginned up to kneecap Donald Trump — and when did they know it?  How much did their chicanery contribute to Vladimir Putin's decision to invade the Ukraine?  Those questions are coming into sharp relief following a definitive report by my RealClearInvestigations colleague Paul Sperry last week that places the worst political scandal in our nation's history and Putin's brutal war directly inside the White House.  Drawing on a wide range of documents, many never previously reported, Sperry details how the Obama administration worked closely with the Clinton campaign and a foreign government — Ukraine — in a "sweeping and systematic effort" to interfere in the 2016 election.  It turns out Democrats were guilty of every false charge they lodged against Trump.

What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?  It's tough to say if they're targeting civilians or simply launching wildly because they can't target anything — Putin being a monster doesn't help with this.  But logistically, they are absolutely a joke.  A competent military doesn't get a 40 mile long convey, on which most of their alleged strategy depends, stuck in the mud and out of gas for 3 weeks.  What I think might be at play is pretty simple: the military leadership in Russia is just as corrupt as the political leadership, because why wouldn't it be?  When the people giving you orders are dipping their hands into the pie, why wouldn't you when whatever is left gets to you?  That leads to corners being cut, to laziness. [...] ake a look at any of the pictures of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.  Do they look ripped or do they look pregnant and ready to retire?

Perhaps Tucker Carlson's most profound monologue ever.  I won't lie:  I'm a Tucker Carlson fan.  He is willing to speak honestly about topics others ignore, sugarcoat, or lie about.  Even when I don't agree with him, I find him worthwhile, and never more so than his Friday-night [3/11/2022] monologue about Biden's latest, terrifying power-grab and how our government is destroying the American economy.  It was a tour de force, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Tucker opened with something I'd meant to write about and now don't need to: without a single pause, the Biden administration slipped effortlessly from COVID emergency powers (which are now passé thanks to polling) and is, instead, assuming war powers, even though we're not at war: [...] If Tucker had stopped there, he still would have said something incredibly important that should cause all Americans to question the power Biden has seized for himself and how, once seized, it will be kept and used in the future.  But Tucker didn't stop there.  He segued smoothly to the vast, unimaginable power the tech monopolies have over American minds and how they are steering us inexorably to accept treating Russia as a nation to be destroyed just because we don't like it.

Questioning Potential Jurors Undermines the Very Basis of the Jury System.  [The jury] system supposes that the average citizen, chosen at random, is capable of judging the guilt or innocence of an accused solely on the basis of the evidence presented in court.  To do so is the purest example of attempted cognitive rationality.  Indeed, the judge tells the jury that they're to consider only what they see and hear in court, that they're to put all other information, rumor, or prejudice from their minds.  If it were not possible for them to do so, then the whole system would fall to the ground.  My experience, as a witness in murder trials in England, suggests to me that most people are capable, when it's demanded of them, of judging solely on the evidence put before them.  As with any system that involves human beings, there must be exceptions and failures:  Perfection is not to be expected.  But in none of the trials in which I was involved did the jury come to a perverse verdict that flew in the face of the evidence put before them.  Relevant evidence may sometimes have been missing or withheld from them, affecting their verdict, but that was not the fault of the jury.

The Great (Destructive) Reset of Capitalism.  The World Economic Forum (WEF) is promoting a dystopian vision, and it is closer than you think.  By 2030, it says, "You will own nothing and you'll be happy."  Ownership and control will be vested in a handful of government leaders and a cabal of the wealthiest individuals in the world.  You will lose more than just your possessions.  Under the WEF's "Great Reset," individual freedom, personal responsibility, and opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment will be eroded away.  Democracy, the free market and national sovereignty will be replaced by a new world order, stakeholder capitalism and centralized control by some NGOs, globalist corporations and the elite.  Klaus Schwab, the WEF's founder and executive chairman, gloated over the pandemic: to him, it was a "window of opportunity" for this reset.

Blinken and Biden Fold, Pentagon Rejects Poland Offer for United States to Start World War III.  Oh, the Biden administration is not happy with Poland.  Not happy at all.  Earlier this afternoon [3/8/2022], Poland called Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's bluff, over the U.S. claims that Poland was going to send fighter jets into Ukraine.  This followed Sunday's announcement where Poland said the U.S. State Dept was lying.  Earlier today, Poland said they would give the U.S. the planes if Blinken and Biden wanted to start World War III, but Poland wasn't going to help the U.S. create a war with Russia.  This put the U.S. in a 'put up or shut up' position.

Why Should Deplorables Fight for Those Who Hate Them?  What happens when a self-anointed "ruling class" spends years demonizing its own citizens as racist, white supremacist, deplorable, insurrectionist Neanderthals bitterly clinging to their guns and their Bibles?  What happens when the fools in charge censor dissent and throw their political enemies in prison?  What happens when the political Establishment floods the country with illegal aliens while publicly wishing for the quick "extinction" of those proud to wave the red, white, and blue?  Maybe when those same elitist snob-goblins start beating the drums of war, declare patriotic love of country acceptable once again, and call for deep sacrifices to be made in the interest of preserving freedom, the people most needed to pick up a rifle, fight, and sacrifice life and limb instead turn their backs on those who have relentlessly tormented them.  Maybe America's real protectors just walk away.

VISA Suspends All Operations in Russia, We Are One Step Closer to Losing the Dollar As Global Trade Currency.  Canada was the beta test when the government targeted the financial networks of the truckers and political opposition.  Now, the global governing system replaces Trudeau and uses the private financial industry to target Russians instead of truckers.  When I previously said to pay attention, because we are not going to like the world on the other side of a Biden, NATO, EU, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Economic Forum and multinational corporate victory, I was not joking.  This public-private merge of government with private financial institutions will never be reversed... ever again.

Tedros Introduces the Globalist Plan to Take Over the World's Health Systems.  As many governments are gradually being forced to pull back from covid restrictions, we have been searching for the direction of the next global assault on individual freedom and the sovereign constitutional republics of the world, including the U.S.A.  We have discovered the next move of the global predators — already in progress — in their escalating assaults against individual and political freedom.  The next big assault on human freedom involves a legalized takeover of national healthcare systems by the World Health Organization.  This stealth attack — with its initial plans already backed by many nations — will begin full implementation in 2024 if it is not quickly recognized and fought!

The Americans itching for war.  The foreign policy experts promised us that President Biden would restore our standing in the world and "stand up to tyranny."  Retired Admiral William McRaven said Biden would make America lead again.  They were wrong, of course.  The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster.  The reliance on intelligence and security from the Taliban got Americans killed.  If they were right about anything, it was about the return to American "normalcy."  This was one of our biggest concerns with Biden.  Normalcy in the U.S. is incompetence.  It got us the war in Iraq and a ~20 year war in Afghanistan.  It gave us Libya and the emergency of ISIS.  This same class of experts — the ones who were wrong on Biden, wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan — are now salivating at the prospects of war with Russia.

The American Trucker Convoy Is a Really Bad Idea.  I was a strong supporter of the Freedom Convoy in Canada.  I felt their cause was just and that the crackdown by PM Justin Trudeau was truly authoritarian and disturbing.  The thing about that protest movement, though, was that it had a clear goal:  To get rid of the federal vaccine mandate affecting truckers.  While the ideological boundaries were stretched at times, it was never a question that the Freedom Convoy was fighting for something tangible and just.  On that note, what is this American trucker convoy protesting?  There is no federal vaccine mandate for truckers (or private employees in general) in the United States.  COVID-19 mandates at the state level have also been nearly universally lifted.  Further, the fact that the U.S. is a republic has always presented a far different dynamic compared to Canada's top-down, federal control of the populace.  In short, you cannot have a successful political movement if it isn't focused, and if the point is just to bait law enforcement in hopes of getting attention on CNN, that doesn't seem like a very good reason for its existence.

Before We Go To War, Let's Take A Look At The Current State Of The U.S. Military.  If we are going to have a war with Russia, perhaps we should determine if our military is actually prepared to fight such a war first.  Unfortunately, as I will detail below, the answer is very clear.  At one time, the U.S. possessed the greatest fighting machine ever assembled, but decades of neglect, incompetence and cultural deterioration have taken a devastating toll.  Just look at what happened in Afghanistan.  After nearly two decades of fighting, we couldn't even defeat a ragged bunch of drug dealers and goat herders known as the Taliban.  In fact, the Taliban appears to be even stronger today than when we first invaded.  And now we think that we can take on the Russian military?  Sadly, the truth is that we aren't ready for any sort of a major conflict at this stage.

'Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible Will Make Violent Revolution Inevitable'.  I will be supporting Donald Trump in 2024.  The Durham revelation that the Clinton campaign spied on candidate Trump before the election and President Trump after should be enough to see that virtually everything Trump claimed was happening... was actually happening.  So what does this have to do with 2024?  Everything, including the election fraud of 2020.  Every single American with a functioning brain knows that Donald Trump won the election in 2020 and that everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to the mainstream media to the Democrat party to Never Trumper "conservatives" conspired to steal it.  And they did.

Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada should start worrying.  Given the green light from Biden, Russia is unilaterally annexing only a portion of Ukraine.  There's its "minor incursion."  Biden is trying to talk and act tough but, of course, it's too late. [...] The "minor incursion" greenlight that Biden (Obama) and Co. just flashed dictators worldwide will reap a very grisly harvest.  Why can't Venezuela grab tiny Guyana?  It's minor after all.  Why can't Putin enlarge his access to the Baltic at Lithuanian or Polish expense?  Why can't Trudeau take back a chunk of Maine?  And why, oh why can't Xi Jinping get his hands on Taiwan Semiconductor?  Reflect that Putin took Crimea on Obama's watch, then takes the Donets Basin on Biden's watch.  Notice a pattern here, America?  We will never know what is treason and what is rank stupidity and weakness but, clearly, the Left (i.e. the Democrat masterminds and overlords) just rolled out the welcome mat for thugs the world over.

An Open Letter to Justin Trudeau and the Federal Government.  We are writing to you as representative pastors of Christian congregations from across the nation and as law-abiding citizens who respect the God-defined role of civil government and uphold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the highest law of our land, which recognizes the supremacy of God over all human legislation.  For the past two years, we have sought to respectfully and peaceably make known to all levels of government our profound concern about the indefinite suspension of civil liberties, coercive mandates and perpetual state interference in the life, freedom and worship of the church — freedoms guaranteed by both our inherited Common Law tradition and Charter.  We have also prayed earnestly for our governing authorities, met with them, written letters and petitions, peacefully gathered for protest with other concerned citizens and in some cases filed lawsuits.  We have used every lawful means at our disposal to be heard and taken seriously.  Yet at every turn, we have been largely ignored, brushed aside, insulted and even told we in no way represent Canadians.

Canada Tightens the Screw.  Canada's trucker protest has been inspiring.  Americans, though imagining themselves a freedom-loving people, have been quiet compared to Europeans, Australians, and now Canadians standing up against draconian Covid restrictions.  The truckers' protest has a combination of good optics, big numbers, a clear message, and it is causing substantial distress to the centers of power.  The truckers' protest is designed to make a mess of things.  By tying up critical roadways in Canada's capital and blocking ports of entry, it imposes economic pain across the country and brings attention to the cause.  But it is a peaceful protest, the kind of civil disobedience about which authorities used to wax poetic, when they agreed with the message and when the conflict was located in the distant past.  Real protests challenge the powerful.  You can tell the truckers' protest has some teeth, because Canada's rulers have responded without mercy.

Forensic linguists say they now know the origin of the Q texts on the message board that began the QAnon movement.  One of the enduring mysteries of the Trump era — 'who is Q' — appears to be solved, sort of.  Two sets of forensic linguists have published two separate papers using two different techniques to conclude that Q appears to be two people:  South African tech journalist Paul Furber, 55, and 4chan internet message board moderator and computer entrepreneur Ron Watkins, 34, according to the studies.  'While relying on two completely different technologies, both stylometric [quantitative study of literary style] analyses could establish that QAnon's early period on the 4chan forum, from October to December 2017, was likely the result of a collaboration between Paul Furber and Ron Watkins,' according to Claude-Alain Roten, the CEO of OrphAnalytics.

Going for Coffee Is Now a Crime in Ottawa; Police May Attack and Threaten You.  One of the things that has been ironic about the police action against the Freedom Convoy in the city of Ottawa has been that the government's complaint that people were blocked from going about their daily business in the city.  While areas of the city might have taken longer to get through and there was a lot of honking, no one was blocked from going anywhere.  That is, until now.  The city has installed checkpoints and fences, just like a police state, to prevent people from peacefully protesting.  They also shut down what had been the "hottest club" in the city — the protester dance party area right in front of Parliament.

Washington and Lincoln Call the American People to Reclaim their Rights from Government.  With the shock and awakening of Americans that the freedoms, rights and opportunities they had taken for granted for generations have been brazenly stripped away in the last few years, this President's Day 2022 may well be one of our most significant holidays.  Presidents Day is unique among American holidays in providing the opportunity to appreciate why George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — whose birthdays fall in February — were the two greatest U.S. presidents.  While Washington was the founding father of the United States, becoming the first President in 1789 after final success in the War of Independence, Lincoln would save the nation from division and collapse — bringing an end to the Civil War and the scourge of slavery as the sixteenth President in 1865.  In short, Lincoln saved the republic that Washington made possible.  And two remarkable men they were, whose wisdom, judgment and foresight are more relevant today than they were in their times.

Tyrant Trudeau shows his true colors.  Like most liberal poster boys, Justin Trudeau's claim to fame wasn't based on his record or his talents.  It was instead based on a famous father, virtue-signaling, and being a subscriber to groupthink.  From climate change conferences to marches for abortion, LGBT, and even BLM, Trudeau was always an eager participant, playing the part of a "nice guy" before slobbering media personnel and cameras.  But real nice guys don't feel any need to make a spectacle of their niceties.  For them, the act of kindness itself is the reward.  When an individual such as Trudeau dedicates most of his energy to the act, it is because he wants to conceal his hollowness.  Like most method actors, Trudeau eventually became a caricature of himself.

The Decline of American Medicine.  The COVID pandemic has highlighted concerning trends in the way medicine is practiced in the United States.  These trends have been present for long time, predating the appearance of COVID, but their pernicious nature has become more apparent under the stresses and anxieties associated with the virus.  The fundamental and most deleterious trend is the decline of the physician/patient relationship.  There are many causes for this — some economic, some cultural, some ideological — but the cumulative effect is corrosive. [...] One set of challenges arises from the inescapable fact that medicine and health care are a business.  Over the past decades, the physician-patient relationship has been gradually replaced by the "service line" or "supply chain" model of health care delivery, in which the physician is a fungible part, and the physician-patient relationship an optional accessory.

If We Had a Real President, Here's How He (or She) Would React to Trudeau's War on Canadians' Freedom.  [Scroll down]  This fictional president would remind Trudeau that the entire Anglo-American political tradition going back to the Magna Carta in 1215 has been a trajectory of the recognition of the rights of the individual, as well as limitations on the powers of government as a guard against tyrannical rulers making questionable use of vaguely worded laws in order to crush their opponents and preserve themselves in power.  He would scold the Canadian for trampling upon that tradition, and quote some ringing words from Ronald Reagan or Alexander Solzhenitsyn about how tyranny crushes the human spirit and must be resisted.  Then the real president would get down to business.  He would issue a warning:  if Trudeau seizes the truckers' bank accounts, Canadian assets in the United States will likewise be frozen until the Canadian government returns the funds to the truckers.

Yesterday I Was Levi's Brand President.  I Quit So I Could Be Free.  [Scroll down]  In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call.  "You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company," our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down.  I responded:  "My title is not in my Twitter bio.  I'm speaking as a public school mom of four kids."  But the calls kept coming.  From legal.  From HR.  From a board member.  And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company.  I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning.  While they didn't try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to "think about what I was saying."  Meantime, colleagues posted nonstop about the need to oust Trump in the November election.

Woke Hiring, Reduced American Competitiveness?  When Bill Clinton supported the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was eventually enacted in 1994, third party presidential candidate Ross Perot at the time stated that it would be like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking American manufacturing jobs into Mexico, and to a lesser extent into Canada. [...] Again, this was started under the Clinton administration, but continued under George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  How serious this has become was dramatically demonstrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic.  Vital pharmaceuticals, like antibiotics and steroids are no longer manufactured in this country.  The same for surgical face masks, gowns and gloves, among many other items.  We had to depend on China, the source of the pandemic, and an obvious potential adversary, to supply our needs.  This is obviously an unacceptable situation, but it is only the tip of a very large problem lurking below the surface.  Because of the policies of a series of administrations from both major political parties, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on offshore sources for vital materials, the lack of which threaten our very survival as a nation.  We have allowed, no, virtually requested, that potential adversaries place their boot on the throat of our country.

Free Crack Pipes, y'all.  We are watching a movie and we have a front row seat.  We are not only witnessing the collapse of a political party, but the destruction of the global elites.  Everyday, more and more truths are being revealed Everyday, more and more people are awakening.  I encourage you to hold on — the best is yet to come.

Oligarchy's Response to the Freedom Convoy Bodes Ill for Them.  As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the "Freedom Convoy" of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse.  Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground.  Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest?  In the short term, perhaps. [...] But impotence comes in long-term and short-term varieties.  Long-term, I think [Tucker] Carlson is right.  Officialdom's response to the Freedom Convey is a desperate effort to put the genie of liberty back in the bottle.  Ultimately, it will not work.  But on the way to that failure there will be plenty of opportunities for the coercive power of the state to manifest itself.

One Way to Fix the Gerrymander Problem.  Without an amendment, a 1911 statute fixed the number of Representatives at 435. With the US population then at 92 million, that meant that each Representative had about 211,000 constituents.  If Congress were to expand to keep that degree of representation, then we would have 1,594 Congress-Critters. [...] We don't trust the government.  It has gotten too far away from the people, and we want some real say in what's happening.  Gerrymandering is just one illustration of how politicians protect themselves at our expense.  Multiplying the number of seats in the House would be one way of diluting that power and restoring the House's representative role.

Truck Trudeau.  In the dead of winter, thousands of Canadians have been streaming into Ottawa, led by a massive convoy of truckers protesting draconian Covid mandates that have harmed their ability to earn a living.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to meet with the protesters and slammed the freedom convoy as "an insult to memory and truth."  Fils Justin thus invites memories of himself and Trudeau père.  As Edward Gibbon noted, hereditary rule is always the most risible, and apart from the connection with his father, Canadians would be hard pressed to find any merit in Justin Trudeau his own self.  He has no scholarly achievement, no record of publication, and no experience running business. [...] When embattled Canadians take to the streets in a peaceful protest, Justin Trudeau smears them with lies.  Ottawa police are now threatening to arrest those bringing fuel and other supplies to the protesting truckers, which is not a crime.  This is what happens when Pierre Trudeau's son becomes prime minister of Canada.

Biden Facing Likelihood of Impeachment if GOP Wins Back House.  It's becoming increasingly likely that Joe Biden will be impeached if Republicans win back control of the House in November's midterm elections.  While speaking with Just the News founder John Solomon, Texas GOP Rep. Lance Gooden, whose district has been overrun by the surge of illegal aliens, argued that Biden's failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border has increased the likelihood that Republicans may push to impeach Biden if the GOP regains control of Congress.  "I really believe that impeachment could be on the table.  And I would support that, certainly," Gooden said, drawing a contrast with the two-time Democrat-engineered impeachment of Trump.

The Editor says...
There are about ten Republicans in the two houses of Congress who have the backbone to impeach Joe Biden.  What are the charges?  Opening the border and importing as many aliens as possible?  Making gas prices "necessarily skyrocket?"  Giving away the nation of Afghanistan, along with enough hardware to start an army, and bringing in terrorists while abandoning thousands of American citizens?  Hunter's deals with China and Ukraine?  Working only four days a week, and six hours a day?  Republicans don't care enough about any of that to follow through with an impeachment, especially knowing who's next in line after Biden.

Organized civil disobedience is the correct next response.  ... to the prolonged, indefinite and deliberate abuse of exotic emergency powers inconsistent with being a free people in our own country.  I don't want to go there, but it is time.  We are going to have to get CCP influence out of our country.  We are going to have to get Fauci and Daszak to explain what we were doing in Wuhan.  We are going to have to drive Pfizer out of news sponsorship.  We are going to have to extend freedom of speech to digital speech.  We are going to need algorithmic transparency from Twitter through regulation.  We are going to need to rein in the Feds ability to print its way into crushing the working class through seignorage and blowing out income inequality for holders of risk assets.  We are going to need to scale back our military obligations so we can actually be counted upon by our partners.

All Republican Candidates Must Learn a Lesson From Arizona Gubernatorial Hopeful Kari Lake.  Kari Lake is a former news anchor running for governor of Arizona as a Republican.  She made national news last year when she resigned from her position at Fox 10 News in Phoenix after 22 years.  In a two-and-a-half-minute video, Lake articulated her frustration with the journalism profession.  She noted the lack of viewpoint diversity and talked about getting handed content that she viewed as slanted or incomplete.  Her comments on the industry should have been a warning to her former colleagues.  Lake knows how the sausage is made and will not get tripped up easily.

The CNN Sex Party Comes To An End.  [Scroll down]  An all-staff meeting the day after Uncle Fester's ouster left everyone in shock, or so they've said.  It's unclear you an "open secret" that has been happening for years snuck up on anyone.  There aren't many companies in the country, especially left-wing companies, that allow someone in power to date subordinates, let alone have affairs with them.  So what were the CNN teleprompter readers upset about?  New leadership.  Under Jeff Zucker, it was pretty clear the fraternization rules were viewed more as suggestions. [...] The end of the orgy isn't what upset CNN staff, it was something even worse... for people with no scruples or talent — they are terrified that their next boss might want some accountability.

Our Elite is No Elite At All.  Our current idea of ostensible elites could be defined by noting their money and influence.  But money alone — even in the huge sums now found on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley — is not the only elite criterion.  Donald Trump is a billionaire with much influence and lives accordingly.  Yet few of our "elite" would consider him a kindred soul.  Ditto Elon Musk.  He is the richest man in the world.  But the elite mostly despise and ostracize him.  Birth itself has given way somewhat to insider influence and professional parentage.  You may be a fifth-generation scion with a name such as Mellon, Vanderbilt, or Rockefeller, but if your dad was not an ambassador, your mom not a VP at CBS, your sibling not a Harvard professor or Google executive, you have fallen out of the elite.

Covid has been used as an excuse for all kinds of things, none of them good.
COVID is the perfect excuse to finally axe the State of the Union.  According to news reports, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives plans to sharply cap attendance at the State of Union address.  The speech has already been postponed to March 1, its latest date in history.  Now President Biden will appear before an underpopulated, socially distanced chamber for the second year in a row.  Continuing health restrictions and delays raise the question of whether the ritual should continue at all.  Although it's become a fixture of the political calendar, giving a major public address is not among the president's formal responsibilities.  Instead, the Constitution requires only that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."  From Thomas Jefferson's administration until 1913, presidents discharged this duty in the form of a written annual message.

Democrats Are Tanking.  How Has Chuck Schumer Escaped Blame?  As the Democrats' political fortunes worsen, recriminations abound.  White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain seems to be the latest target, while centrist Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue to come under relentless attack.  President Biden takes a daily pounding, and news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will run for another term has produced headlines like this one in Axios:  "Pelosi is the GOP's 2022 Bogeywoman."  It seems strange, then, that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose fingers are all over the mess the party is in, isn't taking more heat.  Last week Politico Playbook reported that Schumer has created tension among his colleagues that has largely remained inside the tent and that no senator has articulated publicly.

It's Time for America to Leave NATO and for Europe to Resolve Their Internal Disputes.  The United States should have begun the process of severing military commitments with Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  After all, protecting Europe and thus the United States against Soviet aggression was the primary purpose of NATO.  But an irrational fear of a non-existent nation and its former satellites still persists and has been conferred on its much smaller and less formidable successor, Russia.  Together with the compulsive need to defend a prosperous continent these two pillars still form the basis of American military planning and international policy.  The divorce process should have been accelerated in 1993 when the anti-democratic European Union comprising 27 European countries and unified economic, social and security policies came into being.  The combined population of these nations is 33% larger and their overall annual Gross National Product is second only to the United States.  Since 1993 Europe has been more than capable of defending itself.

Texas Remains in Peril.  It has been one year since the devastating blackouts in Texas, so it's time to examine whether Texas is in danger of repeating the disaster.  Winterization was one of the issues raised as a cause of the blackouts.  The adequacy of winterization plans for natural gas power plants won't be known until after September 2022, when a statewide mapping of the electric supply chain is completed.  It's also unclear whether natural gas pipeline pumping stations have been added to the critical infrastructure list.  Not being on that list resulted in electricity being cut to pumping stations last year, which cut the supply of natural gas to power plants.

Tucker Carlson has some very unexpected people watching his show.  Monday through Friday, Tucker Carlson is my daily indulgence.  I like that he tackles issues other major media types, even the conservatives, shy away from. [...] Whether or not you agree with Tucker, you're going to learn something watching him.  Even Democrats must realize there's nothing to be had from the networks that cried "Russia, Russia, Russia" for so many years.  Additionally, Biden's failures as president are so abysmal and obvious that people are going to go looking for someone who explains the implosion of their world.  Whether they liked Trump or not, they must realize that, during the first three years of his administration, life was great and getting greater.  After only one year of Biden, life is bad and getting worse.  Rachel Maddow won't tell them the truth; Tucker will.

Protests From Out of Nowhere.  After months of uninterrupted growth in state power, what we are now witnessing in the disputes rocking the Australian Open, Spotify, Marvel and the trucking world are spontaneous meeting engagements in the culture wars.  It's like a chain reaction of angry people setting off other angry people.  The singular thing about this development is that it would have been impossible six months ago.  A psychological barrier has been breached and a taboo has fallen.  The potential of this to create a cascade is considerable.

The world's elite:  Tone-deaf, willfully ignorant, or malicious?  [Scroll down]  As an easy example, take Mark Zuckerberg buying up property on Kauai by badgering and suing his way to forcing Hawaiian residents to give up land that's been in their families for over a century.  He's created a veritable fortress of separateness, in the middle of paradise, just so his family can occasionally vacation there.  The man bought 1,400 acres, beachfront, ranch land, etc.  Of course, the family has bestowed some of their largesse on the natives to placate them.  In fact, they donated $900,000 to the effort to get everyone vaccinated.  Talk about doubling down!  The problem with these rich, elite, and not-of-our world people is that they are prideful and bullheaded.  If they see something a certain way, it must be so.  If they view the world myopically — and their equally rich, equally out of touch amigos see it that same way — they can't understand what our little problem might be with their view.

The Most Dangerous Time.  [Scroll down]  The illegal government, empowered by a stolen election, which tipped the Senate from Republican + 2 to even up, allowing Kamala Harris to be the tie-breaker on all of these spending bills that already have and will continue to drive inflation to Venezuelan heights also allows for someone like Hillary Clinton to be named to the Supreme Court.  This is why voting is still important and voting in 2022, if that happens, is more important than ever.  Getting people out of the senate is more important than getting them into the senate, but backing someone who understands that the strength of the Republican Party in 2022 is due solely to a strong nationalist sentiment is vital.  Those who just want to be establishment senators are as much the enemy of the people as communists.  All of it didn't start with the pandemic that allowed for easily forged mail-in ballots, it started way before the stolen election.  It started when we let communists on local school boards and election offices and it will have to get fixed there, if it is to be fixed at all.

The Most Impressive Communist-Crusher You've Never Heard Of.  I first saw Olavo de Carvalho years ago on a program called Update Brazil, which covered the global fight against communism.  The video is gone now, the whole channel purged by YouTube.  The host was Allan dos Santos, an excellent anti-communist journalist who is now being persecuted and blacklisted by Brazil's far-left Supreme Court.  Also on the show were the brilliant American analysts, Jeff Nyquist and Diana West.  The fourth person was the only one I didn't recognize.  An old and playful Brazilian man.  He seemed quirky.  Maybe a blogger and friend of Allan's.  It was actually Olavo de Carvalho, who was something of a national hero and incredibly accomplished.  I just couldn't tell it from his polite and humble demeanor. [...] Since then, I have studied Olavo's work, getting it translated into English, and learned something of his career.  In my opinion, he was maybe the most brilliant and interesting thinker we had in the world.

Virginia Republican Goes Off On Democrats In EPIC Rant: 'Enough!'  Republican State Rep. Nick Freitas of Virginia has had enough of Democrats accusing anyone who opposes them of racism and sexism.  During a floor speech this week, he went after Democrats for this and his speech was so amazing that it got applause afterwards.  Other Republicans should study this speech.

Wrong War, Wrong Enemy.  In the aftermath of the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, America faces the looming possibility of fighting two major wars at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent simultaneously:  one against Russia over Ukraine and another against China over Taiwan.  Given our current disarray, the United States is in no position to fight a two-front war.  Accordingly, it is our best policy to avoid conflict in both regions.  The United States has no vital interests to defend In Ukraine.  Should the Russians seize it, they will merely occupy a region that has been Russian since the days of Catherine the Great.

I Hope Neil Young Will Remember, Spotify Don't Need Him Around Anyhow.  On Tuesday, Neil Young gave streaming service Spotify an ultimatum.  "I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform," he told them.  "They can have Rogan or Young.  Not both."  Well, Spotify chose Joe Rogan.  According to a report from Wall Street Journal, the streaming giant is "in the process of removing Neil Young's music" from the platform.

Spotify sides with Joe Rogan, will remove Neil Young's music after ultimatum.  The predictable conclusion to yesterday's standoff.  Rogan's the most influential podcaster in America, Young's a legend who hasn't been musically relevant for decades.  Oh, and Spotify paid $100 million for the rights to stream one of them.  Guess which one they were less inclined to alienate.  An ultimatum from Taylor Swift or Beyonce to Spotify to yank Rogan's anti-vax episodes from the platform would have been an interesting conundrum for the company.  An ultimatum from Neil Young was a curiosity.

The Editor says...
Neil Young was moderately entertaining in 1972.  Many things have changed since then.  Joe Rogan outperforms nearly all other TV programs, except perhaps the NFL.  Make no attempt to displace Joe Rogan.  It just won't happen.  Neil Young has now shot himself in the foot.

Donald Trump For Speaker Of The House.  In 1994, after Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years, there was no question as to who would be elected Speaker — Newt Gingrich.  Since his petty ouster over the 1998 mid-terms, Republicans have been saddled with one disastrous Speaker after another.  Bob Livingston was next but never got the gavel because of an affair he'd had.  Dennis Hastert was next, worthless as Speaker and an embarrassment after.  John Boehner cried his way into the gavel, and didn't do much beyond smoking and drinking his way through his tenure.  Then it was Paul Ryan, who looked at taking the job as a "favor" for the party. [...] It's unclear as to whether or not Trump wants to be president again, but what is clear is he wants to be a player.  Speaker of the House would make him the ultimate player.  The Republican legislative agenda would move because of him.

It's Still Timely And Necessary To Get The 2020 Election Right.  The election can be overturned.  Not that I imagine there's sufficient internal fortitude among Republicans to do so but, ideally, they should make the attempt.  But how?  The Constitution doesn't address anything remotely close to reversing a fraudulently achieved election.  That's true, but then it also says nothing about the right to abortion, the government providing welfare payments to citizens (or non-citizens), government control of healthcare, the imposition of CAFE standards, or collective bargaining rules.  Indeed, there is much that goes on in government that is not in the Constitution.  In 1803, Thomas Jefferson worried that the Constitution did not give him the power to make the Louisiana Purchase, but today all or part of 15 states exist because of it.  Like John Marshall's judicial review doctrine, which you won't find anywhere in the Constitution, things don't exist until they do.  In this case, in states where fraud is proven or where voting laws were enacted unconstitutionally, the legislatures should withdraw their Electoral College votes and recast them based on accurate and lawful counting of the votes.  It's true there's no existing Constitutional mechanism to facilitate that remedy, and the likelihood of a Democrat-controlled Congress doing anything to further it is less likely than a healthy college student dying of COVID, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Remember when the Great Reset was a conspiracy theory?  Yes, like many conspiracy theories of the past two years, this one is slowly being rolled out by our global leaders as just simple reality.  No longer a conspiracy theory.  Just real.  And they're not being shy about it.  They like the idea of refurbishing the global economy to be more "fair," as they like to say.  Yet still, the big fact checkers continue to use their favorite term for conservatives who oppose the Great Reset:  they call us "conspiracy theorists."  How can they still get away with using this term when we all clearly see a rollout of the Great Reset happening right in front of our eyes?

'Red-Handed' Contains 1,093 Endnotes, No Unnamed Sources.  The soon-to-be-released bombshell book Red-Handed:  How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by nonpartisan investigative bestselling author Peter Schweizer contains 1,093 endnotes totaling 81 pages of source material, Breitbart News has learned.  Furthermore, the highly anticipated book relies on zero unnamed sources, making its findings — which Sean Hannity said are "going to be massive" — easier for federal law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services to track down.  Indeed, Schweizer's bestselling book Clinton Cash sparked an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.  Schweizer, who is the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and a Breitbart News senior contributor, spent over a year conducting the research for Red-Handed with his team of forensic investigators, according to publishing giant HarperCollins.

Kyrsten Sinema's courage, Washington hypocrisy and the politics of rage.  In Shakespeare's "Othello," the character Iago famously declared that "men in rage strike those that wish them best."  It was a warning that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) now understands all too well.  Both Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have refused to be bullied into changing the filibuster rule — a rule that forces the parties into dialogue and compromise.  Sinema supports the voting rights legislation but sees this move as endangering any chance of national healing and resolution.  She stated on the Senate floor that "we have but one democracy.  We can only survive, we can only keep her, if we do so together."  That deeply felt speech was met with vile, threatening attacks.  It appears that, in a nation addicted to rage, even those seeking an intervention can become the casualties of our political distemper.

Must-see video:  In the Dutch Parliament, speaking truth to power.  As with other European Union countries, the Dutch government has been reveling in the power COVID bestowed on it.  In response, the Netherlands has seen huge and violent protests against those draconian strictures.  I'm betting that some of those protesters were among the people who voted for Gideon van Meijeren, a young man newly elected to the Dutch Parliament.  This young man, during his first appearance on the floor, managed in just two minutes to completely humiliate Prime Minister Mark Rutte.  [Video clip]  If we are to emerge from this attempt by the world's totalitarians (an amalgam of billionaires, millionaires, and leftists) to weaponize COVID and wokeness to end the democratic republics that have held sway for more than 200 years, and to reinstate the totalitarianism that has been the world's norm for most of humankind, the only way to do it is to push back:  Refuse to be silenced, ridicule these self-styled "elite," speak the truth whenever and wherever you can, and just say "no," as Martin Luther King and Gandhi both did (and that's true regardless of how one feels about their politics).

Watch for war.  What do tyrants do when their ship is sinking or, more accurately, when they realize that their house of cards will not hold up?  They divert their populace by starting a war — or at least allowing one to happen.  War isn't simply a way of diverting attention, either.  The very fact of a war emergency makes it far easier to erode or negate whatever civil liberties still exist.  Think:  Patriot Act.  Currently, war beckons in two places: the Russian-European border and the South China Sea and Taiwan.  I'm not saying that either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping is an aggrieved party.  Both could conceivably become the Hitlers of the 21st century.  But ask yourself if the floundering, self-immolating Biden-Harris administration might not rejoice at the gargantuan pass it would get if Americans — including especially conservative Americans — must focus on a foreign enemy.  Gone would be the rightful concerns about vaccine madness, dementia, runaway inflation, Big Tech/Mass Media fascism, corrupt education unions, failing Democrat cities, ginned up racial hatred, attacks on the Second Amendment, the federalization of elections, a corrupt FBI and DOJ, election fraud, the Russia Hoax, parental rights and school boards, an open southern border, and on and on.  Biden (and Harris, if there's room) will wrap themselves snugly in the flag and all will be forgiven.  For a time.

Biden's Empty-Shelf America Is A Country Boris Yeltsin Wouldn't Recognize.  [Scroll down]  We admit:  The supply chain breakdown is global.  It can't be fully pinned on President Joe Biden and his party.  But poor public policies advanced (and protected, in the case of productivity-killing union work rules) by Democrats and private-sector policies driven by big-government pressure have left U.S. retailers looking like Moscow's GUM department store failing to serve its "grim customers" in the Soviet era.  Too many "incessant experiments" in the form of generous "rescue" spending that have stripped some of their incentive to work; lockdowns which bit big chunks out of the economy; and vaccine mandates and unrelenting pandemic fearmongering that have created labor shortages across multiple industries within the supply chain.  Biden declared "problem solved" three days before Christmas when he said "Packages are moving.  Gifts are being delivered.  Shelves are not empty."  Yet here we are well into 2022, and store shelves are looking worse than a Christmas stripped of its ornaments and tossed on the curb in the middle of January.

Have Americans become a people who no longer deserve their Constitution?  "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people."  Only moral and religious people?  Who said that about the Constitution?  Someone who would know:  John Adams, America's first vice president and second president, who served on the First Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence.  Adams went on to say immediately thereafter, "It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  In other words, it's "wholly inadequate to the government of" an immoral and godless people.  Sadly, in 2022 there's no shortage of those in America.

Temporary Empty Shelves Are Not a Supply Chain Crisis, It Is Important to Understand the Difference.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of wrong information being discussed and shared.  Even reputable regional media are giving inaccurate information, making wrong interpretations, and generally getting the explanations wrong. [...] All of these #BidensEmptyShelves assumptions, which are being heightened by increased attention and social media, are leading to confusion.  An empty retail shelf or case for a 24, 36 to 48-hour period is not, I repeat, NOT, part of a systemic supply chain disruption.  Those are mostly location and regional specific out of stock situations caused by localized events, weather and employee shortages.

What Issue Was Really at the Heart of the Civil War, and is it Relevant Today?  Most Americans today have a romanticized (and extraordinarily narrow) historical understanding of the conflict that we call the Civil War.  In their imaginations, it goes something like this:  With passions inflamed by a moral renaissance in the North regarding the institution of slavery in the South, the two sides decided to go to war over the issue.  In the end, the evil South was righteously razed by the armies of the North, and thus, slavery was ended, and the former slaves made American citizens, as Abraham Lincoln intended.  If you think this an unfair caricature of the extent of the average American's knowledge on the subject, I'd wager you haven't spoken to many people under 50 about the subject.

Outstanding Summary of the Dangers We Face.  Excellent summary of the State of the State by Mark Levin in two parts.  [Video clips]

Savage Dad Berates 'Beta' School Board With Perfect Comedic Timing.  This might be the best school board video you've seen yet.  There's no information on where this took place but it really doesn't matter.  It could be Anytown USA, with the growing frustration parents feel with school boards locking them out of meetings or having them arrested falsely or claiming that parents are "terrorists" who need FBI investigations.  This man has had enough and his speech is so good, I'll even transcribe it for those of you who can't listen. [...] The whole audience is responding to this like a stand-up act and they're not laughing at the dad, they're laughing at the board.  It's a riot.  It's also worth noting that ridicule is a potent weapon against these boards that are puffed up with their own importance.

The Four Horsemen of the Left's Artificial Apocalypse.  These last twenty-five years of technological development have made it possible for humans to trade goods and services, knowledge, security, spiritual connection, and entertainment without consulting politicians, bureaucrats, pop stars, or corporate boards of directors.  When you see this reality for what it truly is — nothing short of a technologically enabled revolution for human freedom and independence — it becomes obvious why those with power today have embraced authoritarianism and totalitarianism wherever we look.  They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from our rising liberation.  Their tyranny is their only salvation.  In other words, the powers that be are all deeply afraid.

Ted Cruz May Have Just Destroyed His Entire Political Career With One Bonehead Move.  Ted Cruz, who ingratiated himself back into the MAGA movement, after behaving like the sorest loser in town, has just found himself on the outs again after he made a big bonehead move.  While speaking about January 6th, Ted Cruz adopted the same exact tone and narrative the left has been pushing, complete with calling the folks who were at the Capitol "terrorists."  What on earth was Ted thinking?  Nobody at the Capitol was charged with terrorism.

Report: Fentanyl is Leading Cause of Death in Americans Ages 18-45.  The leading cause of death amongst Americans ages 18-45 is the deadly drug fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Because of the Biden administration's backwards priorities, a large percentage of Americans have never even heard of the drug.  "We are in the worst overdose crisis we've ever been in in the United States," said Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver.  "In a magical world there would be no drugs, but we live here."

The Editor says...
Two hundred years ago, nearly everyone lived in a world without drugs, and it wasn't good.  There were no vitamins, no household pain killers (with the possible exception of opium), and nothing that would reduce a fever.  Drugs aren't the problem.  The absence of self-control is the problem, along with secular humanism, social media, inadequate education, and Hollywood.

The Flow of Money Creates a Path to One World Government.  [Scroll down]  America does not need to surrender her wealth, her potential wealth, our Constitutional system, or our nation-state.  We are not Europe.  We do not want to dispose of the foundations of our moral roots and end up as soulless atheists imprisoned in nihilism and drowning in dependence.  George Washington warned us about this; so did Dwight Eisenhower and many others.  We the People urgently need to demand a comprehensive plan from our public servants to re-establish the prosperity of our nation, stabilize and reduce our national debt, and establish a strong enough military defense to buy us time to get our national financial house in order.  One important component of this defense is rebuilding and strengthening a strong moral core in the American people and encouraging authentic education in history, civics, philosophy, and economics.

The Truth You Never Learned about Watergate.  A review of The Nixon Conspiracy:  Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, by Geoff Shepard. [...] When you read this book, you don't have to be reminded that Watergate looks like dress rehearsal or an opening act for the events of 2015 to 2021.

Linguistic Weaponry and the Rhetorical Mechanics of "Let's Go Brandon!"  For those who are unfamiliar with the phrase, "Let's Go, Brandon!" has become a rallying cry for those opposed to Biden and his agenda.  Only a few months after the inauguration, as the nation sat in stunned awe of the new administration's remarkable ineptitude, crowds across the nation began impromptu chants of "[...] Joe Biden" at public events.  Personally, I use very little profanity and I still hold to the old idea that even if you can't respect a particular President, some respect is owed to the office.  But over the course of decades, the left has worked aggressively to normalize the practice of telling the President to [get lost] (when he isn't a Democrat).  Their victory was consolidated when Trump's ascendancy brought with it a 4-year tsunami of vulgarity from leftists of all stripes, bravely "speaking truth to power" by inexplicably telling others to do to Trump what Stormy Daniels did.  But only months after Trump's exit, leftists lamented the new norm they created:  they were aghast at Americans' lack of decorum in speaking of the President.  Wherever calls of "[...] Joe Biden" arose, there were efforts undertaken to distract from them, avoid broadcasting them, or otherwise silence them.  Then, in the aftermath of an October auto race, as the victor Brandon Brown was interviewed on a television broadcast, the crowd began the familiar chorus of "[...] Joe Biden."  In a predictable effort to redirect attention from Biden's failure to the matter at hand, the interviewer said "And you can hear the chants from the crowd: 'Let's Go, Brandon!"  In that moment, a meme was born.

Don't reinstate the ban on US crude oil exports.  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently put an end to speculation about whether an oil export ban could succeed.  She clearly stated at a meeting with the National Petroleum Council, "We are not considering reinstating the ban on exports.  I've heard you loud and clear, and so has the White House."  This is welcome news for the U.S. energy industry, but the secretary also urged producers to get their "rig counts up" and "take advantage of the leases that you have," sending mixed signals from the administration to industry.

Just What is Education For?  [Scroll down]  Senator, I have a question.  Just why are we sending all our children to labor in government child-custodial facilities — er, schools — throughout their childhood?  Just why is it that we have banned children from working for money and anathematized it as "child labor?"  Just what is it that is so vitally important that kids can only get it from school?  Apart from getting the noble and progressive regime narrative?  Back in the day, in 1913, in "Why Children Work" schools inspector Helen Todd found that working children preferred to work rather than go to school.  See, the kids reported that their employers treated them much better than the teachers at school.  That hasn't changed.

Just What is Education For?  [Scroll down]  Senator, I have a question.  Just why are we sending all our children to labor in government child-custodial facilities — er, schools — throughout their childhood?  Just why is it that we have banned children from working for money and anathematized it as "child labor?"  Just what is it that is so vitally important that kids can only get it from school?  Apart from getting the noble and progressive regime narrative?  Back in the day, in 1913, in "Why Children Work" schools inspector Helen Todd found that working children preferred to work rather than go to school.  See, the kids reported that their employers treated them much better than the teachers at school.  That hasn't changed.

Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.  Last year, our nation experienced the largest increase in murder in American history and the largest number of drug overdose deaths ever recorded.  This carnage continues today and is not distributed equally.  Instead, it is concentrated in cities and localities where radical, left-wing, George Soros progressives have captured state and district attorney offices.  These legal arsonists condemn our rule of law as "systemically racist" and have not simply abused prosecutorial discretion, they have embraced prosecutorial nullification.  As a result, a contagion of crime has infected virtually every neighborhood under their charge.  Soros prosecutors refuse to enforce laws against shoplifting, drug trafficking, and entire categories of felonies and misdemeanors.  In Chicago, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx allows theft under $1,000 to go unpunished.  In Manhattan, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. refuses to enforce laws against prostitution.  In Baltimore, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby has unilaterally declared the war on drugs "over" and is refusing to criminally charge drug dealers in the middle of the worst drug crisis in American history.  For a time, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon even stopped enforcing laws against disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and making criminal threats.

Archbishop Vigano's startling warning to the American people.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is a noteworthy maverick within the Catholic Church hierarchy.  He retired as Papal Nuncio to the United States in 2016 and has exposed what he sees as great scandals within his Church.  This lengthy Wikipedia entry provides background.  The Archbishop has issued a Christmas letter to the United States that is unusually blunt about what he sees as a conspiracy underlying the handling of COVID.  The letter was originally published in Gateway Pundit, but is presented here for readers' convenience.

The Hole in the Heart of RFK Jr.'s Extraordinary Book.  Before getting to the "hole" in RFK Jr.'s new book, I would like to say that his brutal smackdown of the Dr. Anthony Fauci - Bill Gates vaccine oligarchy, The Real Anthony Fauci, is arguably the century's most important book, and a page-turner on top of that.  Buy it.  Read it.  If you choose not to, avoid holiday arguments with anyone who has.  You will lose.  The book has real heart.

The Fed has just two jobs, and climate policy isn't one of them.  The Federal Reserve Bank, the central bank of the United States, is supposedly guided in all of its actions by what is known as its "dual mandate."  By law, it is charged with maintaining price stability throughout the economy and with maximizing employment.  Sometimes, these two goals are difficult to reconcile with one another.  In recent years, there has been some talk in Congress of changing this and giving the Fed only the single mandate of price stability.  Whatever the merits of that proposal, though, it is a far cry from what the central bank now finds itself doing, angling to issue dubious guidance for the financial system about climate change and its potential effects.

MAGAnomics vs JoeBamanomics, a Simple to Understand Graphic.  When wages (blue line) are above inflation (red line) our income is growing, life is good and the working class has more disposable income to enjoy life.  However, when wages (blue line) are lower than inflation (red line) our income is shrinking, life is a struggle and the working class has less disposable income to enjoy life.
  •   Point One:  Nothing happens accidentally.  The road to a "service-driven economy" is paved with a great disparity between financial classes.  The wealth gap is directly related to the inability of the middle class to thrive.
  •   Point Two:  There is nothing of value behind the obtuse term "service-driven economy."  The multinationals are paying for this administration, just like they paid the Obama administration; paying for economic policy that advances their interests.  Congress goes along with the K-Street demands, because Wall Street is now the primary benefactor of legislative intent.  Nothing about their effort is done with American interests in mind.

'When science mixes with politics, all we get is politics'.  I just finished reading an article on the Big Think website titled, "When science mixes with politics, all we get is politics," by Professor Marcelo Gleiser, theoretical physicst, Dartmouth College.  I mistakenly thought that the commentary would decry the misuse of science by politicians, but no.  Instead, it decries the mistrust that we, the unwashed masses, have developed for the science establishment in recent years.  Unwittingly, the eminent professor gives us yet more reasons to regard science insiders with skepticism.  He does what so many of his colleagues do, which is to equate science itself, with the institutions that purport to advance science.  To question politicized scientists, then, is supposedly unscientific.

More Woke Companies to Avoid:  List #3.  Companies across the country, and indeed from around the world, aggressively work against conservative ideals and openly display their disdain for our values.  They often do so while simultaneously taking our money as we willingly play along.  It's time we stopped.  We find these companies in virtually every industry, and in all sizes, shapes, and colors.  In a great and free country like these United States, these companies enjoy our freedom of speech, and they have every right to say and act how they see fit; within reason.  Similarly, we also have the freedom to choose with whom we spend our money, and it's time we avoided spending it with these in-your-face wokesters.

Wag the dog:
We now confront the classic circumstances that pose a serious risk of war, and no one is paying attention.  The President and his party, in deep trouble as an electoral year looms, need to goose their support with something.  There's no possibility of that using any domestic issue so they turn to old reliable:  A fake foreign enemy, Russia, that needs little demonization because the US military, intelligence agencies and corrupt media never gave up their outdated, long baseless view of the war target as an enemy.  Plus, that faux enemy is hated by the Western woke left for its stubborn refusal to embrace the West's program of idiotic ideas and civilizational suicide.  Hence, America's gullible and inattentive public still sees it as the modern iteration of Stalin and Hitler.  In sum, a sweet little war with needlessly hated Russia is just the ticket for the Bidencrats.

Escape:  How to Evade Trackers and Tracking Dogs.  I wanted to share with you a few tips on evasion and how to avoid enemy capture when you are being searched for by canines and professional trackers.  As a kid, I used to track deer through the swamp.  Little did I know that what I was doing was preparing myself to be a human tracker as an adult. [...] A dog can be a great friend but it can also be used against you.  Dogs can be trained to track you for lengthy distances.  This is why evasion tactics are covered in the SERE training.  In the field application, tracker dogs are used while the trainees employ the survival skills of navigation, and how to get water, food, and warmth as they track their way through the wilderness.  Proper timing is also a key factor since it's not just about survival but also about evasion.  Beating dogs in their tracking is not an easy task unlike what you might have seen in Hollywood films.  The dogs don't bark; they only run as they sniff and the only time the canines bark is when you are on sight.  At this point, evading is quite tricky since your hideout is already revealed.

The Fed Doesn't Cause Inflation.  Though the Federal Reserve, having added an unprecedented $8 trillion to bank reserves the last 15 years, certainly abetted borrowers by greatly depressing interest rates, it is not the culprit in actually spending or circulating the reserves or money created.  The Fed clearly has manipulated bank reserves, distorting financial markets and calculations and depriving savers of just returns.  Yet, the decision to lend remains with the banker and the decision to borrow remains with the individual, firm, and government.

Sensing Biden Inflation Weakness China Hits U.S. Supply Lines With Shipping Cargo Quarantine.  When you are at war, you target the enemy supply lines.  A cunning move by the smart Panda targets Joe Biden's domestic inflation vulnerability.  Beijing can see Joe Biden under internal political attack caused by massive domestic inflation.  China also knows Biden is weak strategically, handcuffed by the leftist demand for climate change / energy policy, and Beijing can see the administration trying to deflect from the consequences of their economic and energy policy.  After the U.S-China summit, used by cunning panda to size up the potential for backlash, anything China can do to further gain dominant position is now just a matter of easy chess moves on the board of dependency.

American government poised to unleash "Angel of Death" smallpox bioweapon to create perpetual crisis.  Billionaire eugenicist Bill Gates is already signaling the arrival of his next plandemic, which appears to involve the intentional release of a smallpox bioweapon.  The mainstream media has been littered as of late with stories about mysterious smallpox "vials" and other things related to smallpox.  We also reported about eight years ago that the federal government was stockpiling smallpox "vaccines" for some reason.  Just the other day, a worker at a laboratory outside of Philadelphia supposedly stumbled upon about 15 vials of smallpox ... something inside of a refrigerator.  The FBI and other federal agencies reportedly intervened and are conducting an "investigation."  Then, the Daily Mail (U.K.) reported on a warning from Gates, who claims that "terrorists" are planning to unleash a smallpox bioweapon.  This, according to Gates, requires that governments spend billions of dollars to "prevent future pandemics."

The Fight for Civic Nationalism.  In the fullness of time, the past year may be looked upon as the year the future of America was decided in courtrooms.  The Rittenhouse trial is the latest big court case to expose the massive cultural rift in the country.  The Derek Chauvin trial in the summer was another example.  There is the ongoing civil suit over the Charlottesville protests three years ago and the current Ahmaud Arbery murder trial.  What all of these cases and some others have in common is they are tests of the civic nationalist theory of politics.  Civic nationalism is the argument that a country can be organized around a set of ideas, rather than people and land.  The citizens, rather than connected by blood and history, are connected by ideas.  In the case of America, the organizing ideas are in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Civic nationalism, to a great degree, is a reaction to the internationalism of Western ruling elites who are post-national.  The post-nationalists want to eliminate borders and the national sovereignty.  In their place will be international organizations, corporate agreements, and the administrative state.  Civic nationalism is an effort to confront this old enemy of civilization with a nationalism free of past baggage.

Power Shortages and Russia.  Currently, there are concerns about power shortages in China, Europe and the U.S.  The Chinese economy is being held back by power shortages.  People in the UK are worried about increased power bills and a possible food shortage this winter.  In Germany, their power plants are short of natural gas and coal and they are hoping for a mild winter.  All this reminds one of the various arguments in the U.S. about Russia trying to influence our elections.  These concerns remind U.S. that Russia benefits from power shortages and shortages of oil and natural gas.  Vladimir Putin is a smart man.  Putin puts himself and Russia first and everything he does is to promote himself and Russia.  Putin, as a former head of the KGB, is an expert at misinformation and manipulating public opinion, usually without leaving tracks.  The largest and most important sector of the Russian economy is the production and export of oil and natural gas.  Putin is always looking for ways to improve Russia's leverage in economics and geopolitics that comes from being one of the leading providers of fossil fuels.  One of the biggest threats to his position was/is a growing, thriving U.S. fossil fuel industry.  Whenever the U.S. moves from being a net importer of fossil fuels to being a net exporter of fossil fuels that is bad for the Russian economy.  Putin knows this.

With All Eyes on Hillary in Russian Collusion Hoax, What About Obama?  During the Senate Watergate hearings that eventually brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon, Republican Sen. Howard Baker (Tenn.) asked a question that would live in infamy:  "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"  Now, nearly 50 years later, the question again begs to be asked.  This time, about a different president:  What did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it?  As RedState reported late last week, Special Counsel for the Justice Department John Durham's indictment of Igor Danchenko, the principal source for the bogus Steele dossier used by the FBI as a basis for the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation, further illustrates that Durham has his sights set on the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.  Hardly a shock, although the irony is beautiful:  In an attempt to frame Donald Trump for colluding with Russia, Hillary, in effect, colluded with Russia.  But what about Obama?

De Blasio's insane ban on propane heaters will crush NYC's dining scene.  The cranks suing the city to end outdoor street dining over issues like noise and garbage can save their dough on legal fees, because City Hall is about to do the job for them.  Last month, the FDNY, backed by Mayor de Blasio, irrationally banned the use of propane heaters at outdoor restaurants.  (Are any of the actions by the worst mayor in Big Apple history not irrational?)  The ban will likely spell the end for thousands of places that relied on extra money from outdoor seating to help make up for last year's catastrophic losses caused by the pandemic.  Never mind that propane tanks used by thousands of Big Apple eateries caused exactly zero accidents last winter.  Never mind that they're legal in most other large US cities.  Never mind that they're allowed on our food trucks and food carts — including several on Park Place just outside City Hall, within blast range of the mayor's office.  Despite all that, New York's Bravest proclaim that propane heaters "pose a high risk of death and injury."  Their concern for public safety is rich when several thousand firefighters continue to refuse the COVID vaccine, thus endangering everyone they meet and forcing the shutdowns of some firehouses.

Military's Misplaced Focus:  COVID and Climate Change Could Cost Us the Next War.  As China tests new military technologies and brazenly encroaches on Taiwanese airspace, the United States employs its fighting forces to battle COVID and take on climate change.  In his testimony before the Armed Services Committee in March, Navy Admiral Philip Davidson noted that "The Indo-Pacific accounts for 60 percent of the world's current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and contributes more than two-thirds to the present global economic growth," further citing the trade and investment in the region as "vital" to U.S. security and prosperity.  Admiral Philips described the threat posed by China's growing regional influence and briefed leaders on the measures needed to project a "combat credible deterrence."  The Department of Defense should look to support the development of needed technologies and weapons as well as measures to improve combat readiness.  Instead, it remains unnecessarily focused on climate change as a grand part of national strategy.

The End of Science.  Rebecca West writes, in The New Meaning of Treason, that a lot of our scientists during World War 2 were communists.  There are several reasons this is important, but the first is that they immediately leaked our research on atomic bombs to Stalin.  They honestly believed in a "global scientific community" — that science knows no political boundaries, and that the world would be better if scientists shared all their information with each other.  Somehow this would usher in an age of peace and plenty, and scientific know-how would mean food for the poor and an end to oppression.  So they gave the bomb to the Soviets.  To the people who used technology to keep millions in chains and torture them and starve them to death.  These days, American scientists are doing the same thing, helping abusive husbands track their wives in Saudi Arabia and helping the Chinese develop social surveillance systems and biological weapons.  The scientists tell you how to do something and fail to understand or care why we shouldn't do it.  Or maybe it's the money.

The extraordinary power of 'Let's Go Brandon'.  The great thing about it is that it's not "in your face."  Despite the Washington Post trying to argue that the phrase, with its allusion to "Eff Joe Biden," is as offensive as the years of obscenities and death wishes that leftists hurled at Bush and Trump, the fact remains that, outside of political junky circles, most Democrats haven't yet grokked to the meaning behind "Let's Go Brandon."  It's the conservative secret handshake.

Absurdity of the Day:  The Worst Use of the "It's COVID" Excuse Keeps JFK Assassination Documents From Public View.  Nominal president Joe Biden on Friday [10/22/2021] resorted to the worst use yet of the "it's because of COVID" canard that now runs rampant across our society as the go-to excuse for every form of failure to perform.  58 years after the event took place at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Biden signed an order delaying yet again the release of more than 440,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the flimsy excuse that several federal agencies involved have been unable to perform appropriate reviews due to the negative impacts of the COVID pandemic.  Now, let's review the timeline [...]:  John F. Kennedy was killed as the results of multiple shots fired at him from multiple directions in a crossfire in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.  Again, that's 58 long years ago.  COVID, meanwhile, has impacted our society for about a year and a half at this point.  Thus, every one of the agencies in question — including the CIA, FBI and other federal intelligence agencies — had well over 56 years to conduct appropriate reviews of the records in question before anyone even knew what COVID means.  What have they been doing all of that time, other than executing the longest coverup of a crime in American history?

Liberal Repellant:  How to Keep Your Red State Red.  I was talking to my sister from Greenville, South Carolina the other day and she was telling me, once again, about how all the Liberals (read Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Woke Libtards, or just Democrats in general) are moving to Greenville from up north and bringing their values (or lack thereof) with them.  She was decrying their habit of driving around with one hand on the horn, ready to blow it at you or anyone else who even slightly gets in their way or simply draws their attention.  And noting how as soon as they move into your neighborhood they get on the NextDoor app and start complaining about anything and everything they don't like about living in the South, never stopping once to think about the fact that if they dislike it so much, they could move back to where they came from.

A separation, if we can keep it.  [Scroll down]  The Constitution also separates the three branches of government, with each having unique powers specifically defined in the Constitution.  For most of our history, the separate branches used aggressive self-protection to maintain and enforce their powers.  The Executive and Judicial branches could not legislate.  Congress was not a court.  The president was the Commander and Chief but only Congress could declare war.  Defined separations were the order of the day.  There were many more.  The Founders further secured these separations with the different ways our leaders were elected.  The President would be selected by a system in which electors representing each state would have a proportional vote.  The House of Representatives would be the house of the people and elected by them directly from defined geographical districts.  The Senate was a body selected by the state legislatures.  The election process was to be defined by state legislatures and only state legislatures, another defined separation.  If we had maintained this designed separation, we would not be on the precipice of secession or civil war.

California ports, key to [the] U.S. supply chain, [are] among [the] world's least efficient.  Southern California's Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle the most ocean cargo of any ports in the United States, but are some of the least efficient in the world, according to a ranking by the World Bank and IHS Markit.  In a review of 351 container ports around the globe, Los Angeles was ranked 328, behind Tanzania's Dar es Salaam and Alaska's Dutch Harbor.  The adjacent port of Long Beach came in even lower, at 333, behind Turkey's Nemrut Bay and Kenya's Mombasa, the groups said in their inaugural Container Port Performance Index published in May.  The total number of ships waiting to unload outside the two adjacent ports hit a new all-time record of 100 on Monday.  Americans' purchases of imported goods have jumped to levels the U.S. supply chain infrastructure can't handle, causing delivery delays and snarls.

Hilarity Abounds:  New National Parks Woke 'Equity Language Guide'.  If the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) has its way, America's national parks will soon abound with "wokeness."  America's leading parks nonprofit has released a guide on how to speak in woke terms — a veritable "Wokeness for Dummies" — including tips like no longer using the term "Americans" to describe Americans and making sure the term "white" is lowercase while "Black" is capitalized. [...] According to the guide, it can be "an important factor to someone's identity and culture" and encourages parks professionals to "recognize religious and cultural traditions other than those that typically dominate the U.S. media landscape (usually Christian holidays)."  Why I'm shocked.  It's okay to recognize religious and cultural traditions (you know, like Christmas and Easter and stuff).  Oh — wait — other than Christian religious and cultural traditions.

Living In A Potemkin World.  I never thought I would experience the dystopian "fictional" nightmare Orwell laid out in his 1949 novel.  Seventy-two years later and his warning about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, repressive measures against dissenters, mind control through government indoctrination and propaganda designed to convince the masses lies are truth, fake is real and the narrative can be manipulated to achieve the desired outcome of those in power, have come to fruition.  Everything is fake.  I don't believe anything I'm told by the government, the media, medical "experts", politicians, military leadership, bankers, corporate executives, religious leaders, financial professionals, and anyone selling themselves as an authority on any subject matter.  We are truly living in times of mass deception, mass delusion, and mass willful ignorance.

Texas Governor Candidate Don Huffines Pledges to Arrest Federal Agents Persecuting Parents in Justice Department CRT Probe.  Texas Governor candidate Don Huffines is pledging to arrest federal agents that usurp the rights of parents who oppose the instruction of anti-white critical race theory in public schools, responding to an announcement on the part of Biden's Justice Department that it had begun a federal probe into opposition to CRT in schools.  Huffines made the pledge in a statement Wednesday [10/13/2021]. [...] Huffines is challenging incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has courted dissatisfaction among Texas conservatives for lockdown orders and falsely smearing free speech social media network Gab as "anti-semitic" at the direction of the Anti-Defamation League, a left-wing extremist group.

The Editor says...
The next Texas Governor is either going to be Allen West or Don Huffines.  Greg Abbott is on the way out, because he was waaay too slow to fight the Covid lockdown-mask-vaccine nonsense, and is still too lethargic about it today.  Texas is full of Uniparty RINOs, and needs a solid counterweight on the right.  Mr. Abbott is more interested in running for U.S. President, I think.

Dems own Biden failures:  They'll run but they can't hide from policy fiascos.  As the natural consequences of bad public policy continue their inevitable assault on the American economy, Democrats with national ambitions are going to be increasingly reluctant to let voters pin Joe Biden's tail on their donkey.  This may help explain why the president is not getting a lot of help, even from his own inner circle.  We aren't getting the plans we were promised.  Instead, we're getting thin smoke and faded mirrors that aren't fooling anyone.  Joe Biden may be aging and confused, but what's the excuse for Vice President Harris' failure to address the border crisis, Secretary Buttigieg's failure to contain the shipping crisis, or Secretary Blinken's failure to bring Americans home from a war zone?

Worldwide survey has politicians as least-trusted profession.  The world appears to agree on one thing.  Politicians are the least trusted profession on the planet, according to a massive Ipsos "Global Trustworthiness Index" poll of 19,570 adults conducted in 28 countries.  On average, only 10% of the respondents felt that politicians were "trustworthy."  That negative finding ranged from a low of 3% in Argentina to a high of 19% in Malaysia.  The U.S. was just about in the middle with 9% of respondents saying they trusted politicians — a finding shared with respondents in Poland, Italy, South Korea and Mexico.  Politicians had some company at the rock bottom of the poll, which has been conducted since 2018.  "Government ministers" are trusted by 14%, advertising executives by 15%, and journalists by 23%.

Why Shortages Are Permanent:  Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense.  Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience — they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity.  Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition.  Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits.  Wide open competition and structural abundance are the least conducive setting for generating reliably ample profits, while quasi-monopolies and cartels that control scarce supplies are the ideal profit-generating machines.  The incentives to expand the number of suppliers, i.e. increase competition, are effectively zero.  America's corporations spent $11 trillion buying back their own stocks over the past decade; that's equal to the combined GDP of Japan, Germany and Italy.  If adding new suppliers to the global supply chain were profitable, some of that $11 trillion would have exploited those vast profits.

Pie in the sky:
A Mechanism to Restore Liberty and Prosperity.  The Anti-federalists, including George Mason and Patrick Henry, were correct in their concern about government growing ever bigger and less concerned about individual rights and free enterprise.  Today, progressive fascists control both houses of Congress and the White House, and their authoritarianism is becoming ubiquitous.  To rectify this situation and to return to much smaller government respectful of individual rights and free enterprise, the following Constitutional amendments are proposed. [...]

The Editor says...
Let me assure you that the Constitution will NEVER be amended to make any Congressman's career shorter, more difficult, or less lucrative.  Propose all the amendments you like, but none of them will ever be ratified.

Politics in the Case of Col. Scheller.  We all witnessed the events beginning with the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban followed by the chaotic noncombatant evacuation operation from Kabul's airport.  It was a sad commentary on President Joe Biden's judgment because had he accepted the advice of his military chain of command (keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to stiffen the backbone of that government and security forces) this fiasco would not have happened.  However, because Biden was evidently in a hurry to exit the Central Asian country (likely for crass political reasons), he rushed the exit process and a catastrophic situation emerged:  the Taliban, our enemy of two decades, took over the country, now it will host a new wave of terrorism for years to come and the U.S. left Afghanistan with its tail tucked and lost international credibility.  Just as that embarrassing situation emerged a Marine lieutenant colonel, Stuart Scheller Jr., at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina posted a public video on a social media website expressing criticism of senior military officials for their handling of the withdrawal and demanding they be held accountable.  His superior officers immediately relieved him of command and then incarcerated and placed him in pretrial confinement.

Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Is The Billy Mitchell Of The 21st Century.  [Scroll down]  Mitchell's undoing came in September 1925 when a Navy dirigible, the USS Shenandoah, crashed during a severe thunderstorm killing 14 men.  The airship had been ordered aloft as a public relations gesture during a period of severe weather over the protestations of its own Captain.  Mitchell offered his opinion on this and other incidents that had previously occurred:  "These terrible accidents are the direct results of incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the National Defense by the War and Navy Departments."  This was the last straw for the army.  He was charged with insubordination, court-martialed, convicted, and suspended from duty for five years without pay.

The Wrong Man Is In The Brig — Put Biden On Trial.  U.S. Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Scheller is in the brig — a military jail at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  More specifically, Scheller is in pre-trial confinement.  That means he is being held behind bars pending a military court-martial.  Scheller was up until recently a Marine battalion commander.  He was relieved of his command following a series of public statements he made chastising military leadership for the manifest incompetence shown during the Afghan withdrawal that led directly to the deaths of 13 Marines.  After his relief Scheller announced he would resign from the service and continued to speak out — in apparent violation of direct orders to stop discussing his concerns publicly.  In one video, posted on September 16th, Scheller stated his intention to charge Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, with dereliction of duty.

The Most Dangerous Man In America.  Four-star General Mark A. Milley, 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces, is a walking answer to the unasked question, "What if Jim Mattis were fat and dumb?"  With his fellow four-star and President Trump's first secretary of defense, Milley shares a powerful but muted arrogance, a strong but less than rabid hawkishness, a clear political ambition that nonetheless defies immediate identification, and the obvious desire to be seen as a 21st-century warrior-scholar.  He does not share with Mattis the requisite intelligence to uphold these delusions of soldier-sagehood, nor the basic capacities required to competently lead men and fight wars.

McAuliffe and Democrats try to ignore their past election trutherism.  Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe faces a tougher-than-expected race for his old job against GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin.  So, he has resorted to a tactic Democrats love to lean on now:  painting their opponents as election deniers.  But McAuliffe, like many in the Democratic Party, can't erase his own track record as an election truther.  McAuliffe has tried to tie Youngkin to former President Donald Trump's denial of the results of the 2020 presidential election.  But McAuliffe has spent nearly two decades claiming the 2000 presidential election was stolen from Democrat Al Gore, arguing the Supreme Court tampered with the results.  At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, McAuliffe delivered a quote indistinguishable from Trump:  "We actually won the last presidential election, folks, they stole the last presidential election."

Afghanistan: What Comes of Limited War.  The recent disaster in Afghanistan, however spectacular, was part of a pattern, the pattern of failed American interventions since the Second World War.  Previous misadventures might not have entailed needless bungling of the kind just displayed over a few days to an astonished world.  No one expected the withdrawal of military forces before civilians, in such hasty neglect that vast quantities of armaments were abandoned to the enemy and American and allied Afghan civilians left to their fate. [...] And yet this failed mission is really the last element of a series.  Since the 1950s, America has intervened in defense of other nations under attack (South Korea and South Vietnam), or to liberate a nation recently conquered or seized by coup (Kuwait, Grenada), or to change or provide relief from an existing regime (Iraq, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Libya).

Have You Noticed Modern Presidential Assassins Have One Thing in Common?  Have you noticed only beauty queens and criminals seem to have middle names?  Sara Jane, as we called her in the months ahead, was a West Virginia native who gave up her nursing studies and, over the years, five husbands.  Turns out, she was also a leftie.  You may have noticed California has a surfeit of them, still.  Like many folks who get in big trouble, they're typically already on authorities' radar. [...] Later, Moore expressed regret.  She got life anyway which, as you may have noticed in modern America, doesn't really mean life.  It means about 30 years.  On Dec. 31, 2007, at age 77, Federal Inmate No. 04851-180 was released.  In 2019, she was jailed for six months for failing to inform her parole officer of a foreign trip.  She was the first prominent would-be presidential assassin totally released.  It seems like Americans, or at least some of their appointed officials and boards, are in a forgiving mood.  If events proceed as expected, three more will soon have their liberties restored — Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sirhan Sirhan, and John Hinckley.

Repeal the 17th Amendment.  [Scroll down]  But the more fundamental point is that repeal of the 17th Amendment would return us to the structure of federalism devised by the Founders to limit federal power and preserve our liberty.  The current U.S. Senate elected pursuant to the 17th Amendment has 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats and 2 independents who vote with the Democrats.  The Vice-President is a Democrat who can vote to break a tie.  According to Americans for Tax Reform, Republicans control 30 state legislatures in states with a combined population of 185,164,412, while Democrats control 18 state legislatures in states with a combined population of 133,888,565. Under the system originally devised by the Founders, the U.S. Senate would be overwhelmingly Republican — with at least 60 GOP senators.  The Founders made the amendment process difficult, and rightly so.  Should the Republicans takeover the House and Senate in 2022, repealing the 17th Amendment should but probably won't be a priority.

Politics and the Politicization of the US Military.  Americans traditionally have been wary of a large permanent military establishment, believing it to be a threat to democratic institutions.  This attitude goes all the way back to the Founding Fathers who deliberately kept the army small, preferring to rely on local militia in case of an emergency.  This was done to prevent the army from being used to repress the rights of any individual state during the long and ongoing battle over the issue of states' rights; the echoes of which still reverberate to this very day.  The past nine months' events show how wise this attitude was.

The Deep Optimism Manifesto.  The world is far better off than most people think.  By moving a billion people from poverty to the middle class, we have automatically moved more subsistence farmers into homes with electricity, gas stoves, and mobile phones.  By focusing on long-run economic growth, we automatically solve our environmental problems.  We will end this century with many fewer poor people than we started.

Bush and Milley Have Chosen Obama's False History of America.  It has been the project of the political left for quite some time to convince Americans that there is nothing exceptional about their country.  To "fundamentally transform" a culture, you must first poison the roots of what has already been growing.  So for a century, Marxists have disparaged American history as steeped in genocide, imperialism, and avarice.  They have exploited the imagery of virtue and vice to convince moral people that their nation rose from immorality.  This has reached its logical apex with the historically illiterate 1619 Project, supported by elite news publications and academic institutions, reimagining America's birth as bathed not in liberty, but rather enslavement.  Killing American history is not just a matter of destroying our collective identity as Americans, but also the vehicle for undermining notions of personal freedom.

We Need to Talk about Pakistan.  An examination of the history of Pakistan reveals several disturbing consistencies.  In Pakistan, few 'elected leaders' ever complete their tenure in office.  These 'leaders' are either executed or jailed after Pakistan's deep state stages a coup.  The more fortunate manage to bribe their way out in exchange for being 'exiled' to a foreign country, where they live in great luxury.  Occasionally, army generals from the deep state who led coups to become leaders themselves become victims of a coup led by other factions.  If the deep state does not eliminate them, the Islamists supported by factions in the deep state conduct an assassination.  The Pakistani deep state consists of the armed forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the judiciary.  The deep state in Pakistan has ruthlessly used iron-fist tactics at regular intervals, to serve as severe warnings to 'elected' leaders who presume that their elected office gives them a license to develop a mind of their own.  The knowledge that they can be summarily dethroned or even eliminated perennially looms over every elected leader in Pakistan.  Hence, they operate with the utmost caution, never daring to disturb 'equilibrium' as determined by the deep state.

Why I don't have faith in John Durham.  [Scroll down]  In the waning days of the second Bush presidency, the attorney general assigned Durham to investigate the destruction of tapes of interrogations at Gitmo.  No charges were filed.  The final report remains sealed.  Eric Holder assigned him to look at the actual interrogations.  Same result.  No charges.  After a couple of years looking into the use of the FBI to spy on Donald Trump and the Russiagate hoax, he got a minor conviction of one lawyer and has now indicted Michael Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie who has since left the firm.  Compare and contrast that to the speed with which the FBI set-up and forced General Flynn to cop a plea.  Sussmann is a safe catch.  He is big enough to close the case.  He will keep his trap shut.  We joke about Arkancide but it is real and Sussmann ain't stupid.  Neither is John Durham.

'Nothing Can Stop What is Coming.' What If Nothing is Coming?  [Scroll down]  Arizona's election audit is dragging on, and "any day now" sufficient evidence of fraud will supposedly be released to overturn that state's election results, triggering similar results in other states.  Yet after ten months there is no end in sight, just pleas to be patient and wait.  And what if evidence of fraud or outside interference is produced?  Then what?  The media will ignore it and anyone who dares to discuss it will be labeled a QAnon domestic terrorist and attacked with the ferocity of someone recommending ivermectin for COVID.  Will state legislatures decertify their electoral college votes?  Will Congress decertify the presidential election?  Will the Supreme Court get involved?  No, no and no, based on common sense and their past performance.

If Junior Officers Had Botched Afghanistan, They'd All Be Fired Right Now.  [Scroll down]  Who planned the Afghanistan withdrawal?  Where within the civilian-military leadership does the buck really stop?  Were planners and ground commanders constrained by unreasonable political considerations that increased the risk?  If so, did our military leaders inform their civilian superiors of that increased risk?  Someone decided to withdraw U.S. military forces before we successfully evacuated American citizens and our Afghan partners.  Someone decided the "retrograde operation" should be conducted during the summer "fighting season" in Afghanistan while the Taliban was expanding their control across the country.  Someone decided relying on the Taliban for security around the airport was a good idea.  Someone believed the Afghan army could stand up to the Taliban after U.S. air support and U.S. operational intelligence networks were withdrawn.  Someone thought the will of the Afghan government was sufficient even when told otherwise by the Afghan president.

The Democrats Hypocrisy Caught On A Cell Phone Video Before The MSM Camera Crew Went On Air During The 9/11 Ceremony.  Joe and Jill Biden first visited Ground Zero in Manhattan, where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood before the attack.  Biden was also joined by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at Ground Zero.  It was really strange that only the Democrat Presidents were at Ground Zero yesterday, and Bush, who was actually the president when 9/11 happened, appears to have been shunned, and put out in a field in PA to give a speech that no one even saw, instead of at Ground Zero in Manhattan, while Clinton who had nothing to do with 9/11 was at the WTC, and Obama.  Not to mention, Trump was not at the service either.

Keeping the National Flag at Half-Mast Indefinitely a Crass Political Move.  Elections will always bring about new and unexpected wedge issues during the campaign.  I don't think anybody could have predicted that the status of the Canadian flag on federal buildings would come into play though.  The decision to fly a national flag at half-mast is not one to be taken lightly.  It is an expression of collective sorrow on the part of a nation.  There are well-established federal protocols for when the national flag is to be lowered and for how long.  The flag is lowered upon the deaths of senior members of the British royal family, former prime ministers, governor generals, and other people whose passing is considered to be of national significance.  The prime minister has the discretionary ability to have the flag lowered for unique tragedies as well.  Few Canadians felt that it was inappropriate to lower the national flag in response to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves deemed to belong to children at the sites of former residential schools.  When the flags came down on May 30, however, nobody realized that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had bizarrely ordered the lowering to last for an indefinite period.  As we approach the four-month mark with our national flags at half-mast, Canadians are beginning to ask when the flags will be going back up.

The Editor says...
The same condition exists in the U.S.  The giant flags at the car dealerships along the Dallas freeways are at half-mast more often than not, and for no apparent reason.  Evidently every little bit of bad news is treated as a disaster now.

9/11 memorials are a reminder of how far the country has fallen.  On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Saturday night, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, his NYPD commissioner of the day, Bernie Kerik, members of SEAL Team Six that killed Osama bin Laden, and other veterans of the war on terror gathered at Cipriani Wall Street for a night of bittersweet memories. [...] Nasty trolls on Twitter who were not at Cipriani described the speech as a drunken rant.  They couldn't have been more wrong, but it shows the depths to which haters will stoop to besmirch what was a beautiful night for the heroes of 9/11 just blocks from "the first battleground in the last 20-year war on terror," as [Bernie] Kerik put it.  Feelings were raw just two weeks after President Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  The city that said it would never forget its 9/11 heroes had spent 18 months demonizing the NYPD.  And Nancy Pelosi had taken Giuliani's usual spot in the front row at the Ground Zero memorial Saturday morning, a sign of the disrespect now heaped on the former mayor.  What was the divisive House speaker from San Francisco doing on hallowed ground, anyway?

China is in deep trouble and bound to get worse.  Is China the next superpower?  Is the media's depiction of the country as a ten-foot giant really accurate?  That's dubious.  For all its bluster on the global stage, China is a giant in trouble.  Here are some of the reasons we know:  Perhaps the biggest problem in China is its erstwhile "one child" policy, which created many single, self-absorbed adults with poor social skills and an entitlement mindset that included no great desire to marry young and bear the financial burden of offspring.  China switched to a two-child policy and recently revised it to allow three children per family.  But it's too little, too late.  The best result is that in about 20 years, the Chinese population will probably be more than halved anyway, instead of something worse, and the elderly will be a great burden on their single offspring and the economy.

The curious case of the missing resignations.  One of the strangest things about the Afghanistan debacle is that in spite of extraordinarily harsh criticism worldwide, nobody has resigned, and nobody has been fired.  Many assume that this is so because the failure is President Biden's, but in thinking this, they are simply wrong.  Consciousness of failure is only one of many reasons for resignations from high government positions.

Do Your Duty as an American and Do Not Comply.  We live in a time where politicians seem to believe that they are the ultimate authority in the United States and that with a wave of their hand and a scratch of their pen, they can enact unassailable dictates that you have to follow.  This is so far from the truth that you could fit a solar system between them.  There are many laws in the land, with different states containing different laws to follow.  But, the supreme laws are the ones enshrined in the Constitution.  If any laws are issued that conflict with this supreme law of the land, then those laws are invalid and do not have to be followed.  This isn't just the opinion of a freedom-loving American with a penchant for bucking authority, it's also the opinion of the Supreme Court.

20 Years after 9/11 — Are We Better Off?  When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that first 9/11, the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary for al-Qaida.  Today, the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to al-Qaida.  What then did our longest war accomplish?  The Afghan army and government we stood up and sustained for decades has collapsed.  The U.S. military has withdrawn.  U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghans who fought alongside us have been left behind.

Biden's shameful Afghanistan disaster has made America look weak, spineless, cowardly, and disloyal.  This Saturday is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, one of the darkest days in American history.  To mark the occasion, President Biden will travel to Ground Zero in New York where the Twin Towers were destroyed, to Virginia where a plane was flown into the Pentagon, and to a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight United 93 also crashed after an on-air battle between terrorists and hero passengers.  This would be a sombre enough experience for any American President given that nearly 3,000 people were killed on that infamous day back in 2001 which represented a terrible failure of US intelligence.

Mediocrity Reigns.  [Scroll down]  Another mediocrity involved in the Afghan debacle is General Milley.  He is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  People may remember him from his appearance in front of Congress earlier in the summer.  He was kitted out like a third-world dictator with a chestful of ribbons and medals.  The general spent his time fighting back tears as he told the congressional committee of his struggle with white rage.  Milley, another product of New England, is a Princeton man, where he graduated with a degree in politics.  Then it was a master's in international relations from Columbia and then another master's from the Naval War College.  His military career has mostly been about avoiding any real danger and making sure the people above him are happy with his personal service.

National Review and Other NeverTrump Mags Sold Out for Google Cash.  Most Americans who identify as conservative share a slate of views:  They want a secure border and a massive reduction of immigration, an end to foreign wars, and the halt of critical race theory and LGBT indoctrination in schools.  Such Americans believe there is sufficient evidence to prove the 2020 election was stolen; they feel the mainstream media exaggerates the threat of COVID-19 (which they hold to have been released by China) in order to justify vaccine mandates and other freedom-restricting policies.  They are tired of the "racism," "hate speech," and "bigotry" being slung to attack anyone holding views once considered the norm in this country, and, as a result, are sick of political correctness.

Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom Urgently Need The Politics of COVID as a Tool For Distraction.  Biden's inflation is crushing the middle-class.  Gas prices are intentionally skyrocketing.  Obama Term-3 policies are destroying jobs and the working class.  The southern border is in crisis; widespread illegal immigration is alarming.  Biden's Afghanistan strategy was/is [very bad] (by design).  Thirteen U.S. service members were killed by JoeBama policy.  Leftist promoted wokeism as a social engineering tool is running amok.  Schools are a battleground between parents and Obama's union orcs.  Joe Biden himself is a hot mess of incompetence and dementia on a scale they can no longer keep hidden.  And the poll numbers for Biden overall are showing it.  The JoeBama crew must bury all of it by weaponizing the use of COVID-19 fear.  There is no other issue large enough to protect the JoeBama agenda without using COVID.  COVID-19 is the only political tool with the outcome to keep all other purposeful crises under control.  That urgent narrative is what's behind this little soundbite segment from the professional media proletariat.  [Video clip]

Joe Biden and the Consequences of Lost Global Trust.  All societies are based on trust.  It doesn't matter how the society is organized.  It could be a democracy, king and country, or even a totalitarian dictatorship.  What matters is that the people of that society have trust in their system and in their leadership.  Without that trust there is chaos.  The imbecilic way we withdrew from Afghanistan has created a monumental crisis, not just domestically, but for the entire world.  Everywhere now, within and without, trust in United States has been irretrievably lost.  We are now at a pivot in time around which all of history is in rotation.  As a result of the stupendous incompetence of the Biden administration the world will never be the same.

What makes the world go around?  [Thread reader]  While the media keeps you fixated on J6, Covid, and how it's always Trump's fault, you might want to ask about these things.  The Biden admin is run by all the same people as the Obama admin. [...] In order to understand what happened in the span of 1 week, when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan & Pelosi rammed through the $3.5 [trillion] budget which is the Green New Deal, you have to look back in time.  Remember the GND, forces the US on EV's which run on lithium batteries.  In 2011, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, worked on the Silk Road Initiative.  It connects China to many countries & helps them become #1 super power through trade.  It also grows the economies of Afghanistan, Pakistan & more enemies to the US. [...] While the US military was involved in conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, our gov (US taxpayers) also paid for the geological surveys of in Afghanistan and found over $1 [trillion] in rare earth minerals, including lithium, which is needed to make batteries that are needed for EV's.

Something Is Wrong with America's Top Commanders.  Recently the Office of Naval Intelligence, in reaction to the Kabul news, warned all its active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize their Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden.  The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.  That is true.  And indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps just relieved from active duty a lieutenant colonel who posted a video accurately blaming the military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.  But until January 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander-in-chief with impunity.  Recently retired General Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific slur that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan where they presumably would be left to die.  Hayden earlier had compared Trump's border facilities to the German death camps.  Other generals and admirals in 2020 variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving to be removed from office sooner than later.  None of these retired politicized four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

Afghanistan fiasco may have been the result of blackmail.  Why would our military commanders willingly give up Bagram, a strategic airport built by the Russians, and why would they willingly leave $85 billion in military hardware behind?  Why would they leave thousands of Americans stranded behind enemy lines while providing the Taliban a "kill list" of those Americans left behind?  Unlike previous withdrawals, where it is customary upon withdrawal to first evacuate our citizens, and then destroy the equipment and blow up the bases, we did the opposite.  We did not evacuate our citizens.  We did not destroy the equipment.  And we did not blow up the bases.  We have learned that the Biden administration cut off all communication with the anti-Taliban resistance group, the National Front.  Although Ali Nazar, head of foreign relations for the group, has said he "tried to reach out," there has been no response from the Biden administration.  Glenn Beck recently reported that his mission to rescue Afghan Christians has been blocked by our State Department and the White House, and he fears that they may be burned alive or crucified by the Taliban.  Are we to believe that our military leadership, led by four-star generals, is so naïve and incompetent?  Highly unlikely!

The Afghan War Isn't Over Until We Rescue All Those Left Behind.  In what can only be called a shocking lack of self-awareness, President Joe Biden this week bragged about his "extraordinary success" in Afghanistan.  Now his handlers and the Democratic Party are urging Americans and, of course, the media to "move on." But there is no moving on from his botched departure from Kabul, whose ill effects will be felt by Americans for decades.  Far from a success, the "evacuation" was in fact an ill-planned, incompetently executed, chaotic dash to cram as many human beings as possible onto planes and transport them away from Kabul.  The new talking point is that "only" 100 or so Americans may have been left behind, despite Biden's explicit promise that none would be.  The media, which for several days seemed actually to be doing their job, are now falling in line with the new White House-Democratic Party spin.  Afghanistan is now a yesterday story.

In Afghanistan, we've opened the gates of hell.  The Afghanistan fiasco is the worst strategic blunder since 1938: the year that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved around a copy of the Munich Agreement and proclaimed "peace in our time."  Chamberlain's failure to understand the enemy gave Germany the space it needed to invade Poland — the event that marked the start of World War II.  Chamberlain resigned in 1940 when his political support evaporated.  Winston Churchill assumed power, ultimately snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  President Joe Biden's debacle will have no such savior; the Islamic jihad isn't that kind of war.  Instead of getting us out of Afghanistan, and bringing peace in our time, he's opened the gates of hell.  In one disastrous and grossly ill-conceived strategic move, Biden has armed and empowered the Taliban and elated every Muslim fanatic from Morocco to Mindanao.

Is Our Military Woke, Broke or Both?  The fall of Kabul is not the end, as Joe Biden seems to think, of the Afghanistan nightmare.  It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream.  Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.  In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 servicemen, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise.  We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul.  We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival.  Such statements are either untrue or absurd. [...] The Pentagon needs to stop virtue signaling about diversity days, culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees, and rooting out supposed white conspiracists.  Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram Air Base was abandoned by night?  Why suddenly are the terrorist Taliban our supposed "partners" in organizing our surrender and escape?

[The] U.S. [is] In More Trouble Than At Any Time In Its History.  Candidate Joe Biden said last October that we were nearing the "most important election of our lifetime."  He was right.  What made it so crucial was keeping him out of the White House.  President Joe Biden is visibly exhausted.  His mental decline that began long before the 2020 election appears to have now gone straight over a cliff.  The first seven months of his term have depleted him so thoroughly that the toll taken by eight years of the modern presidency look mild in comparison.  His errors and poor judgment continue and compound.  Never in possession of an abundance of sound thinking, he's been drained of what little wisdom he ever had.  And he's only going to get worse.  Biden's record of failure is well-documented.  He's been a train wreck in progress for decades.  Just added to his resume of misery is the ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan where Americans have been murdered and abandoned; historic inflation that threatens economic growth; a workforce that feels work is optional; dire conditions in which businesses can't find enough workers; an open wound on our southern border; and a greenlighting of terrorism both in the U.S. and abroad.

Cui Bono?  Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal?  If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.  If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.  I'd be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan — conservative or liberal — would give to the question, "Cui bono?"  I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.  "Twenty years is too long," or its variant, "we have to end these endless wars," the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.  It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.  The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members' lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

Good Leadership Leads by Example, Not by Coercion.  It is not a good indicator when troops must be reminded that they are not allowed to speak critically about the military's civilian leadership.  It is not a good sign when a USMC Lieutenant Colonel feels compelled by the horrible events in Afghanistan to speak out publicly and risk ending what has otherwise been a successful career of faithful, war-time military service. [...] Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier, USAF, and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, USMC, can now be listed among those patriots who have pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" to the American citizenry and those core values that have defined their military service.  Why has speaking the truth, and doing so with the service branch's best long-term interest in mind, become a career-ending decision?  It is curious, isn't it?  None of these "reminders" were issued while President Trump held office.  Then, there were no prohibitions against an active-duty military member's "disrespect" to "government officials."  No, those people (for example, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman) were "whistleblowers" with only the highest conceivable, most earnest, and most honorable of intentions to save the Republic from the bad orange man.

General HR McMaster Reveals Deep State's "Coded Language" While Responding to Afghanistan Terror Attack.  There is only one fitting response to last week's heart-wrenching suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul:  America must get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, and stay out, for good.  Nothing good has come of America's involvement in Afghanistan, and nothing more will come out of it, except more flag-draped coffins.  Sickeningly, the US security state responded to last Thursday's attack with a borderline glee.  Sadly, ISIS-Khorasan's (ISIS-K) gruesome attack served the forever-war lobby perfectly, as it used the tragedy to launch a final Hail Mary bid to prolong America's interminable, objective-free crusade in Southwest Asia.  In the process, the globalist war lobby revealed one of the most cynical, sinister components of a playbook it has run for two decades — a playbook that capitalizes on public ignorance to conflate wildly different groups and oversell totally unproven claims in the service of perpetuating endless warfare.

These reports out of Kabul are too awful to believe.  American troops are due to leave Afghanistan on Tuesday, even though uncounted Americans are stuck in the country.  And by stuck, it appears that our American government is deliberately denying them access to Kabul airport.  This isn't a wild rumor.  Instead, it comes from two eminently reliable reporters (Lara Logan and Emily Miller) and from Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL. [...] At this point, there are only two conclusions that can be drawn from what's happening in Afghanistan, beginning with Biden's decision to jettison Trump's careful plan and continuing through to the present day:  (1) Everyone in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon is so incompetent that a roomful of drunk kindergarteners could have handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan better than they have, or (2) What we're witnessing is deliberate.  I can believe that of Biden, who is a Chinese puppet.  That the Pentagon brass would engage in this conduct means that they too are on the Chinese payroll which is a very distressing thought.  Alternatively, it's deliberate because these people have been so steeped in America-hatred that they are willingly sabotaging America to destroy it.  They are the contents of the Trojan Horse.

Is Afghanistan the Next Killing Field?  America's abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan portends a humanitarian disaster of unknown proportions. [...] The term "killing fields" refers to the disastrous power vacuum created in Cambodia in the 1970s.  That vacuum was filled by Pol Pot, communist leader of the Khmer Rouge regime.  He rapidly put in a plan that included the arrest and butchering of those he suspected of connections hostile to his regime.  A quarter of the Cambodian people — more than a million — died, either by execution or lack of medical care and food.  A similar power vacuum has been created by the Biden administration's deliberate policy of abandoning Americans left behind in Afghanistan.  Those who have assisted America in any way are also without recourse.  Further, a vast supply of military equipment is being left behind, armaments that will assuredly be used by the Taliban and their allies against Americans and their sympathizers.

The fatal failure of Gen. Mark A. Milley over closing Bagram Air Base.  Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, must go.  President Biden claims that the military advised him to close Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and instead use Kabul's airport to evacuate Americans.  They were the ones who said the Afghan army would hold, that the pullout would go smoothly.  If Biden is telling the truth, this disaster is on Milley's watch.  Or Biden is lying (the more likely scenario, based on what sources inside the administration are saying) and Milley failed to do his duty and push back against a commander-in-chief who is making deadly decisions.  Either way, he is derelict in his duty — and must either take responsibility for what went wrong or tell Americans the truth about their president.

The military brass may regret firing Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.  Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller was fired for speaking the truth about the fact that the top brass in the Pentagon never pay for their bad decisions, even as the ordinary men and women get no quarter for their errors.  As soon as he's free, Scheller intends to change that two-tiered system.  In fact, we've been watching unfold for some time in America a two-tiered justice system.  In the civilian world, one tier, the higher one, is for leftists and the other, the lower one, is for conservatives.  It started in politics.  We've all noticed that Republicans who err got fired.  Meanwhile, leftists who violated the law (e.g., Hillary) never got fired.  The only exception was the #MeToo movement, which was obviously targeted at Trump but instead did nothing more than destroy a handful of prominent, but sleazy, leftists.  Biden, despite a credible sexual assault charge and a compulsive need to paw and sniff little girls, was untouched.

The Declaration 2.0 (Revised).  [Scroll down]  The history of the present POTUS is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.  He has usurped the nation's highest office, and because of his mental unfitness for that office, is the puppet of an illegitimate and hidden Cabal that has destroyed the bonds of trust most wholesome and necessary for the public good.  He has forbidden our Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them, and hath meanwhile ignored restraints issued by coequal branches of government not under his direct political control.  He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.  He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

To survive, we must fire them all.  The last Democrat president to surrender like this was Jefferson Davis.  The survival of America depends on firing them all.  The good, the bad, and the indifferent must all go because we must send a clear signal to the mediocrities running the military and the Department of State.  The message must be failure gets you canned.  We failed 20 years ago to do so, and it cost us dearly.  9/11 resulted in no firings.  Instead of dismissing the people in charge of an intelligence community that failed the nation, Bush 43 appointed a 9/11 commission, which included many of the people responsible for the 9/11 whiff.  The commission was a bipartisan [sham] and coverup.  After months of interviews, it concluded that the FBI and CIA had "not well served" Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Disney's Shame.  We have come a long way from Walt Disney, in the wrong direction.  The phenomenon of woke capitalism is hard to understand, but it seems clear that companies will not stop promoting leftism until they feel pain at the bottom line.  I encourage you to contact the companies involved here, express your disgust, and where appropriate, take your business elsewhere.

The Biden Administration Should Just Knock Off the Press Briefings Until They Get the Story Straight.  If the last week is an example of the adults being in charge, we should all pine for the guy who fired off mean tweets and sent the Ayatollah's favorite terrorist home in a tiny box.  The Biden administration press briefings from the Pentagon and White House today upended any messages CENTCOM or President Biden conveyed yesterday.  Perhaps we are witnessing peak incompetence.  Or maybe lying all the time is getting confusing.  This morning Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby had a bizarre exchange with Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.  Griffin asked Kirby how the administration was confident the Taliban had no role in the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport.  She inquired if General Kenneth McKenzie ruled out this possibility because the U.S. is dependent on them for security at the facility.

Twenty-five minutes to infamy.  On what was arguably the worst day of Joe Biden's presidency, he was scheduled to address America and the world at 5 P.M. on August 26, 2021.  We'd been told earlier that day that the president and commander-in-chief was going to address the bomb that killed Marines and a Navy corpsman in Kabul.  Biden was 25 minutes late.  That delay is not trivial.  It has direct consequences on an ever-present 24/7 strategic threat that Russia, China, and North Korea pose to America.  All three have "ready now" ICBMs with multiple warheads aimed at targets in the continental United States.  I know this because I was President Reagan's principal director of mobilization planning and requirements in the Pentagon at the height of the Cold War. [...] It may appear to be just a typical Biden trivial time-delay moment.  However, the entire American strategic deterrence posture, especially during the Cold War, was measured in thirty minutes.  That was the time of flight for incoming missiles to destroy us.  Today, I suspect the time is even shorter.  Regardless, the fundamental building block to make sure we would never be attacked was competent, determined presidential leadership with the "football" launch codes to unleash hell on our enemies.  If anything leads Russia, China, or North Korea to believe strongly that President Biden is not mentally together — and his 25-minute delay may have proven that — America is in even greater danger than we thought.

Trump: Biden Handling of Afghanistan : 'Dumbest Move' Ever Made Perhaps in the History of Our Country.  As the U.S. casualty count is trending in the wrong direction in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is taking heat from all sides for the handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Central Asian nation.  During an appearance on FNC's "Hannity" on Thursday, former President Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor, called the move by the Biden administration to withdraw military forces before evacuating non-military personnel the "dumbest move" in perhaps the history of the country.

Biden Turns Afghanistan Into A Slaughterhouse, Taliban Into A Military Superpower.  A day after at least 13 U.S. soldiers were killed at the Kabul airport, it's still unclear how many Americans will be abandoned in Afghanistan by the Biden administration.  What we do know, though, is that most of the U.S. weaponry in the country will not be recovered.  It's as if Joe Biden himself was the military procurement chief for the Taliban.  Until Thursday [8/26/2021], there had been no U.S. combat casualties in Afghanistan since February of last year.  But a bloodbath that the entire world outside of the White House saw coming arrived, and it became the deadliest day in the country for American troops since 2011, when — yes, that's right — Biden was vice president.  Homicide bombers and gunmen, reportedly from that brood of terrorist vipers called the Islamic State, killed at least 60 Afghans in addition to the American servicemen, and wounded more than 140. These horrific deaths and dismemberments are squarely on Biden, who rejected military leaders' advice, has resorted to blaming the victims, and once again demonstrated that he has miserable, if not depraved, foreign-policy instincts.

If You Think Afghanistan Is a Disaster You're Missing the Big Picture.  Get Ready to Be Told It Is the New Berlin Airlift.  While most of the world looks on in horror at the epic incompetence of Joe Biden and his sycophants in creating and carrying out a once-in-a-generation tragedy in Kabul, the foundation is being laid to convert this goat-rope into a major Biden political success.  The first hint that that came to my attention was from Politico's Alex Thompson.  He observes that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a comment from a Twitter user with 257 followers.

Sometimes there really is a conspiracy to theorize about.  It has been claimed that the phrase "conspiracy theory" was invented by the government to discourage the questioning of official explanations for important events, especially the JFK assassination.  Whether that was the real origin of the phrase or not, it is clear that the charge is plainly being used for that purpose: to dissuade any alternatives to the party narrative for major occurrences such as election fraud and the origin of the Wuhan virus.  The more we find out about the most significant events of today, especially the virus, the more we see a gigantic, long-term, sophisticated, and extremely disciplined coordination.  With newly released emails, knowing the real authors and background of major studies, previous strategy papers, and videos outside the mainstream until now, the wargaming of pandemics, the financial support of agencies, laboratories and studies, and the timeline of the vaccines and related patents, the enormous COVID conspiracy is coming into view.  There is so much organized intrigue now; how could anyone believe there aren't any conspiracies?

Hey Dems:  What Price Your Deep State Pals Now?  The U.S. has 17 — seventeen — intelligence agencies.  Do you think that helped or hindered in the runup to the Afghanistan debacle?

The Deep State and Afghanistan.  What if some people who pull strings were so angry about our Afghan exit that they said, "Okay, you want a withdrawal?  We'll give you a withdrawal you'll never forget." [...] [Lara] Logan's claim is that the U.S., insofar as worldly entities go, is practically omniscient and omnipotent.  Our National Security Agency (NSA) watches continuously like an all-seeing eye and "is known as the crown jewel of intelligence collection in the world," as Logan puts it.  "There isn't a digital signature in existence that they don't collect and store and analyze and have algorithms and everything else to sort through," she continued, expressing that there's no way the intel agencies "missed this" (what would transpire).  Logan also "posited that the NGIA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], which controls government satellites and other resources, has been watching the Taliban taking control of abandoned U.S. military equipment; bringing it back east into Pakistan," writes Fox News.

Chaos on the Ground, Collapse at the Top.  The failure of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, though great, is of comparatively minor importance when compared to the manifest collapse of the Washington intelligence, diplomatic, and military institutions on which national and Western security depend.  This transformed what was potentially a local debacle into a strategic crisis of the first order.  The fact that no senior official was fired and the administration insists on characterizing obvious ineptitude as resolute excellence underlines, rather than belies, their delusional character.  But it fools no one except a dwindling number of media hacks.  We see you Joe — and so do the Taliban, the NATO allies, and, worst of all, America's most dangerous foes.  Thus self-blindfolded, Biden's Washington stumbles toward three crises: the August 31 troop evacuation deadline set by the Taliban; the forthcoming meeting demanded by major allies; and the inevitable challenge from China.

In Afghanistan, the fix is in.  Americans are trapped in Afghanistan with diminishing chances of escape, our military is essentially trapped at Kabul airport, tens of thousands of Afghan citizens have been getting on flights that will see them end up in America, sharia and all, and the Taliban is on its usual murderous rampage.  The worst thing of all, according to Lara Logan, is that we're being told there's nothing to be done... and that's a lie.  [Tweet]  The question, of course, is why we're being fed this lie saying that Afghanistan must collapse and America must take in tens of thousands of people who completely believe in sharia law.

Chaos and Confusion in Kabul.  Either Joe Biden, his advisors, and our military are woefully ill-informed, or they are purposefully lying to the public about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.  Either way, Americans of all political views should be aghast.  First, the fact that the administration has told U.S. citizens to leave the Kabul airport and "shelter in place" — effectively, "go somewhere else" — or move to neighboring provinces or other locations without safe escort is simply inexcusable.  I am among the scores of private citizens and ad-hoc organizations trying to help rescue our colleagues in Afghanistan.  We have known for days not only that rapidly deteriorating security has been a continuous problem outside the airport but also that the Taliban has been targeting people who are waiting outside with beatings and burning of documents.  They are also conducting door-to-door searches in neighborhoods looking for American supporters and perceived opponents.

Dead Superpower Walking.  The War on Terror began with men plunging to their deaths from the highest floors of skyscrapers hit by airplanes; it ended with men plunging to their deaths from the undercarriage of a US airplane taking off from what's left of "Hamid Karzai International Airport" (the signs will be coming down even as you read this). [...] The United States is dead as a global power because of this kind of indestructible stupidity. [...] Meanwhile, back at the palace in Kabul, the Taliban commander giving a victory speech is Gholam Ruhani, released from Gitmo (under Bush) because he said his "only wish" was to return to Afghanistan to (per the Department of Defense documents published, natch, in a London newspaper) "assist his father, who is sick, in operating the family appliance store in Kabul".  I don't know what appliances they sell at Ruhani & Son over at 237b Sword of the Infidel Slayer Street, but evidently they're enough to take out the global superpower.  On social media, the wags are having great sport with Joe Biden's recent taunt that no American needs an AR-15, because, if you want to defeat the mighty US government, you're gonna need fighter jets and nukes.

Who Exactly is Being Evacuated from Afghanistan?  The US military is certainly evacuating "people" but why are only 15 percent of evacuees Americans?  Who are the other 85 percent?  Obviously not Americans.  The Daily Mail is more specific, "Hero airmen reveal they flew 823 Afghans out of Kabul including 183 kids after scrapping red tape to cram record number of people on C-17 jet."  Any Americans or just Afghans?  They went on, "The US has removed 9,000 people since Sunday but only around 1,000 of those are US citizens."  It seems Americans are not high on Biden's evacuation priority list.

The Drossy Touch of Joe Biden.  Almost everything Joe Biden has touched since entering office has turned to dross.  None of his blame-gaming, none of his distortions, none of his fantasies and unreality can mask that truth.  Seven months ago, Afghanistan was relatively quiet — with about 10,000 vestigial NATO troops, including 2,500 Americans, anchored by the Bagram Airfield.  They were able to provide air superiority for the coalition and Afghan national army.  With air power, NATO forces, if and when they so wished, could have very slowly and gradually withdrawn all its remnant troops — but only after a prior departure of all American and European civilians, coalition contractors, and allied Afghans.  The transient calm abruptly imploded as soon as Joe Biden recklessly yanked all U.S. troops out in a matter of days.  Many left in the dead of night, leaving no one to protect contractors, dependents, diplomats, and Afghan allies.  In Biden's world, civilians protect the last Western enclave while soldiers flee.

The Editor says...
What a coincidence!  Guess who else has the Reverse Midas Touch.

Back to the Past for America's Freight?  In a typical year, freight trains in the United States move about 1.7 billion tons on over 140,000 miles of track.  The massive tonnage hauled by freight rail every year means that most American consumers own goods transported on freight trains.  Yet, despite the importance of freight rail to American consumers and the broader economy, the Biden administration has proposed several potential changes that could undermine the profitability of freight rail companies and enhance government control of the industry.  Given the importance of freight rail, any government intervention could have catastrophic effects for consumers.  Policymakers only need to look at the history of freight rail in the United States to understand why increasing government control of freight rail could be profoundly damaging.

This should have been done a week ago:
Biden Admin Considers Strikes To Destroy U.S. Military Equipment In Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover:  Report.  The Biden administration is reportedly considering launching strikes against some of the larger pieces of U.S. Military equipment that were abandoned in Afghanistan, and have been subsequently seized by extremists, after Democrat President Joe Biden decided to pull out from the nation.  "The Biden administration is considering launching airstrikes against the larger equipment," Axios reported.  "They also fear that such a move could provoke the Taliban at a time where the U.S. is focusing on evacuating people from Afghanistan."

The Editor says...
Fear of provoking the Taliban or offending the Muslims has been a false concern for decades.  Of course they'll be provoked if they're carpet-bombed.  Most of them will die, too.  But whether they are provoked or not, the Muslims are bent on world domination through force and violence.  We can let them take over, or we can resist, but there is no way to just ignore them and hope we can all get along with each other.  The Chinese would probably like to take over the world, too, and already the Chinese have shown that they have no use for the Muslims.

The Drooling Class.  In one fell swoop, the administration left billions of dollars of military equipment in the hands of the barbarous anti-American Taliban; broke the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance by bugging out without warning to its members who were in Afghanistan in support of our mission there; left as many as 50,000 Americans and tens of thousands more of our Afghan allies to the not so tender mercies of the enemy; and on Friday Biden lied about it all.  It's not that most of us wanted this Afghan Mission Impossible to continue forever.  It's just that there's a right way to do it.  President Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a well-conceived plan.  It included preconditions on the Taliban and the removal of all U.S. military equipment and civilians before any group withdrawal.

Dear President Biden,.  I wouldn't normally write.  Watching your policy agenda fail is something I enjoy, but this isn't policy, this is lives. [...] First, you are Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces of this country, and this country has the strongest military in the history of the planet.  There is literally no reason to cower in fear of a band of luddite zealots.  You shouldn't have pulled out our troops before bringing out our civilians and Afghan allies, nor should you have closed Bagram Air Base, but you have to know that by now.  If you don't, you should resign immediately as you are beyond incompetent and an active danger to the people of this country.  Since Hamid Karzai Airport is so small compared to Bagram, our ability to get people out is severely limited.  Send troops to retake Bagram.  This will speed up the process and make supplying people on the ground easier.  I know there is risk in retaking anything, we could upset the Taliban.  But here's how you do it.  You tell them we are doing it, that we're going back to Bagram, and if any of their fighters so much as jaywalk in front of our personnel going there, every single one of them our troops come across will be killed and we will bomb the absolute hell out of every single place they are from the air, particularly their leadership.

Aftermath of an Afghanistan Debacle.  In Afghanistan, the mission failure appears complete.  The trillion-dollar project to plant Western democracy in a Muslim nation historically fabled for driving out imperial intruders has crashed and burned after 20 years, and the Taliban are suddenly back in power.  After investing scores of billions in training and arming a force of 350,000 Afghani troops, the U.S. could not stand up an army and a government that could survive our departure.  And the final U.S. departure from Hamid Karzai International Airport may become, like JFK's Bay of Pigs, a synonym for American debacle.  Nor is the failure ours alone.  Many of our principal allies were heavily invested.  The British are now attempting to bring their people out of Kabul under the same conditions as ours.

Three and a Half more Years of Biden-Harris.  The takeaways from Afghanistan, which were the takeaways from Vietnam, are 1) We can't fight other people's wars for them; 2) we can't social-engineer backward countries into being card-carrying members of the "community of civilized nations" (a dwindling club as-is); and 3) we must rediscover this truth:  A country exists to safeguard and promote its national interests.  A nation isn't a philanthropy, a police force, or both.  America doesn't exist to police and/or "transform" the world.

Note: All material below was once located on an overflow page, but has now been rejoined with the main page.

US general tells British special forces:  Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you're making us look bad.  I understand that the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter.  Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue has told his British Army counterpart, a high-ranking field-grade officer of the British army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, that British operations were embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar U.S. military operations.  I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request.

After the Debacle:  Six Concrete Steps to Restore U.S. Credibility.  The indelible images from Kabul this week have done serious damage to U.S. credibility abroad.  The Chinese Communist Party media mouthpiece, the Global Times, has already used the chaos in Afghanistan to warn Taiwan that the United States cannot be counted on to come to its aid when China eventually attacks the island.  There will be ample time to assess how things went so wrong so quickly for the Biden administration in this still-unfolding crisis.  We fully support our diplomats and troops as they execute their mission to evacuate U.S. citizens, allied diplomats, and the United States' Afghan friends over the coming days and weeks.  Rather than get drawn into a political blame game over the harrowing scenes the world is watching on TV, we believe it is far more important for the United States to immediately take steps to shore up its alliances and diplomatic standing, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.  Fortunately, there are efforts that can be undertaken without delay to reassert U.S. leadership.

Biden Can't Escape Blame for Afghanistan Fiasco.  The American-nurtured Afghan military of the last 20 years that had suffered thousands of prior casualties evaporated in a few hours in the encirclement of Kabul.  Enlistees apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were still better than fighting as a dependency of the postmodern United States — despite its powerful diversity training programs.  Forces more powerful than the Taliban, in places far more strategic, will now leverage an ideologically driven but predictably incompetent administration, a woke Pentagon and politically weaponized intelligence communities.  Why not, when President Joe Biden trashes both American frackers and the Saudis — only to beg the Kingdom to rush to export more of its hated oil before the U.S. midterms? [...] And why not, when our own military jousts with the windmills of "white supremacy" as Afghans fall from U.S. military jets in fatal desperation to reach such a supposedly racist nation?

Fire the military and intelligence bigs who bungled Afghanistan — now.  There are many lessons to learn from the disastrous US pullout from Afghanistan, but there is one that we should take home right now:  Failure must be punished.  The United States has been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years.  It has been obvious for the last few years that we would be leaving soon.  Former President Donald Trump wanted to leave Afghanistan, but the generals managed to slow him down and wait him out.  Instead of making plans, they stonewalled.  When President Joe Biden ordered them to get out, there wasn't a lot of time for planning, but they managed to get what they did wrong.  US forces fled Bagram under cover of darkness, with no warning to anyone.  (But botched even that, turning off the lights as they left, which gave looters free rein for many hours before Afghan officials showed up.)

6 Reasons China, Not Just Taliban, Benefits from US Exit From Afghanistan.  [Scroll down]  China now could have access to oil, copper, and rare earth minerals in Afghanistan, experts say.  The communist regime also will want infrastructure, roads, and railways to access mining areas.  The connection would be part of China's "Belt and Road Initiative," a multi-trillion-dollar strategy of investing abroad to gain influence over other countries.  "China benefits immensely" from the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, said Marco Rimanelli, a professor of political science and international security at Saint Leo University in Florida.  "By expanding the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese are using a form of predatory capitalism by making nations completely dependent on China," Rimanelli told The Daily Signal.  "Once a country is unable to pay back its debts, China tries to extract political concessions."  China has used this model to gain leverage in Africa and in Latin America, often in smaller countries with extensive natural resources.

Lara Logan confirms what we feared about Afghanistan.  Biden's pullout from Afghanistan has been the worst managed event in American history.  With Saigon as an example, the administration knew exactly how bad it would be.  There's a lot of finger-pointing going on now but, at bottom, people are wondering if the unconditional Taliban takeover, including the trapped Americans, is a deliberate policy.  On Tucker Carlson's Wednesday show, Lara Logan said, "Yes, it is.  This was what the government wanted." [...] [Unlike Japan,] We never flattened Afghanistan.  Instead, we imposed ourselves on top of a medieval Islamic country, including the whole LGBTQ+ madness.  It worked for those already geared to Western values and those looking to take American money.  The Afghan military, many members of which were brave fighters, clearly would never be ready to lose their training wheels — with our military being the training wheels.  Some of you may remember this video, which embodies problems of both culture and competency:  [Video clip]

Assabiya Wins Every Time.  Democrats and Republicans are right to blame each other for the fall of Kabul.  It's a loss for America's bipartisan foreign policy establishment as a whole.  For nearly two decades Washington sent thousands of Americans to their deaths and spent trillions of taxpayer dollars to wage a strategically pointless war.  And because both sides of the political divide should be held accountable, military as well as civilian officials, too, it is unlikely that anyone ever will be.  Since everyone is to blame, holding anyone accountable implicates everyone.  The reality is that America lost its war in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, roughly around the time when CIA officers began bribing aging warlords with Viagra.  The Americans knew all about the young boys the tribal leaders kept in their camps; because the sex drug helped Afghan elders rape more boys more often, they were beholden to America's clandestine service.  Losing Afghanistan then is the least of it.  When you choose to adopt a foreign cohort's cultural habits, customs for which the elders of your own tribe would ostracize and perhaps kill you, you have lost your civilization.  Yet military strategists, political pundits, foreign correspondents, and even historians will spend the next several decades wondering how a gang of rough Pashtun tribesmen galvanized by a fundamentalist version of Islam managed to defeat the most advanced military in the world.

Afghanistan's Tragic Collapse And The Death Of U.S. Influence.  It's one thing to lose a war intentionally, quite another to botch it so badly that it damages our relations around the world.  But thanks to the epic ineptitude of the Biden administration, our military leaders and dysfunctional intelligence agencies, that's exactly what has happened.  The news couldn't be more depressing.  Our president's response was, no joke, a strongly worded letter to the Taliban from our United Nations ambassador.  At the same time, our own State Department informed U.S. citizens now stuck in the capital of Kabul that they should make their way to Karzai Airport if they can, but that the U.S. can't guarantee their safety.  Even as the horrible images of the Taliban's takeover come tumbling in over social media and news sites, the harm to the U.S. and its global reputation has been significant.  The Taliban has already started killing people, including a woman for not wearing a burka, while making up more comprehensive death lists of those who will be summarily murdered once it takes total control.

If You Live in Taiwan, Time to Worry.  Taiwan needs to worry about American reliability.  Unlike Afghanistan, where the United States had committed its forces for two decades, Taiwan has no U.S. forces and no assurance that the United States will come to their defense if attacked by China.  The United States has a bad habit of walking out on its allies and friends.  The list is long.  It includes Vietnam and Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran.  In all of those cases, one way or another, the United States, for its own reasons, took a hike.  Obama pulled U.S. troops from Iraq, opening the door to Iran.  While the United States has a few thousand soldiers still in Iraq in training and advisory capacities, they're under siege and it's unlikely the United States will protect them.  In fact, President Joe Biden has said the United States will end combat missions in Iraq by the end of 2021.  Unless U.S. troops are pulled out in the middle of the night, as they were in Afghanistan, they'll quite possibly have to shoot themselves out while exiting.

The 'Thank You for Your Service' Red Pill.  One thing we need to examine is our dogmatic praise of the military and its members.  For the last 80 years, since the great shift to the post-World War II order, the military has become a hallmark of the American regime.  But this was not always the case.  Praising a professional military, especially a massive, standing army in times of peace, would have been antithetical to American virtue to most Americans living during the first 150 years of our history.  During the founding, for instance, professional soldiers were seen for what they are:  mercenaries.  We debated some after establishing our regime about if and how much we needed some small portion of a professional cadre of soldiers, but I have never come across a founder who did not see professional soldiers essentially as scum.  Ours was to be a republic, and republics cannot use mercenary armies.  The hallmark of the American military was the citizen-soldier — the direct opposite of the professional.  The logic is simple.  There is something less than admirable about someone who would fight and kill for a living.

The very center of all US problems is the rejection of Christianity.  Christianity has always been hand in hand with the greatest empires.  The abandonment of Christianity has always led to the collapse of any nation or people or family or person who abandons it.  This is an axiom. [...] Christianity itself is the most difficult way of life to live.  Any other religion is far, far easier, because they don't require of the faithful what Christ does:  everything.  Many people use "Christianity" as a brand to justify their own existence and behavior.  Look at Imposter Joe, for example.  He claims to be a "devout Roman Catholic", yet he supports gay marriage, abortion anytime anywhere, and acts like a pedophile at times.  He is false.  He probably doesn't think he is false, and many who prefer him because of political (not religious) reasons will participate in perpetuating the delusion.  But "by [his] fruits", we see he is no follower of Christ, he is instead, a hijacker of Christ, using the Lord's good name to get ahead politically among seculars.

The Pandemic Gave Americans A Taste Of Government 'Help' And They Didn't Like It.  It's fair to say Americans, especially the pre-revolution colonists, have always had a healthy skepticism of government.  What's frightening is some days we seem dangerously close to losing the unique quality that separates this country from every other.  The Washington Examiner's Byron York posted last week in his Daily Memo some interesting data that tells us a lot about Americans' attitudes about their government.  He tracked a long-term Fox News survey in which respondents are asked which message they would send the government if they had the chance: "lend me a hand" or "leave me alone."  Over the course of the last decade, only in August 2020 did a majority (57%) say it would ask for government help.  In that same poll, 36% said "leave me alone."  This year, however, the numbers were flipped — 47% said "leave me alone" while 44% still wanted aid.

Our Ridiculous Way of Fighting Wars.  As we look at the disgraceful coda of the Global War on Terror and the tens of thousands of our countrymen who have been maimed or killed with scant results, it is clear to all but few (sadly, those few seem to occupy a lot of Defense Department jobs and think tank posts), there must be a better way to fight our wars.  If we look to history, and even demands from the anti-war Left, we might find a better way forward. [...] Which "victory" was more decisive:  World War II or Vietnam?  Are we to believe that timelines are beneficial to every type of work (construction, budgets, school testing, sports), but when it comes to deploying our military efforts that is the one thing that somehow needs zero accountability for how long it takes?

Tucker Carlson:  We must hold someone accountable for what is happening in Afghanistan.  There's a pattern, if you look around for a moment, you may notice things that add up:  gas lines, inflation, spiraling crime, collapsing cities.  If you're over 40, it could look familiar.  It's the 1970s, but without the free speech and Brezhnev running our government and, as if it could get more perfect, now we may have another fall of Saigon.  Remember the fall of Saigon?  If you were watching television in April of 1975, April 30th, you remember it well.  It was the single most humiliating day in the history of the United States abroad.  American officials fleeing in terror as a peasant army swept through the capital city, desperate civilians clinging to the struts of helicopters as they took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy.  It was a complete disaster.  It was a total ignominious defeat.  We'd spent more than a decade in Vietnam and in the end, we lost.  So no matter how you felt about that war, it was painful to see it happen and nobody wants to see it again.  Last month, Joe Biden promised we never will see it again.

Why Everything We Thought About Drugs Was Wrong.  Over the last 20 years the U.S. liberalized drug laws.  During that time, deaths from illicit drugs rose from 17,000 to 93,000. Two and a half times more people die from illicit drug use than from car accidents; five times more die from drugs than homicide.  Many of those people are homeless and die alone in the hotel rooms and apartment units given away as part of the harm reduction-based "Housing First" approach to homelessness.  Others are children found dead by their parents on the floors of their rooms.  Many progressives today say the problem is that we didn't go far enough, and to some extent they are right.  A big factor behind rising drug deaths has been the contamination of cocaine, heroin, and counterfeit prescription opioids with fentanyl.  Others say that concerns over rising drug deaths are misplaced, and that alcohol and tobacco kill more people than illicit drugs.  But drug deaths were rising in the U.S. long before the arrival of fentanyl, and most of the people who die from tobacco and alcohol do so in old age, not instantly, like they do when they are poisoned or overdose.  Of the nearly 90,000 people in the U.S. who die of alcohol-related causes annually, just 2,200 die immediately from acute alcohol poisoning.

Accountability for Afghanistan.  It is probably too much to expect that there will be accountability for the debacle in Afghanistan — we have a Democratic president, after all.  But we can still hope.  We can turn to the foreign press for their perspectives on what is happening.  France24 posted this video of chaos at Kabul's airport:  [Video clip] [...] One country that isn't withdrawing its people is Russia.  They expect to get along just fine with the Taliban.

My scooter was stolen last week. Unknown to the thief, I hid two Airtags inside it.  [Thread reader]  I was able to use the Apple Find My network and UWB direction finding to recover the scooter today. [...] Here are a few lessons learned if you're using Airtags for theft recovery:
  [#1]   Use an Airtag adhesive that blends in and muffles noise.  It's clear my thief was looking for them.
  [#2]   Do not turn on Lost Mode.  It immediately alerts the thief they're being tracked.
  [#3]   Act quickly, before the anti-stalking feature kicks in.  Damage done to my handlebars was likely in response to the regular noises from the Airtag.
  [#4]   Limit your in-person interactions and always involve the police.  Don't try to retrieve your stolen goods until you have backup.

Where was the US Navy when Iran Took Over the Strait of Hormuz?  Neither Congress, nor President Biden, nor even the U.S. Navy has registered interest in the following alarming developments in the Gulf of Arabia, first reported by Israeli intelligence.  On Tuesday, August 3, at least six ships off the coast of the UAE in the Gulf of Oman suddenly announced via their Automatic Identification System trackers, nearly simultaneously, that they were "not under command."  In other words, they had lost power and could no longer control their steering.  Shortly afterward, Britain's maritime trade agency reported a "potential hijack" unfolding off the UAE coast.  One of the stricken ships, the Asphalt Princess tanker, was boarded by operatives suspected of being Iranian troops, seized and towed into Iranian waters, and then released the following day.  This was not the first attack against a tanker off the UAE in the Gulf of Oman.  Iran apparently used one or more armed drones to carry out a deadly tanker attack the previous Thursday against the Mercer Street in those same waters.

'Preppers' Quietly Stock Up for the 'Perfect Storm'.  A crippling ice storm that left Travis Maddox and thousands of other Missouri residents without power in 2007 had an "almost apocalyptic feel to it."  "No one could move.  It just shut the whole region down for two weeks.  I wasn't as prepared as I thought," said Maddox, a burly man of 43, sporting a long black beard, T-shirt, cargo pants, and baseball cap, while tending his garden.  Those two weeks made Maddox realize that being prepared — "prepping," as it's called today — was the key to a life of self-reliance and personal freedom.  As an Eagle Scout, he never forgot the Boy Scout motto:  Be prepared.  "To me, the ultimate level of prepping is being self-sufficient.  You're still being modern, but you're in control," Maddox told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5.

British Commentator's Monologue on the Nature of Freedom Will Make You Stand up and Cheer.  I've never heard of Neil Oliver before today, but I am now following him on social media and I can count myself as a bonafide fan after reading his Twitter timeline and watching this incredibly moving and salient monologue on the nature of freedom.  Oliver is an archeologist and podcaster out of the United Kingdom. [...] But it's not his accent or his smooth, calming tones that are most engaging.  Oliver's most recent weekly monologue on freedom and the nature of freedom is a must-watch for everyone, but especially those who believe freedom is a privilege that can only be meted out with the guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen.  Oliver's monologue is quite Mike Rowe-esque, and should be shared everywhere.

Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future.  In 2019, Steven Spielberg called for a ban on Oscar eligibility for streaming films, claiming that "movie theaters need to be around forever" and that audiences had to be given "the motion picture theatrical experience" for a movie to be a movie.  Spielberg's fury was about not only the threat that streaming posed to the in-person viewing experience but the ways in which the streaming giant Netflix reported theatrical grosses and budgets, despite these not being the ways in which one evaluates whether a movie is good or not.  Netflix held firm, saying that it stood for "everyone, everywhere [enjoying] releases at the same time," and for "giving filmmakers more ways to share art."  Ultimately, Spielberg balked, and last month his company even signed a deal with Netflix, likely because he now sees the writing on the wall:  Modern audiences enjoy watching movies at home.

Will China bail out Biden?  Renmin University professor Jin Canrong has Washington's attention.  The senior director for China at the US National Security Council, Rush Doshi, cited him two dozen times in a new book entitled "The Long Game:  China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order."  Professor Jin's warning on Friday [7/30/2021] at the "Observer" website that US inflation might lead to the bankruptcy of the US government will be read carefully in Washington — especially because Jin claims that China can help America out of its economic problems.  "The United States is in a state of mental transition," the Chinese academic averred, citing the late Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  America was in denial three years ago, and shifted to anger, but "some sane people may be ready for the third stage," and "be ready to bargain."

Did Karl Marx Really Know What He Was Talking About?  [Scroll down]  Perhaps Marx's communist economic model reflected how he lived his personal life.  To put it bluntly, Karl Marx was a lifelong free-loader, was always in debt, and was constantly begging for money to pay his bills from his mother, his wife's family, and from a generous, rich Friedrich Engels (whose father was a rich industrialist!). So, while Marx was busy attacking the industrialist class, he was living off the money of a rich industrialist, an extraordinary brazen act of hypocrisy by the "leader of the proletariat."  Although he lived in poverty in a poor section of London, Marx had a family maid, Helen Demuth, although he really couldn't afford one.  In 1851 while Marx's wife was away on the Continent begging for money, Marx impregnated the maid and fathered an illegitimate son, Fredrick Demuth, who Marx never saw and totally abandoned.  It gets worse.  To cover up Marx's betrayal of his wife, professed principles, and public image, Engels agreed to pose as the father of Marx's illegitimate son and paid off the maid to keep quiet.

Slouching Toward Dictatorship.  "Progressives" (the quotes flag the falsehood behind the label) are corrupters of reality who think nothing of corrupting even science in order to achieve their goals.  Taking no lessons from history and drunk on political power, they move ahead to make the state command every aspect of our lives in the mad obsession to own us.  Their contempt for reality punches us with "justice" that kills babies because they happen to be on the wrong side of a mother's abdominal wall.  It thumps us with "reasoning" that makes killing a non-human creature a criminal act and killing a human being legitimate because Homo sapiens is not on a list of endangered species.  And so it is that the government in an America adulterated by "progress," exercising a power taken from its people by eviscerating the Constitution, has the "authority" to control every aspect of our lives.  And that includes everything we own and everything we need to stay alive.

Conservatism Is Over:  A New Vocabulary for a New Right.  [Scroll down]  Surveying American life and government in 2021, the failure of American conservatives cannot be denied.  What we lost was precisely the vision of American governance and virtues that Benjamin Franklin warned us would be a struggle to maintain.  Equality under the law?  Despite successes in recognizing the humanity of previously oppressed minority groups, the free market has enabled a crass commodification of legal representation that ensures many Americans must routinely settle for inferior counsel.  Another sign of bias in the legal institutions is that informed citizens who aren't lawyers can reliably predict the outcome of key cases merely by learning the number of the circuit court before which they will be argued.  But the betrayal of equality under the law isn't only evident in formal court proceedings — it can be seen in things like the increasingly discriminatory affirmative action policies in higher education, or the Biden Administration's overt racial favoritism in allocating COVID relief funds.

There's Something Happening Here...  There is an undercurrent going on that is felt but not seen at this time.  Stills's words expressed great dissatisfaction with the national government, estrangement of government from the discontented, and a sense that the government is ignoring and does not care about the masses.  There is a real sense of physical threat by the progressive government against the people.  And there is a real arrogance by the powerful government elite that the populist masses, including the patriots, just cannot do anything about progressive abuse of power.  A real sense of estrangement, isolation, and unfairness that the outsiders felt in the '60s, is what the patriots (conservatives/Christians/constitutionalists) feel today.  There appear to be many events happening all at once and closely linked that give hope.  And the people are aware and noticing.

Taiwan Is Next, but Should We Care?  Taiwan is a small island state (about 24 million inhabitants) in the western Pacific.  There, Chinese nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, took refuge following the fall of China to Mao and the Chinese communists in 1949. Since then, Taiwan has remained a contentious issue for Beijing's communist government, which has vowed to "reunite" Taiwan with mainland China either peacefully or through force of arms.  But let there be no doubt:  Taiwan is one of the brightest lights of freedom and prosperity in the world.  Fully democratic, Taiwan routinely holds free and fair elections.  Taiwan elected a female (Tsai Ing-wen) as the country's (yes, I will refer to Taiwan as a country!) president in 2016 and remains staunchly anti-communist.  President Tsai was reelected in 2020 with a historically strong majority.  Taiwan boasts a significant free market economy, producing the 20th-largest GDP globally — incredible for such a small population.  And Taiwan's per capita income ranks with that of the United States.

What Is to Be Done?  Restore Federalism and Elect DeSantis as President.  One of the things the Left hates most about the United States of America is that there are 50 of them.  A leftist revolution is more easily accomplished in a country in which power is already consolidated in a single place among a small group of people.  Despite the vast territory of the Russian empire under the last of the Tsars, Lenin was able to hijack the initial anti-Tsarist revolt and turn it into a Bolshevik seizure of power.  Over the course of the centuries, similar things have happened in France, England, and Germany. [...] The system of checks and balances instituted by the Founders cooled the passions as it was designed to do, rejecting the "fierce urgency of now" in favor of gradual change.  From 13 east-coast colonies to 50 states, marked by deep regional differences, America weathered the storms of civil war, anarchism, socialism, National Socialism, and communism without succumbing to any of them.  But the hammering on the gates of our republican democracy has only grown louder and more insistent.

The radical left is going to wish Rush Limbaugh had lived to age 99, when they see the people who replace him.
The only reason the media tries to cancel Joe Rogan: He terrifies them.  Joe Rogan is staying one step ahead of Cancel Culture, but not if the media has anything to say about it.  The host of "The Joe Rogan Experience," the podcast sensation who joined Spotify last year following a jaw-dropping $100 million deal, is under near-constant attack from his woke critics — and, sadly, journalists who pledge allegiance to the new woke order.  The short list of complaints against Rogan?
  •   He's too willing to speak to fringe players like conspiracy monger Alex Jones.
  •   He's too willing to give "problematic" voices like Abigail Shrier, a critic of the trans agenda, a platform.
  •   He's too willing to question the government's COVID-19 dog-eared rule book.
  •   He's too willing to curse out Cancel Culture.
  •   He's too enamored of free speech, worst of all.
Rogan invites guests on his show who have been deplatformed by social media giants (Jones, for example).  He blasted Joe Biden as too old during the heat of the 2020 presidential campaign after endorsing an even older Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primaries.  More recently he brought up President Biden's mental fitness anew, something the mainstream media refuses to consider after years of questioning the mental state of Donald Trump.

When 'Woke' is More Sacred than Old Glory.  On my desk is a framed political cartoon with the caption:  "Burning the American Flag is a form of free speech?  Try burning a rainbow flag and see if that too is considered a form of free speech?"  You could replace "rainbow flag" with "BLM flag," or even "Antifa flag."  The cartoon lances the recent rise in free-speech hypocrisy that promptly abandons the First Amendment and drums up hysterical charges of "hate speech" when certain sacred cows du jour are so much as mildly criticized.  In the Left's campaign to "fundamentally transform" America and rid it of soi-disant racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other perceived ills, certain symbols — the American flag, and a panoply of images of western culture — have been isolated as representative of "the white patriarchy," deserving of derision and destruction.  Therefore, it has become perfectly acceptable to desecrate them.  At the same time, it has become hateful to even give a disapproving look to banners or murals representing the LGBTQ+, militant black groups, or anything remotely leftist.  "Woke" symbols are untouchable; free speech [notwithstanding].

Liberals do have more mental health issues.  [Elizabeth] Condra offers few opinions as to why liberals have more mental health issues, such as "an unrelenting focus on oppression, verbal violence, and microaggression."  And while I do agree with her analysis, I think it's an even deeper issue.  Conservatives are inherently more grateful for the country we're born into.  It's in the very name we call ourselves:  we want to "conserve" our country.  Progressives want it to "progress" into something else.  Conservatives are more focused on micro-values (improve myself to be the best I can be) and liberals on macro-values (improve society to be the best it can be).  The problem with focusing on macro-values is it's a lot harder to change society.  I have massive influence over my own disposition and perspectives, but I have little effect on society at large.  Conservatives are more logical.  As much as I might want to change society into improving, I know that logically I can control only myself and perhaps influence those around me.  So I am not depressed when my efforts at producing a "utopia" fail.  Conservatives have more traditional values.  And, perhaps, those values have been around for centuries because they make a happier society, not just due to the evil "patriarchy."

America's 'forever war' is here to stay.  America's withdrawal from Afghanistan is already leaving chaos in its wake.  The power vacuum will be exploited by the Taliban, Islamic terrorists, Russia and China.  The disregard for America's strategic interests and the resulting human calamity could end up matching President Obama's callous dismissal of the ISIS threat.  These days, both Republicans and Democrats think blasting a policy of "forever wars" makes for a good line.  The refrain may score cheap points with voters, but it also telegraphs to the world that America is increasingly conflict-averse and tired of leading on the world stage.  Make no mistake: an increasingly aggressive Communist China waits in the wings to assume that mantle.

A brilliant Twitter thread perfectly explains what drives today's conservatives.  Darryl Cooper, AKA MartyrMade, is a researcher, writer, and podcaster who has put together one of the most brilliant Twitter threads you will ever read.  Over the course of 35 tweets, he examines fact after fact from the last five years to explain why conservatives — the people who used to believe in our government, in law enforcement, in the election process — have become cynical, disillusioned, and prone to accepting conspiracy theories to explain the manifest breakdowns in the American system.

Great Thread on How the Election Was Rigged, and How the Nation Was Stolen.  [Scroll down]  Not a single person has gone to jail.  Even Kevin Clinesmith, the fall guy — and no one believes he forged that document without orders from Comey or McCabe or Lisa Page — got community service, and what was, effectively, a one month suspension of his law license.  Not a single other person paid any price.  And we're supposed to keep believing in the government, huh?  We're supposed to keep enlisting in the military?  We're supposed to keep obeying the laws?  We're supposed to keep believing the FBI and law enforcement?  We're supposed to keep returning "guilty" verdicts at trial when the Ruling Class tells us to?  Why?  The Ruling Class ignores the laws.

Does the Biden Administration Understand Inflation?  There seems to be a lot of confusion today about inflation.  Pick up the paper or follow an internet site and you will read that the inflation rate this year is expected to be 2% or 3%.  What they really mean is that prices are expected to rise 2% or 3%.  But is that inflation?  Inflation is an increase in the money supply.  So why is the difference in definition critical?  Prices rise because of inflation; they are the result of inflation but they are not inflation, nor are they the cause of inflation.  This is important because the government is the only one that can increase the money supply.  This is done in a number of ways, but for the moment just think of it as printing more money.  That is what countries have done when they ran out of money; they just printed more money until it came to the point where their money was almost worthless, where a wheelbarrow load of money would just barely purchase a loaf of bread.

The Costs of Biden's Big Government.  The Biden administration submitted its first 10-year budget to Congress last month.  The budget projects average annual economic growth for 2023 through 2031, after it's done with all the stimulus spending in 2021-22, of 1.9%.  What does 1.9% growth mean?  Economist John Cochrane, of Stanford University's Hoover Institution, notes that from 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at 3.5% per year.  Average real income over that period grew from $16,000 per person to $50,000.  Suppose instead of 3.5%, growth over that period of time was 2%, asks Cochrane.  With average growth of 2% instead of 3.5%, a $16,000 income would have grown over the 50 years to $23,000 rather than $50,000.  In recent years, since 2000, average growth has been more sclerotic, in the range of 2%.  What's the problem?  Too much growth of government, says Cochrane.

America's Ruling Class and China's Ruling Class Are More Similar Than You Think.  In the oft-cited issues of the day, we discuss censorship in public spaces, corporate and military institutionalized wokeness, Critical Race Theory indoctrination of our youth in publicly-funded government education centers, upending traditional cultural norms, domestic surveillance of political opposition, an election no one is permitted to question, enormous spikes in murders and drug deaths across every major American city coupled with the demonization of law enforcement, a financial sector that is increasingly working against the interests of working and middle-class Americans, and a manufacturing base that has been sold off to our greatest world rival, the People's Republic of China (who bears responsibility for a deadly worldwide pandemic that likely emitted from their dangerous lab experiments in Wuhan).  If you dare to speak out about any of the above, you risk ostracism, reputational attacks, career termination, banning from public discourse, removal from payment processors, and in the most extreme cases, prosecution.  Why is this happening?  Because there is a 1% in America that wields powerful influence over the rest.

Why This Veteran Worries Wokeness Is Poisoning Our Military.  Jason Beardsley served his country in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Special Forces before taking the helm as executive director of the Association of the United States Navy.  Today, he's speaking out to urge military leaders to focus on their primary mission of defending America — not advancing the left's woke agenda.  Beardsley recently wrote a commentary for The Daily Signal about the challenges of readiness and morale in the U.S. Navy.  "Wokeness is well on its way to poisoning our military, even as it claims the military is moving toward utopia," Beardsley says.  He tells The Daily Signal that his own military experience taught him radical ideas like critical race theory have no place in our armed forces.

In a cancel culture, anonymity must be a civil right.  Anonymity, in ordinary times, is a tough topic to wrestle with.  These days, however, it's easy:  Dissent, and thus democracy, will only survive in today's culture if anonymity is preserved.  That's why the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down California's donor-disclosure law was correct and crucial.  In Americans For Prosperity v. Bonta, the court struck down California's law requiring all charities and other nonprofit organizations to disclose their donors.  California, in defending its law, was in effect trying to demolish the precedent set in NAACP v. Alabama, in which the court barred Alabama from requiring the NAACP to disclose all of its members.  Freedom of association is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution.  Supreme Court jurisprudence holds that if a government wants to regulate it, the government needs a compelling interest, and the regulation needs to be narrowly tailored.  California's law clearly didn't meet these standards.

Is It a Conspiracy Theory to Say All This Racial Discord Is Intentional?  What do CRT, the 1619 Project, BLM, and white supremacists have in common?  All promote the depraved idea that some Americans are sufficiently different from others not to have a common interest in a unified country, a melting pot of immigrants of all races and ethnicities connected with the binding force of nationalism.  The left denounces nationalism repeatedly even though it is the sole force that holds an entity like the United States together. [...] Vladimir Putin, the first suspect who comes to mind, grew up in an empire that stretched from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean. [...] Putin now looks at the United States to see a multiracial and multi-ethnic nation that is very similar to the former Russian Empire in terms of everything except the binding force of nationalism — the idea that an American is an American regardless of what he looks like or where his ancestors came from.

Will EU Christophobia Drive Hungary Out?  Respect LBGT rights or get out of the EU, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte instructed Hungary's Viktor Orban at last week's gathering of the European Union in Brussels.  According to Reuters, attendees described it as the "most intense personal clash among the bloc's leaders in years."  What caused the clash?  Hungary just passed a law that bans schools from using materials seen as pro-homosexuality.  According to the AP, the new law "prohibits sharing content on homosexuality or sex reassignment to people under 18 in school sex education programs, films or advertisements."  Rutte eagerly related details of his confrontation with Orban:  "It was really forceful, a deep feeling that this could not be.  It was about our values; this is what we stand for."  "I said, 'Stop this; you must withdraw the law, and if you don't like that and really say that the European values are not your values, then you must think about whether to remain in the European Union.'"

Has the Military Lost Middle America?  Traditionalist and conservative America once was the U.S. military's greatest defender.  Bipartisan conservatives in Congress ensured generous Pentagon budgets.  When generals, active or retired, became controversial, conservative America usually could be counted on to stick with them.  Flyover country supported marquee officers such as Gen. Michael Hayden, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. David Petraeus and a host of others when the media went after them for alleged unethical conduct, financial improprieties, spats with the Obama administration, or accusations of using undue force or hiding torture.  When Democrats railed in Congress about the "revolving door" of generals and admirals leaving the Pentagon to land lucrative board memberships with corporate defense contractors, Middle America, rightly or wrongly, mostly yawned.  Yet traditional America also assumed its military leaders were largely apolitical and stayed out of politics.

China vs. America.  There can be little doubt the United States is now in a contest with China over which will be the most important country in the world.  In important respects, we are replicating the German challenge to the United Kingdom prior to World War I and the renewed German challenge of the 1930s, or the Soviet challenge for 45 years after World War II.  As China grows stronger and bolder, and especially as the United States fumbles its way through periods of great distraction and internal political strife, the Chinese — like Hitler — become more brazen and provoking.

What does woke heart surgery look like?  As a practicing cardiovascular surgeon for 25 years and member of both organizations, I look with deep regret upon the embrace of woke ideology and obsession with skin color.  It will lead, I suspect, to diminished membership appeal and prestige, a distracted focus and mission, and less respect for surgical heritage, in time, in both organizations.  The elite surgical leaders, working within academia, have ignored the surgical majority in the ACS who do not support this political dogma or identity politics in general.  As a kind of secular religion, woke ideology dictates that a person (in this case, a surgeon or a patient) is considered not as an individual, but rather as a member of a group, a category, based on skin color or sex or both.  Woke ideologues reduce all persons in society, it seems, to the simple binary categories of white and non-white skin color, which are defined further as oppressor and victim groups, respectively.  A person as an individual becomes irrelevant.  The profession of surgery, in my opinion, needs to disregard this harmful ideology, preserve meritocracy, and maintain race and sex neutrality.

Should children be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance?  The United States flag is a symbol for freedom, and freedom is essential to life.  It stands for individual rights, and individual rights are essential in order to pursue happiness.  When I pledge to the flag, in my mind I know that I am pledging to the original ideals put forth by the founding fathers:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Therefore, it is logical to say that you're teaching children about the fidelity that the Pledge represents — the fidelity of the concept of individual rights.  By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Americans promise to be true to these ideals, not to take freedom for granted, and to remember the countless men, women, and children who have given their lives through the centuries so Americans can live peacefully today.  When children recite the Pledge, they are given the opportunity to think about their roles as citizens, the founding principles of their country, and may be incentivized to think more about the meaning and significance of the Pledge.

America Needs Critical Infrastructure Training.  The United States has 16 key critical infrastructure sectors, each one providing a vital service to the country.  These include the chemical sector, the communications sector, IT and transportation, to name just four.  As the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns, the "incapacitation or destruction" of these sectors "would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof."  Distressingly, the "incapacitation" or "destruction" of at least one of these key pillars looks increasingly likely.  Every 39 seconds, somewhere on the planet, a cyberattack occurs.  The United States is now the most targeted country in the world.  Last year alone, the United States was the victim of 65,000 ransomware attacks; that's more than one every eight minutes.

JoeBamanomics — An Honest Outlook of Inflation and What is Coming.  Despite the deflective talking points by the professional financial pundits this massive spike in inflation is entirely predictable due to Biden economic policy and Biden monetary policy.  Keep in mind the FED has already said in April they would "support inflation" but that's because while they will not say it openly they know there's no way to stop it.  The massive inflation is a direct result of the multinational agenda of the Biden administration; it's a feature not a flaw, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with COVID.  Also keep in mind the first group to admit what is to come are banks, specifically Bank of America, because the monetary policy is the cause.

This item is presented for what it's worth, with a big grain of salt:
County gathering celebrates local law enforcement.  Northeastern Nevada sheriffs were recognized Sunday [6/20/2021] for their special role in government, as a crowd of a few hundred people gathered in Elko City Park to celebrate Elko County becoming part of a "constitutional sheriff" organization. [...] Ramos introduced author and former Marine Corps officer Robert David Steele as the driving force behind Mack's "Arise USA" tour. [...] Steele cited major threats to America as traitors, Wall Street criminals and satanic pedophiles.  "The National Security Agency has every single email, cell call, text, game chat and banking transaction for every traitor, every elite pedophile and every Wall Street criminal and every corrupt government official at the local, state and federal levels," he said to applause from the crowd.  "And I remind you that no army of lawyers are going to be able to stand up to an Army Ranger battalion with fixed bayonets.  We're coming."  "I will tell you with absolute certainty that the thing that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff fear most is not jail, but us releasing their 10 most treasonous phone calls to their own public," he continued.  "They will be torn limb from limb on their own streets."

General Insists Military's Not Woke, Just Wants to Study 'White Rage'.  After claiming to be "personally" offended over accusations the drag queen-loving U.S. military is woke, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley said, "I want to understand white rage, and I'm white."  Oh, okay, because that's not woke at all. [...] Okay, just for starters, only an idiot would see skin color as a factor in the January 6 protest in and around the U.S. Capitol (which was mostly peaceful, per the corporate media's own definition) January 6 protest in and around the U.S. Capitol, but here's a question that should put a chill up everyone's spine:  Why is the U.S. military brainwashing our troops with the openly racist ideas behind Critical Race Theory that push the wild and wicked claim people with white skin are inherently evil and racist oppressors?  I'll tell you what this sounds like to me.  Like the U.S. military is studying up on its next enemy, and not to "understand" this enemy.  No, to dehumanize this enemy in a way that will justify making war against this enemy.  This is exactly what happened at Waco in 1993.

Ingraham: Congress should halt military funds after Gen. Milley's support for 'far-left Marxist ideology'.  On Wednesday [6/23/2021], Laura Ingraham, host of "The Ingraham Angle," blasted General Mark Milley for propagating a "far-left Marxist racist ideology" in the U.S. military over his support of Critical Race Theory.  Milley testified before the House Armed Services Committee and was questioned concerning diversity training and racism within the ranks of the military.  He stated that he found recent attacks on the military over those issues "offensive."  Milley voiced his support for Critical Race Theory and he blamed the Jan. 6 riot on "white rage."  "I do think it's important for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read," stated Milley seemingly insinuating that troops were closed-minded and uneducated.  "The fact is, Milley has made his choice," noted Ingraham."  And he's chosen to indulge the radical whims of Democrats.  He'll do everything they tell him as long as they keep the military-industrial complex flush with cash."

A Terrible Day for the Republic:  Biden and His Top General Strike at America's Foundations.  In testimony before the House Wednesday [6/23/2021], Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about the military's new emphasis on politics and critical race theory.  Milley's testimony is telling in many ways.  He didn't deny the military is pushing CRT and its ideas down the ranks.  How could he, with so many whistleblowers calling his military out on it?  The nation's top general leads in this segment by suggesting that he's merely studying critical race theory and wokeness to understand them as a military leader should study ideas to understand their nature and whether they pose a threat or not.  That would be fine, even commendable, if it was true.  As Sun Tzu wrote, know your enemy.  But then Gen. Milley, America's top soldier, gets within inches of trashing the United States Constitution, which he swore an oath to defend with his life.

What will become of the useful idiots?  As the Marxist revolution oozes forward, I occasionally wonder what will happen to the useful idiots when the commies seize absolute power in this once great Republic.  I believe that most AT readers are familiar with the term, but for those who need a brief refresher, a useful idiot, as defined by Wikipedia, "is a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically used by the cause's leaders." In my opinion, this definition can be applied to a majority of the young, brainwashed radicals who have no idea about the true history of Marxism...or the real history of their native land that they're working so hard to destroy.

The DeSantis doctrine.  The term 'Florida man' usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you're talking about Ron DeSantis.  The first-term Republican governor's approval ratings have reached 64 percent; a recent poll had him at 55 percent, still high for an unabashed conservative in a swing state.  Enterprising apparel companies are already selling 'DeSantis 2024' gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters.  The Florida governor also bested Trump in a straw poll conducted during June's Western Conservative Summit in Denver.

Cancel Amazon Prime.  Today is Prime Day. [...] The holiday was invented by a corporation in honor of itself, to enrich itself.  It has existed for six years and is observed by tens of millions of people worldwide. [...] Prime is Amazon's greatest and most terrifying invention: a product whose value proposition is to help you buy more products.  With 200 million subscribers worldwide, it is the second-most-popular subscription service on Earth, poised to overtake Netflix in the not-so-distant future.  This popularity is both extremely logical and a little perplexing.  When you subscribe to Prime, you're paying to pledge your fealty to a single company's ecosystem — something that consumers once wanted to avoid.  You're paying to have your every purchase cataloged — also something consumers aren't wild about, at least in theory — so that Amazon can use that information to sell you, and people like you, more goods.  You're paying to become part of a system that is purpose-built to keep you paying, forever, and to keep Amazon growing, forever, [...]

Petition to Remove Admiral Michael Gilday as Chief of Naval Operations.  Our military is under attack by "anti-racism" activists whose message is that white America is racist.  "Critical Race Theory" is the academic discipline that is used to justify the attack.  Critical Race Theory is a hateful Marxist fiction that maintains America is evil because the majority of its citizens are white, and that its Constitution is evil because it was written by white people.  The agents of this dogma, including those lecturing at the Naval War College, teach that white people — from the Founding Fathers to the 200 million white people in the country today — are oppressors, who are an internal enemy[.]  Critical Race Theory began by destroying the moral integrity of colleges and corporations.  Now its target is the U.S. Navy.  Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday has told the third of a million naval personnel that they should be reading and learning from Ibram X. Kendi, a mediocre, fact-challenged university professor who has become the go-to "anti-racism" expert for America's woke elites.

'Where Are The Admirals?  Where Are The Generals?  Where Are the Veterans?'.  On 17 August 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower prescribed a Code of Conduct for members of the Armed Forces of the United States.  The purpose was to inform each service member in a combat unit about their basic responsibilities when engaged in combat or if they were captured by enemy forces. [...] Given the inherent and undeniable virtues of this colorblind, merit-based system based upon shared values, the Armed Forces of the United States travel a pernicious and destructive path if they embrace Critical Race Theory, with its core belief that America and her citizenry are irredeemably racist, along with the tenets of "white supremacy," "whiteness," "white privilege," "white fragility," and "systemic" or "institutional racism."  Critical Race Theory does not build up, it tears down.  There is nothing aspirational or uplifting about it.  And as a springboard to establishing "diversity" as a goal unto itself, as its own concurrent priority, inculcating those values into troops will not equip the military to succeed at its first, and most important goal, which is to fight and win in armed conflict.

Candace Owens and Brandon Tatum Are Not Who They Pretend to Be.  [Scroll down]  I have said it in my past writings. the Black community is not a monolith; there are many shades and structures of the Black community, just as with any other community.  It is the political Left and Right that wants to reduce the depth and breadth of our contributions to the nation and the world to a monolithic structure.  Just as the Black community is not a monolith, neither is Black conservatism.  I enjoy listening to viewpoints among the various aspects of Black conservatism the same as I do hearing the viewpoints among legacy conservatism and the new young cons.  Why are the differences accepted in one camp, but impossible to conceptualize in another?  What I will focus on is what results from platforming the disingenuous, and we are seeing this disingenuousness in Owens' behavior of late.  What results is a loss of credibility, and a rejection of the concepts on which you are supposed to be an authority.  This is bad not just Blacks in general, but for conservatism specifically.

Woke, Inc:  Why I'm blowing the whistle on how corporate America is poisoning society.  I used to think corporate bureaucracy was bad because it's inefficient.  That's true, but it's not the biggest problem.  Rather, there's a new invisible force at work in the highest ranks of corporate America, one far more nefarious.  It's the defining scam of our time — one that robs you of not only your money, but your voice and your identity. [...] I'm fed up with corporate America's game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money.  It is quietly wreaking havoc on American democracy.  It demands that a small group of investors and CEOs determine what's good for society, rather than our democracy at large.  This new trend has created a major cultural shift in America.  It's not just ruining companies.  It's polarizing our politics.  It's dividing our country to a breaking point.  Worst of all, it's concentrating the power to determine American values in the hands of a small group of capitalists, rather than in the hands of the American citizenry at large, which is where the dialogue about social values belongs.  That's not America, but a distortion of it.

Leftists are a minority... so why do they keep winning?  The truth is, normal, happy, well-adjusted people don't really care about politics — or care only when they are forced to by rioting mobs of looters in their cities.  Normal people of any and all colors don't want to tell you their pronouns, chemically castrate their sons with puberty-blocking drugs, or defund the police.  They're neither oppressors nor oppressed.  They just want to live their lives in peace, attend their kids' soccer or baseball games, and enjoy summer afternoons grilling[.]  Therein lies the problem:  it turns out that, with a very few exceptions, the absolute worst people on the planet — the kind of people who were hall monitors in high school and enjoy creating and enforcing petty regulations on their fellows — go into politics.  These are the entitled few who believe that rules and regulations are for other people, never for themselves — the grifters, tax cheats, and adulterers who run for office instead of working for a living.

Critical Race Theory Will Destroy Our Military.  As a young Marine Corps first lieutenant assigned to an infantry battalion in the late 1980s, I had charge of the unit transport section of operators, mechanics, and supervisors tasked with taking care of our fleet of combat vehicles. [...] Everything just worked and worked well.  Why?  Because they were all Marines, wearing the same uniform, supporting the same combat organization, serving the same country.  They all had been through the same training.  They had to measure up to the same standards.  They had to make the same cutoff scores for promotion.  They humped the same combat loads, ate the same field rations, fired the same qualifications at the rifle range, suffered the same annual refresher training for proper use of gas masks.  They worked the same long hours in hot and sweaty, cold and damp, sunbaked or frigid or windblown field conditions, tolerated the same irritating micromanagement, and enjoyed the same positive leadership interventions from higher headquarters. [...] It was wonderful.  I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if each person in that section had been pitted against each other, assessing his fellow Marine's trustworthiness or reliability or capability based on the color of his skin.

The case for Congressman Trump.  In his article "Will Trump run in 2024? A fascinating clue from Don Jr.," Thomas Lifson sets forth a credible scenario in which Trump is keeping his options open, while a possible presidential successor, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, proves his bona fides.  If no messy skeletons jump out from DeSantis's closet, he is a dream presidential candidate: brilliant, patriotic, practical, and empathetic.  Should that come to pass, Trump would give another gift to America.

No Leaders Attended the G7 Summit.  [Scroll down]  And that brings us to the picture of the G7 leaders on the beach in Cornwall.  Nobody who watches the film of these people arriving, coming down the boardwalk carefully spaced, hygienically elbow-bumping in lieu of shaking hands, and finally taking up positions for their photo op — nobody would believe these people are world leaders.  Because they aren't.  They aren't running the western world.  They are run by the people who really are running the western world — people whose names we don't know.  The people on the beach in Cornwall are there simply in recognition of the working man's need to see an elected head of state.  They are actors.

Four Ways I Am Preparing For The Dollar's Collapse.  In the era of financial and societal insecurity, I have taken it upon myself to best prepare for the unknown.  Will inflation wipe out my savings?  Will the price of common goods become unaffordable?  Will the effects of Critical Race Theory implode on our shared cultural and societal underpinnings?  These are critical questions with serious repercussions if and when the answers come to fruition via the affirmative.  In the event there is a massive fallout, whether from inflationary pressures or a collapse of civic coexistence among the alleged classes of the oppressed and oppressors, it is better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.  I would prefer I never discharge my firearm, and despite the bland taste, I would much rather dine on soon-to-be-expired cans of beans out of parsimony than out of necessity.  However, if catastrophic changes sweep through the country and those items are vital for either short-term or long-term survival, then it is literally the difference between life or death.

Social Mobility is a Lot Less Mobile Than We Thought.  Inequality is the worst thing in the world.  Even my racist neighbor at the top of the hill with his BLM "Equality Hurts No one" yard sign knows that.  And we have gubmint programs to the tune of 36 percent of GDP per annum working like mad to un-hurt people from the horrors of inequality.  Only, writes Gregory Clark in The Son Also Rises:  Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, all that lovely lucre hasn't made much difference to social inequality.  The scions of the elite pretty much stay in the elite.  Almost everywhere in the world, from way back.

The Coma Before the Storm.  [Scroll down]  Grandpa Badfinger is a rickety joke, bumping elbows with his younger fellow-incompetents at the G7, wandering about mindlessly chasing moths until his ridiculous wife, with her ridiculous "Dr.", wrangles him back into the hapless pack.  You look at this sorry set of leaders of the formerly-free world and the vibe you get is "exhaustion."  There's no energy, no drive, no hope.  Boris Johnson, formerly a man, explained to a bored UK that that "nations coming out of the pandemic need to 'build back better' in a 'greener,' 'more gender neutral and perhaps a more feminine way.'"  Hack clichés are their solution, but these relics have nothing else.  They are weak and stupid and they represent a spent elite that cares about nothing except just a little more time holding fast to their uncertain sinecures.

Once You Realize The US Government Is An Organized Crime Syndicate, Everything Makes Sense.  CDMedia wrote weeks ago that our sources informed us the alleged 'ransomeware' attack on the Colonial Pipeline was not a foreign operation, but likely executed by domestic entities for monetary, or political gain.  Some have entertained the thought of internal strife between U.S. government agencies, essential criminal gangs, reaping the benefits of organized money laundering on a massive scale.  Now we learn the FBI reportedly seized the millions of Bitcoin paid by Colonial pipeline for the alleged ransom.  Was the hack was solved so quickly because there's a power struggle between the FBI and the CIA going on?  In that story, did the CIA hack the pipeline and the FBI decide to punish them?  In Russia this is common.  Different security agencies of the Russian secret services are in regular competition for illicit gains.  The FSB regularly takes over businesses to reap ill-gotten profit.  Corruption is what the Russian system is built upon.  This is what Obama and his minions have brought here.  Think about it, if parts of the U.S. government are in bed with the Chinese Communist Party, looking to rape the American people of trillions of dollars, agriculture, energy, and so on, then the entire Russia!  Russia!  Russia! hoax makes perfect sense.  Blame it all on the rival criminal gang!

Living With the Limits of Our New Clerisy's Knowledge.  [Scroll down]  Unfortunately, the new clergy seem too fallible to take on trust.  They flip-flop on expert advice and one scientist denounces the other on YouTube.  Once things seemed more cut and dried.  Once we were at the End of History.  Science could predict the future more or less and the public hoped with increasing accuracy.  Ever since the 17th century, the expectation was that the scientific revolution would supply the answers. [...] In the coming years, the new clerisy will come forward with even more global solutions, endorsing trillion-dollar multidecade proposals in the fields of climate engineering, genetic alteration, and artificial intelligence.  In each case the public will be asked to trust the science — to put all our eggs in the expert basket.

Why the government cannot answer the UFO question.  The anticipated release of a government report about UFOs (or UAPs) later this month has created a lot of public discussion about what might be included in that report, and perhaps more importantly, what might be excluded.  But in the end, the government does not know, nor can it, what the UAPs really are, or are not, because they are a paradox. [...] That paradox is this:  any nation (or organization) that possesses the technology to do what the UAPs are reported to do would have in its hands such power, such force, such a threat that no one could oppose it.  Yet we see no evidence of any nation wielding such power, an inaction that would be highly implausible were they to have it.  Another paradox is that the development and manufacture of such technology would require enormous scientific infrastructure.

Fighting Woke Capital.  If were trying to define this term and understand what it means, it's rooted in the fact that the biggest businesses, the most powerful institutions, the most powerful banks in this country have aligned themselves against us.  Now that is an obvious fact, you see it in a number of ways.  A couple of years ago Stacey Abrams said, about a Georgia abortion restriction, that this was a bad bill because it was bad for business.  That was the argument of our new corporate, neoliberal class.  And she was right.  This is something that those of us on the right have to accept.  When the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to parent children, Stacey Abrams is right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business.

'Woke' Asset Managers Rip You Off — Using Your Money.  If most Americans noticed at all the election of at least two climate-focused dissidents to ExxonMobil's board, they certainly missed the significance.  But they may soon notice as ExxonMobil and other companies knuckle under to climate activists, leading to higher energy prices for American consumers.  Note the little victory dance by three massive asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — in the Wall Street Journal.  Their votes elected dilettante climate activists, who own approximately 0.02% of the oil giant's shares, because "Exxon's yearslong refusal to make board directors available for frank conversations irked investors."  Yeah, right.  Big Finance pulled the rug out from under Big Oil for one simple reason:  To feather its own ample nest, using your money.

Biden's 'Made in America' Tax Plan Destroys Any Incentive for Anything to Be 'Made in America'.  The United States has spent the last decade-plus destroying most of the reasons to create Intellectual Property (IP) in the United States.  This is more than a mite problematic — given we are in the nascent stages of what will increasingly be an Information Economy.  Where more and more of what we do will be digital and thus require more and more IP.  The US has three branches of government.  All three have been actively attacking IP and its creators.

The Great Conservative Migration.  In fact, my wife and I were part of the migration.  We lived for 36 years in American Siberia — otherwise known as Minnesota.  Politics in Minnesota has always been dominated by the Democrats.  However, in recent years it has taken a decidedly radical turn.  When Keith Ellison — former supporter of the Nation of Islam and attorney to cop killers — was elected attorney general, we knew it was time to leave.  This anti-Semite, race baiter, and woman abuser was now the state's top law enforcement official.  What could possibly go wrong?  One year after we left, the George Floyd riots happened.  That's what could go wrong.  We moved to the small town of Star, Idaho.  I call Star the nicest refugee camp in the world.  It's a community of new housing subdivisions, wonderful schools (that don't teach Critical Race Theory), numerous churches, and friendly people.  It has also doubled in population in the last 10 years — almost entirely from west-coast transplants.

The U.S. Military's Love of America:  We need to find a way to get our country back.  Most of our uniformed service members — and most Americans — believe in the fundamental goodness of our great country.  And they want to preserve it.  But fighting for what is right means first understanding the truth about what is happening.  We have the world's most powerful military and it is an all-voluntary force.  We all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  We believe in the sanctity of that oath.  All of our civilian and military leaders take the same oath.  Today we are confronted with a very serious domestic enemy which, if left unchecked, will threaten our way of life and our ability to remain a beacon of freedom and a leader of the free world.  The threat has been allowed to exist in our educational systems over many years and has gained additional support and momentum with recent left-leaning media which shapes public opinion.

Joe Biden is the last person in America who will criticize China.
Biden must rally the world against an increasingly malevolent China.  "We must pass the history of the Holocaust on to our grandchildren and their grandchildren in order to keep real the promise of 'never again,'" President Joe Biden said in a statement earlier this year marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  "That is how we prevent future genocides."  Today, there is a dark and evil force testing the world's resolve to keep its "never again" promise.  In western China, Xi Jinping's tyranny is showing what a genuinely racist regime does.  Through violence and persecution, he is attempting to eradicate the remnants of a racial minority's culture and religion.  The resemblance to the Nazi genocide extends even to Xi's liberal use of concentration camps, where rape, torture, and indoctrination have been part of daily life for hundreds of thousands of prisoners.  Oh, and then forced labor for the ones who are able to escape.

The Middle East Dispute Is About Religion, Not Land.  If you've seen videos of recent attacks on Jews in New York City, Los Angeles, London and elsewhere, you may have missed a very revealing aspect of those attacks.  They were almost always — as they have been for decades — accompanied by curses such as, "[...] the Jews."  Now, given that the perpetrators are almost always Muslims — whether immigrants or children of immigrants from an Arab or other Muslim country — two questions present themselves:  Why attack American or French or British Jews?  And why curse "the Jews"?  In other words, given that the recent wars have been between Hamas and Israel, why aren't these attacks outside of Israel on Israelis and Israeli institutions?  And why level curses at "the Jews"?  The answer is this:  The Muslims who seek Israel's destruction do so because Israel is Jewish, not because Israel occupies the West Bank or Gaza.

Ridicule is an Important Weapon, Keep Throwing Sand in the Machine.  Ridicule is an important weapon.  The left is overreacting to sunlight because they know the machinations behind their ideological endeavors are based on fraud.  In this brilliant piece of agitprop, the White House situation room looks at the landscape.

The Two Uncle Joes.  [Scroll down]  American military battle readiness, ingenuity, and cunning have been the core of our national defense spanning our entire history, from Steven Decatur and William Tecumseh Sherman to Chester Nimitz and George S. Patton, Jr.  Yet today our own politically driven Uncle Joe, with support from his newly appointed military commissars such as DoD Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, appears far less concerned with training and operational readiness than with mindlessly obsessing over the chimeras of right-wing extremism in the ranks and climate change.  I can assure Secretary Austin that yes, climate change will be a factor if an American city goes up in a mushroom cloud because our commanders were too busy trying to figure out a policy for how trans officers should be addressed or directing servicemen and women to the cause of saving the earth for Gaia.  A million degrees Fahrenheit is most definitely a significant change in climate, Mister Secretary.  You got that right!

Scott Atlas:  The Last Word.  The coronavirus pandemic has been a great tragedy, there can be no doubt about that.  But it has also exposed profound issues in America that now threaten the very principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted.  First, I have been shocked at the enormous power of the government, to unilaterally decree, to simply close businesses and schools by edict, restrict personal movement, mandate behavior, and eliminate our most basic freedoms, without any end and little accountability.  Second, I remain surprised at the acceptance by the American people of draconian rules, restrictions, and unprecedented mandates, even those that are arbitrary, destructive, and wholly unscientific.  This crisis has also exposed what we all have known existed, but we have tolerated for years:  the overt bias of the media, the lack of diverse viewpoints on campuses, the absence of neutrality in big tech controlling social media, and now more visibly than ever, the intrusion of politics into science.  Ultimately, the freedom to seek and state the truth is at risk here in the United States.

Newsmax Reporter:  "Colonial Pipeline "Hacker" Story Doesn't Add Up".  When this "Russsian Hacker" pipeline story first broke, I did a piece on how MANY people online didn't buy it.  They felt like there was a deeper plot afoot.  And now, more folks are saying this — even reporters over at Newsmax.  The reason being is because since this so-called "hack" happened, Biden has now caved to Russia in a big way — as a matter of fact, it's so big, that if Trump ever pulled off a move like this, he'd likely be impeached.  But suddenly, the party of "Russia boogiemen" no longer cares about "Russia boogiemen."

Donald Trump Should Not be the 2024 Republican Candidate.  [Scroll down]  While the manifestly unconstitutional Civil Service Act creates a lot of headaches, there's one thing that can be done immediately.  All "civil servants" who have been employed for longer than, let's say, five years, must be reassigned, preferably to an office at least a thousand miles from their present station.  This "stirring" will lead to a mass exodus of federal employees, most of whom should not be replaced.  This is crucially important in the DC area.  Those people cultivate news and business contacts so they can be enriched when they leave Uncle Sugar's employ.  And, as before, all security clearances must be suspended or revoked upon separation from government service.  Finally, President DeSantis needs to identify which "Republicans" cry loudest.  Their districts, along with those of the most powerful Democrats, should immediately receive "Most Disfavored Nation" status when it comes to government contracts.  This is fully legal and will cut the opposition off at the knees.

Top Retired Officers Are Right:  Biden's Leftism And 'Woke' Military Threaten U.S. Security.  The letter was not couched in military jargon or bureaucratese; it was plain-spoken and blunt in its concern about America's course.  It starts with a call for protecting our free and fair elections, but then turns toward the ominous political and cultural trends of recent years.  No need for a translation:  ["]Aside from the election, the current administration has launched a full-blown assault on our constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner, bypassing Congress, with more than 50 executive orders quickly signed, many reversing the previous administration's effective policies and regulations.  Moreover, population control actions such as excessive lockdowns, school and business closures, and, most alarming, censorship of written and verbal expression are all direct assaults on our fundamental rights.  We must support and hold accountable politicians who will act to counter socialism, Marxism, and Progressivism, support our constitutional republic, and insist on fiscally responsible governing while focusing on all Americans, especially the middle class, not special interest or extremist groups which are used to divide us into warring factions.["]

Two Actions [the] US Must Take in [the] Wake of [the] Colonial Pipeline Crisis.  After a group of cybercriminals known as DarkSide succeeded in causing massive disruption in the southeast with its ransomware attack on May 7 — which wasn't resolved until Wednesday evening — it became clear that U.S. infrastructure remains at risk.  The stakes are extremely high.  In our highly interconnected world, cyberattacks against critical infrastructure can leave us highly vulnerable.  As we saw with this DarkSide incident, a ransomware attack can cause immense (but fortunately short-term) economic disruption across a large segment of the country.  But state-based cyberattacks from countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea could lead to loss of property and even life.

This Time Israel Should Finish Off Hamas.  It is time to put paid once and for all to the evil terror organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have been attacking the heartland of Israel virtually ever since Israel freely gave Gaza to the Palestinians, first to the Palestinian Authority and then to Hamas after they murdered the PA officials in a mini-civil war and took over the territory as a fanatical dictatorship.  Every few years Hamas (and their now-billionaire leadership) seizes on something, some issue on the Temple Mount, a neighborhood where, in their view, too many Jews are moving in, and start a missile barrage, aiming to hit as many innocent civilians as possible and ignite the "Arab street."  The current barrage, thanks largely to Iran, is the biggest ever, with modern weapons that can reach the entire Jewish state with significant payloads.

Biden needs to tell Democrats that Hamas is the bad guy.  "Israel has a right to defend itself," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday [5/13/2021], as America's staunchest Middle East ally faced criticism for its retaliations against rocket attacks by Hamas.  It's an anodyne statement from the Biden administration with two problems.  First, it fails to state clearly that Israel is defending itself against a terrorist instigator.  Second, too many officials in Joe Biden's own party don't actually believe that Hamas is the bad guy here.  Before its recent attack on Israelis, Blinken and Biden seem to have laid out a somewhat reasonable strategy:  Support the more moderate Palestinian Authority and marginalize Hamas.  The Palestinian Authority is corrupt, to be sure.  But it at least does not view its political purpose through the lens of maximal Jewish blood.

Monopoly: An overview of the Great Reset — Follow the Money.  If you've been wondering how the world economy has been hijacked and humanity has been kidnapped by a completely bogus narrative, look no further than this video by Dutch creator, Covid Lie.  What she uncovers is that the stock of the world's largest corporations are owned by the same institutional investors.  They all own each other.  This means that "competing" brands, like Coke and Pepsi aren't really competitors, at all, since their stock is owned by exactly the same investment companies, investment funds, insurance companies, banks and in some cases, governments.  This is the case, across all industries.

Clean House in 2025.  When President DeSantis is sworn in at 12:00 pm on January 20, 2025, he should give a short speech and by 12:10 be firing people.  Lots of people.  Okay, it might not be the current Florida governor — we do know it's not going to be Gov. Nikki!  Haley (R - Establishment) or Kristi! Noem (R-NCAA) — but whoever beats Kamala Harris like a drum needs to come into the Oval Office ready to clear-cut the bureaucracy.  Just level it.  Every keen observer understands that Donald Trump's first and foremost failure as president was personnel.  He did not get it right until the end, and then it was far too late.

Are Americans Becoming Sovietized?  Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism.  Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.
  [#1]   There was no escape from ideological indoctrination — anywhere.  A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise or past achievement.  What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.  Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion.  Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.
  [#2]   The Soviets fused their press with the government.  Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist Party partners.  In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was negative.
  [#3]   The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.  Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments.  The U.S. Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.

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Federal Reserve turns the dollar into toilet paper.  Toilet paper was much on the mind of Americans Wednesday when Boston Federal Reserve chief Eric Rosengren told MarketWatch that today's higher inflation is as temporary as last year's shortage of paper products.  The toilet paper they were thinking about, though, was the green stuff in their wallets.  Rent asking prices rose an all-time record 17% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter 2021. Home prices rose 12%, used car prices rose 26% and freight costs rose 17%.  That's the biggest year-on-year jump on record for rent and used cars, and a near-record for homes and freight.  Recent data are even worse; used car prices are up nearly 20% during the first four months of 2021 alone, and gasoline is up 55% during the same period.

It Got Serious In A Hurry.  This exchange of imaginary money supposedly creates wealth effects that have replaced boring old savings, capital investment, and entrepreneurial activity as drivers of the economy.  Asset prices elevate, the government's GDP statistics hum while its inflation statistics slumber, and the rest of the world accepts FDIs for real goods and services.  There's even snake oil peddled by PhDs that blesses all this:  Modern Monetary Theory.  Wealth for all — without boring old work and deferred gratification — is just around the corner.  From the dwindling ranks of the reality-bound come those inevitable objections.  The key word in fiat debt instruments is debt, which carries an obligation to pay it back sometime in the future.  They can't honestly pay back the debt they have now, why are they adding to it?  The key word is honestly.  The plan is to issue so many FDIs that they depreciate the value of existing ones, making them easier to pay back.  None dare call it a swindle.

They Were Promised a Socialist Paradise, and Ended Up in 'Hell'.  On a bright August morning in 1960, after two days of sailing from Japan, hundreds of passengers rushed on deck as someone shouted, "I see the fatherland!"  The ship pulled into Chongjin, a port city in North Korea, where a crowd of people waved paper flowers and sang welcome songs.  But Lee Tae-kyung felt something dreadfully amiss in the "paradise" he had been promised.  "The people gathered were expressionless," Mr. Lee recalled.  "I was only a child of 8, but I knew we were in the wrong place."  Mr. Lee's and his family were among 93,000 people who migrated from Japan to North Korea from 1959 to 1984 under a repatriation program sponsored by both governments and their Red Cross societies.  When they arrived, they saw destitute villages and people living in poverty, but were forced to stay.  Some ended up in prison camps.

Talking the Talk on 'Climate Change'.  What are we to make of an article by William Hague, a former U.K. Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014, that predicts Britain's armed forces may one day be sent into action abroad to safeguard the natural environment from such predators as oil companies and loggers? [...] That prediction is startling from several standpoints.  To begin with, it could be read as confirming a frequent left-wing allegation — hitherto hotly denied by the British and other Western governments — that in the two Gulf Wars the West intervened not to prevent Iraqi aggression or to stabilize the Middle East but to get its hands on Arab oil.  I don't think that's true, as a matter of fact, but if it is, it's a big admission and a big news story.  And it was merely the first of several startling predictions.

Our Country Was Founded by Geniuses, but It's Being Run by Idiots.  The eminently quotable Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said sometime back:  "Our country was founded by geniuses, but it's being run by idiots."  I heartily agree, and the problem is not self-correcting.  The principles behind the formation of America's government were and are exquisite, but the American government, like all forms of government, is corrupt as [it can be].  This isn't an extraordinary statement.  Exquisite things often break, and even the noblest of institutions become distorted over time until the original purposes for their creation are eclipsed (and often contradicted) by the personal motives of the men running those institutions into the ground.  This phenomenon is apparent anywhere there is power.

Biden Deserves Zero Credit For Booming Economy, COVID Gains.  Take the GDP number.  Far from being in a Great Depression-scale crisis, the economy had been rapidly recovering from the government-mandated (and scientifically unjustified) lockdowns — with GDP leaping 33.4% in the third quarter of last year and another 4.3% in the fourth quarter.  When Biden took office, Q1 of this year was nearly a third over, and he didn't sign his "American Rescue Plan" into law until mid-March, just two weeks before the quarter ended.  So, even though checks started rolling out to people, that rescue plan was too late to have a significant impact on overall growth.  As a matter of fact, the GDPNow forecast for Q1 — which is a running estimate of the economy based on available data as they are released — was much higher before Biden signed his rescue plan than where it ended up.

Power back to the people.  According to conventionofstates.com, which tracks the progress of resolutions, 15 states have approved calling for a convention of the states to reign in what they believe is out-of-control government.  The support of 34 states is needed.  Thirty-eight states are required to ratify any proposed amendments.  The website says seven states have approved a resolution in one of their legislative chambers and 22 state legislatures will consider doing so this year.  The Founders saw state conventions as the ultimate safeguard against government overreach and a necessary workaround should Congress exceed its constitutional authority, which supporters of state conventions believe it has. [...] I have been on the side of the cautious on this issue, but as I see President Biden issuing record numbers of executive orders, bypassing the authority of Congress, and Congress on a spending binge that is driving the debt to record and unsustainable levels, perhaps threatening our very survival, I have come to the conclusion that nothing but a carefully organized and controlled constitutional convention can return power to where the Founders intended it to reside — with the people.  The reason government has become so dysfunctional and unwieldy is that it has for too long exceeded the boundaries originally set for it.

Using Progressive Means to Restore Liberty.  Globalism is the antithesis of nationalism — or should I say, patriotism.  CEOs of major corporations act like oligarchs who can do as they please as long as they have government on their side.  So, they donate hundreds of millions of dollars either directly or indirectly to the party of government and tilt the electoral process toward their friends in high places.  What's more, many of those big corporations have gone woke in an effort to please their Democrat allies.  In the aftermath of the recent intervention by much of corporate America into the controversy about Georgia's election law, many conservatives are awakening to the magnitude of this problem.  Scores of millions of Americans feel helpless in the face of this overwhelming threat posed to our liberty.

If We Lived in a Perfect World... 
  [#1]   CNN would have been pulled from airports and other public places long ago.
  [#2]   There would be no political censorship by Big Tech.
  [#3]   The media would all convey truth instead of agitprop. [...]
  [#7]   Hillary Clinton would be in jail.
  [#8]   Black Americans would realize that the Democrat Party has been abusing and exploiting them continuously since the days of slavery.
  [#9]   The Democrats would admit that "Trump-Russia collusion" was a hoax.
  [#10]   Barack and Michelle Obama would admit that they are racists.
  [#11]   The Lincoln Project would admit that they are not Republicans.
  [#12]   George Soros would be in jail. [...]
  [#14]   Taxpayer funding of PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have ended long ago.
  [#15]   Native American reservations would never have been established.
  [#16]   Hollywood would be producing patriotic movies.
  [#17]   The Ten Commandments would never have been pulled from public schools.
  [#18]   Clapper, Comey, and Brennan would be in jail.
  [#19]   Donald Trump would still be in the Oval Office (with no election fraud).
  [#20]   Abortion would still be illegal except for extreme cases. [...]
  [#24]   Barack Obama would produce his original birth certificate.
  [#25]   Lebron James would never again receive another endorsement contract.
  [#26]   Nancy Pelosi would have been voted out of office years ago.
  [#27]   The wall on the southern US border would have been completed decades ago. [...]
  [#30]   All federal forms would be English-only.
  [#31]   The US dollar would be backed by gold, just as it was for most of the country's existence.
  [#32]   All federal funding would be pulled from sanctuary cities and states.
  [#33]   All federal laws would apply equally to members of Congress and the Executive Branch without exception. [...]
  [#37]   All of Obama's records would be unsealed.
  [#38]   Any public school pushing Project 1619, critical race theory, and other cultural Marxist curricula would lose federal and state funding.
  [#39]   Planned Parenthood would never again receive another taxpayer dollar. [...]

Is America Led Today By Anti-Americans?  [Scroll down]  What other nation has provided the same measures of personal and political freedoms and material blessings for 40 million Black people as has the United States?  If people of color are treated "as less than human" in America, as Harris says, why are so many people of color seeking desperately to get across our Southern border to build their future here?  What is the real truth about race in America that goes unmentioned in the mainstream media's endless hunt for encounters between Black men and white cops?  The main perpetrators of violent crimes against Black Americans — are other Black Americans.  Black men, ages 16 to 40, are 3% of the U.S. population but commit roughly a third of America's violent crimes.  Defund police, restrict police, remove police and you will get more of what the police prevent — crimes, especially violent crimes, in your community.

Archbishop Vigano rips Vatican conference with Fauci, says Holy See 'servant of the New World Order'.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said an upcoming global health conference at the Vatican — with guests such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, Deepak Chopra and Chelsea Clinton — constitutes "the umpteenth scandalous confirmation" of Pope Francis leading the Catholic Church astray.  A new op-ed by the Catholic Church's former Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. blasts the pope and his allies within the Church for betraying the faithful by cozying up to "representatives of Big Tech ... a whole slew of abortionists, Malthusians, and globalists known to the general public."  "The Holy See has deliberately renounced the supernatural mission of the Church, making itself the servant of the New World Order and Masonic globalism in an antichristic counter-magisterium," the archbishop wrote Tuesday for LifeSite.  "The submission of the Cathedra veritatis to the interests of the Masonic elite is manifesting itself in all its evidence, in the deafening silence of the Sacred Pastors and in the bewilderment of the People of God, who have been abandoned to themselves."

How Much Ruin Do We Have Left?  As Americans know from their own illustrious history, any nation's well-being hinges on only a few factors.  Its prosperity, freedom, and overall stability depend on its constitutional and political stability.  A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military.  Perhaps most important is a first-rate inductive educational system.  Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm (often dependent on a reverence for the past) and secure borders.  The ability to produce or easily acquire food, fuel, and key natural resources ensures a nation's independence and autonomy.  Unfortunately, in the last few months, all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have been put into doubt.

How Empires End.  [Scroll down]  Chances are, future leaders will be just as uninterested in learning from history as past leaders.  They will create empires, then destroy them.  Even the most informative histories of empire decline, such as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, will not be of interest to the leaders of empires.  They will believe that they are above history and that they, uniquely, will succeed.  If there is any value in learning from the above, it is the understanding that leaders will not be dissuaded from their aspirations.  They will continue to charge ahead, both literally and figuratively, regardless of objections and revolts from the citizenry.

Comedy Is a Dictatorship's First Victim.  Humor has always been one of the first targets of a dictatorship.  It is no surprise that in America, comedians can no longer function because of rampant political correctness.  Thus, according to Mel Brooks, "we have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy.  Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks."

Not Dead Yet.  Our nation began with an initial declaration of independence and now every law and executive order from this administration is leading us toward dependence — debtor dependence, energy dependence, and government dependence for the begged permission to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.  The list of grievances and offenses are staggering and too numerous to mention and if one does, they are censored or banned by the government's confederate oligarchs of Big Tech.  It's a depressing situation and the truth of the matter is a sobering one.  The diagnostic is that in the predawn darkness of the morning of November 4, 2020, the American Republic flatlined.  The nefarious and somewhat dubiously defined Deep State does not want it revived.  We've got some work to do.

Every Physical Silver Ounce Has Been Sold Up To 1000x.  The silver price is today half of the January 1980 level.  That was the peak at $50 which silver reached again 31 years later in 2011.  But alas, the bullion banks, aided by the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and central banks have again managed to push it down again and today silver is only $26.10.  The current silver price has nothing to do with supply and demand.  In a real market the Price of Silver would be substantially higher.  In a fake market, the manipulators have no problem to suppress the price by selling virtually unlimited fake paper silver. [...] If a salesman has a demand for 1,000 items of a product of which he possesses the only one available, he will first rub his hands and then perform a victory dance.  He knows he will achieve an astronomical price.  And that is exactly what would happen in a free silver market.  But since the paper silver issuers know that they are dealing with totally clueless buyers who don't understand that there is no silver, they will continue to stuff the gullible buyers with more fake silver.  That is, until the buyers wake up and ask for delivery to find out that the silver vaults are empty.

Federalism In The Form Of Strong Governors May Be Our Only Hope.  I am not a Constitutional Scholar, but it seems to me that absent the specific granting of authority to the federal government, that the states have legal control.  Here the author is most exercised by the 17th Amendment (direct election of senators), but the trend has been clear since the War of The Rebellion; the accretion of power by the federal government and the creation of a vast regulatory state by exercise of this power.

The Federal Reserve Should Not Finance Insane New Spending.  Since the onset of the pandemic, Congress has been spending more money than ever.  The pandemic hit when it was already projected that in fiscal 2020 the federal budget deficit would once again top $1 trillion.  On October 16, however, USA Facts reported that the 2020 deficit was $3.1 trillion.  That's more than twice as much as the previous record of $1.4T set in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis.  On April 12, the Fiscal Times reported that the deficit for just the first six months of fiscal 2021 was $1.7T:  "In March alone, the deficit came to nearly $660 billion, driven in large part by $339 billion in pandemic-relief payments to individuals."  On top of that, the feds just enacted a $1.9T stimulus bill, and on March 31, Pres. Biden proposed his "infrastructure bill" that will run to $2.3T in new spending, and more new spending is promised.  A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon Americans will be thinking that no one in D.C. cares about the federal deficit anymore, and that the "deficit hawk" is no longer an endangered species but is extinct.

Russia Stuff And Our Corrupt Rulers.  This is all very depressing to see — the utter mendaciousness of our ruling class:  elected representatives of the American people, appointees, the military establishment, the intelligence community, and last but far from least, the media.  The corruption is so sweeping that you're left almost breathless.  And they're utterly feckless, to boot.  Let's start with Gilbert Doctorow [and his article,] Bombast From Washington:  Joe Biden's Russia Sanctions.  Doctorow first explains that nobody who understands the current shape of the world is taking those sanctions seriously.  Putin himself is obviously unfazed.  The DC armchair imperialists have crossed a red line, and Putin has responded — as Doctorow explains in a Postscript to his original article: [...]

Chauvin:  The Case Against the Mob.  One of the main arguments being advanced by Eric Nelson, sole attorney for Derek Chauvin in his trial for the murder of George Floyd, is that the hostile crowd itself prevented the officers from attempting to perform CPR in the last minutes of Floyd's life.  Even the prosecution's "use of force" experts admitted repeatedly on cross-examination that a hostile crowd would justify Chauvin keeping Floyd restrained until an ambulance arrived.  An officer's duty to provide care is overridden by his duty to keep himself, the suspect and the bystanders safe.  As was evident from the videos (and admitted to by the bystander witnesses), they were shouting obscenities at the police, threatening them with bodily harm and, in a few instances, had to be held back from rushing the officers.  And of course, because of the presence of the angry crowd, the EMTs themselves did not stick around to provide care, but did a "load and scoot," heaving Floyd into the back of the ambulance and driving three blocks to get away from the mob on the street.  They didn't even want to work inside an ambulance near this feisty group.  As it becomes increasingly obvious that the belligerent onlookers themselves may have gotten George Floyd killed by creating a dangerous situation for the officers, media commentators leap in to do backup work for the prosecutors by sneering at the idea that the officers might have felt threatened by a few rowdy teenagers.

The Real Reason for Daunte Wright's Death.  Daunte Wright, or at least the life he led, killed Daunte Wright.  He wasn't pulled over because he had air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror.  He was pulled over because he had expired tags on his license plate.  Then it was noticed that he had air fresheners hanging from his rear view.  Then it was noticed he had an outstanding warrant.  Then it was noticed he resisted arrest.  Then it was noticed he got back in his car and drove away from the police.  Which he had done before, as it turned out; Wright had fled from officers in June.  The circumstances from which that police encounter arose make for scintillating reading.  He was reported to the police for waving a gun around, and when the cops showed up it turned out Wright didn't have a permit for the gun.  He ran away.  And he was cited and ordered to appear in court.  He didn't, which occasioned the warrant for his arrest.  That's not all that appears on Wright's record.  There was the February arrest for aggravated robbery.  There was a disorderly conduct charge arising from a 2019 incident.  There was the guilty plea in late 2019 to possession and sale of marijuana.  And there was an arrest warrant for armed robbery; [...] In other words, this is someone who chose to be a penny-ante John Dillinger.  He ended up with the full ante.

Why Does Society Revere Drugged Up Black Criminals?  Breonna Taylor.  Dijon Kizzee.  Jacob Blake.  Daniel Prude.  Rayshard Brooks.  George Floyd.  Each name is or has been a rallying cry for both Black Lives Matter and every believer of the manufactured narrative that blacks are oppressed by a white supremacist system and then killed by racist police.  Had any of the aforementioned names been born of European descent and followed the same life trajectory, they would have immediately been discarded into oblivion after their unremarkable demise.  They would be lucky to even have garnered a footnote in the annals of police interactions.  It's not hard to see why.  Drugs, violence, and chaos are not the recipe for emulation.  However, our culture has chosen to make the deceased, black "victims" our focal point of idolatry, grievance, and remembrance.  What other culture has ever sunk to such depths?

Understanding How 'Critical Events' Lead to People Getting Killed by Police.  Most people would consider the death of George Floyd or Daunte Wright to be a critical incident.  They would make that rash assumption because they are "critical" to our political environment.  Many pundits and businesses are piling on because the same faulty assumption is applied to voter integrity laws passed in Georgia and under consideration in other states.  No one should be rash enough to discount the importance of these events.  But the term "critical incident" refers to a completely different concept — one that can inform how we address and prevent such public events.  The process of "critical incident analysis" is a method of examining a series of events to identify where a single critical intervention or altered critical choice would have brought the whole "chain of events" to a different conclusion.  Daunte Wright's death cries out for such an analysis.

How not to get killed when stopped by a cop.  I'd like to take a rational look at the confrontations among cops, motorists, and pedestrians.  When we see incidents of cops shooting blacks (which are the only shootings the media cover), one thing becomes clear:  resisting arrest often ends up with a loss of life.  Something else is obvious:  when a cop is the one losing his life, it's practically overlooked by the media.  When a police officer, whether during a traffic stop or a street stop, is making an arrest, the person being arrested has no right to resist.  If that person believes it's an unlawful arrest, he can make that argument at the station house or in a courtroom.  However, let's be clear about this:  the cop has the legal authority to make the arrest, simply based on the penal law.  Moreover, once the officer has uttered the words "you're under arrest," the only right that person has, under the law, is to submit to said arrest.

Is A Cultural Revolution Brewing In America?  There is a whiff of unease in the air as beneath the cheery veneer of free money for almost everyone, inequality and polarization are rapidly consuming what's left of common ground in America.  Though there are many systemic differences between China and the U.S., humans in every nation are all still running Wetware 1.0 and so it is instructive to consider what can be learned from China's Cultural Revolution 1966-1976.  China's Cultural Revolution was remarkably different from the Party's military-political victory of 1949.  Where the political revolution was managed by the centralized hierarchy of the Communist Party (CCP), the Cultural Revolution quickly morphed from a movement launched by Mao into a decentralized mass movement against all elites, including Party and state elites which had been sacrosanct and untouchable.  The Cultural Revolution is not an approved topic in China today, and that alerts us to its importance.  Although ostensibly launched by Mao (as part of his 1966 purge of Party rivals), the Cultural Revolution very quickly devolved into a decentralized, semi-chaotic movement of Red Guards, students and other groups who shared ideas and programs but who acted quite independent of the Party's central leadership.

It's Time to Call the Bluff of These Woke Corporations, Here's How to Make Them Pay.  Yesterday, news broke that somewhere around 100 companies joined a private conference call to discuss how to combat red states that dare have reasonable regulations around voting.  This is, of course, all stemming from the lies surrounding Georgia's recent election reform law. [...] Well, let's give them their wish.  Mitch McConnell should call up Joe Biden and say he's got a deal on raising the corporate tax rate as long as it's only on the Fortune 500.  Leave the small and moderate-sized businesses that are currently being squeezed by these monopolistic behemoths out of it.  Let the woke, virtue-signaling among us see what it's really like to live under unfettered, Democrat rule.

From American Dream to American Nightmare.  Our society has devolved into an oligarchy since The Epic of America was published in 1931, where a powerful few rule over a willfully ignorant many through propaganda, mistruth, fear, and an iron fist. [...] The real questions are why did the American dream turn into an American nightmare and is there a pathway back to the kind of country our forefathers created?  There are numerous reasons why the country has fallen far from its original conception as a proud defiant Republic to its current state as a dying empire of depravity, decay, debt, and decadence.  The conspiratorial creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of a Federal income tax in 1913 marked a true destructive turning point for America.  These two choices, implemented by greedy bankers and sleazy politicians, put the country on a road to perdition.  They centralized the power of money printing and confiscation of our wages at the point of a gun.

Guns of April and Global War.  In the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has squandered much of its time as the world's sole superpower.  Rather than winding down NATO's mission in a post-Soviet world, the West redirected and revitalized the alliance after 9/11 into a global military engagement against "extremism," with the U.S. fortifying its role as the world's policeman.  And rather than using the end of the Cold War to balance budgets and fix America's unstable financial footing, the U.S. aggressively burdened itself with new and unsustainable levels of debt.  In effect, the U.S. rejected the possibility of multipolar peace, assumed the role of global hegemon, and never saved up for a rainy day.

The Left Doesn't Want You to Believe in DeSantis Claus.  Is the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination already over?  "60 Minutes" seems to think so.  They did a dishonest hatchet job on one governor, leaving all the others jealous that the media doesn't think enough of them to try and destroy them before they become Joe Biden's nemesis.  That governor is Ron DeSantis of Florida.  "60 Minutes" didn't attack Greg Abbott of Texas.  They didn't attack Kristi Noem of South Dakota.  They didn't attack Doug Ducey of Arizona, or even Brian Kemp of Georgia. "60 Minutes" admitted which Republican fuels its nightmares by attacking Florida Man Ron DeSantis.  Governor Ron DeSantis is just 42 years old.  He may only be 5-feet-9-inches, but Florida's 46th governor is currently America's wise giant.  He's the most popular and the most successful governor in the land.  DeSantis is the governor who is calling the shots for all the others. [...] The state's media have been trying to hit him just about every day.  They're not targeting him because he's bad.  They're targeting him because he's right and he terrifies them and the Democrats.

The Hard Road.  The current regime in D.C. has some issues, to put it mildly, and its handlers are busy working to shore up its power.  Creating a faux internal enemy with the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, H.R. 1 election rigging, gun control, lawless immigration, Puerto Rico and D.C. statehood initiatives and a rash of executive orders are all part of a plan to give the Left unassailable political dominance and implement permanent one-party control.  The regime is moving fast, aware that traditional America is disorganized.  They realize that this sleeping giant will eventually awake, and they are racing to put in place the cage to contain it before it does.  History doesn't always repeat itself, but you can make it rhyme if you try.  In 2010, the Tea Party grassroots movement halted the Obama Administration's overt agenda to radically transform America.  It wasn't the GOP establishment, the RNC leadership, or the politicians who made the Tea Party the destroyer of utopian fantasies — it was the people.  More specifically, it was the little people — the grassroots.  The working class, the independent-minded conservatives, and the rowdy not-in-my-house Americans took back the House of Representatives and staved off the Democrats' planned transformation of America in a 2010 version of the spectacle we are seeing today.  We need to take the lessons learned from that grassroots Tea Party effort and make them rhyme in the present.

The End of an Era, or the Return to an Earlier One?  [Scroll down]  Now, one of the key factors on everyone's mind with last year's lockdowns, particularly for the kids, is their total isolation with respect to school and after-school activities.  These constraints are bubbles within bubbles that utterly inhibit all exposure to the natural world as well as direct personal interactions.  Part of that is enforced by an ever-increasing sense of danger in the urban environment where crime and degradation are expanding.  Flashing back to mid-20th century and before, kids could be 'feral' without any serious consequences as Mother Nature was steadily upgrading their sense of what being truly alive is all about.  If true, I believe there will be a steady shift to more conservative thinking as the autonomy and liberty of those new locations quietly enhances what was once a common denominator across this vast country.

The Kind of Leaders Needed to Save America.  First and foremost, the movement needs leaders who follow the True North principles of conservatism — principles based on the genius of America's founding and on the many lessons we've learned since; principles that have made this nation exceptional for nearly 250 years.  They include the idea that the federal government was created to protect fundamental freedoms and rights such as life, property ownership, freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, and the right to be treated equally under the law.  They encompass the concept that the government works for the people, not the other way around, and that taxes should raise the minimum revenue necessary to fund only the constitutionally appropriate functions of government.  They also include the notion that the greatest driver of prosperity for all citizens is the free enterprise system.

America Must Go Beyond Wishful Thinking About China.  Ever since President Richard Nixon's infamous 1972 trip to China, the West has deceived itself into believing that being nice to Red China is a win-win proposition.  The policy's underlying reasoning was that opening China up would expose the communist nation to freedom, which would induce its dictators to change and do what is best for the Chinese people.  Alas, how wrong the West has been.  The wishful thinking revolved around several myths about China.  The first myth is that by introducing a free market system into the country, the leadership would gradually adopt a capitalist-like scheme that would be communist in name only.  The West has long asserted that the Chinese have abandoned Marxist ideology and embraced world markets.  However, the Chinese have never stopped insisting that they are genuinely communist.  The more the West claims that China is not communist, the more the Chinese openly say they are.  The recent hardline developments of the Xi dictatorship have dashed the hopes of Western optimists.  Hong Kong and the persecution of the Catholic Church now offer bitter testimony that nothing has changed.

The Fed vs. the Real World.  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has made some interesting statements in recent weeks about the Fed's view of inflation.  In summary, Chairman Powell has stated that overall inflation remains below the Fed's 2% long-term objective, and that while reopening of the economy could produce price increases later in the year, inflationary pressures from rising prices are likely to be neither large nor persistent.  Given the transient nature of these effects, and a long history of deflationary pressures in the U.S. and around the world, Chairman Powell believes that inflation isn't something to worry about.  And in any event, Chairman Powell reassures us that the Fed "has the tools to deal with that [inflation]" should it rise above long-term target levels.  These statements stand in increasingly sharp contrast to the real world in which ordinary Americans live.

How 'It's Covered by Insurance' Wrecks Health Care.  A 58-year-old patient came to see me one Monday morning not long ago.  He was like so many in his age group — he had spent the weekend getting in a week's worth of exercise.  His left knee was sore, and he wanted an MRI.  He was not a professional athlete with a huge stake in his physical well-being, and he had not fallen on it or twisted it; it was simply sore from his three-mile jog on Sunday morning.  "It's covered by insurance," he told me.  Never mind that there was no medical indication to qualify this particular hurt for an MRI.  Never mind, too, that he has a $5,000.00 deductible on that policy.  Never mind, also, that his knee would very likely heal quickly with the simple intervention of rest, ice, and maybe some physical therapy.

Woke Wars:  Say the Magic Word!  Do you think that last week was Peak Woke?  What with Delta's genius CEO Ed Bastian falling into line to criticize Georgia's new election laws, What with MLB pulling the all-star game from Democratic Atlanta, What with Amazon joining in the fun.  And then there is the ticklish question of The Dam Busters movie.  I probably saw the movie, way back.  But did you know that the pilots of 617 Squadron had a black labrador, and its name was... unmentionable?  Tell me:  is the Woke Capital thing due to Big Business getting bullied around by lefty activist groups threatening to make trouble?  Is it CEOs getting a quiet word from Our Nance and Chuck E. Schumer?  Is it the wokey ladies in HR?  Or is it just Big Business trying to stay out of trouble?  The world would really like to know.

Where There Is Chaos.  We have been diligently working on film production efforts in the midst of an industry meltdown.  But that's actually good for a company such as 12 Round Productions.  The days of super blockbusters are not economically feasible in a theater industry decimated by Covid restrictions.  It is a time of scrambling in the film industry to produce and distribute films with Covid restrictions.  Now is the time to get our message out to the masses.  This environment forces productions to seek out low and ultra-low budget films for the streaming services.  The sort of films that can be made for $500,000 to $5,000,000.  The box office for the last week I saw was $28 million across all films for the entire week.  Two of those that were moneymakers were legacy animated films.  The message to be concluded from that, is that people were taking their children to see films now that the theaters are opening to a greater degree.

Who Killed George Floyd?  In the death of George Floyd, the State of Minnesota has charged former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder and former officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting that murder.  But, as will be shown in detail below, the physical, scientific, and electronically recorded evidence in the case overwhelmingly and conclusively proves that these defendants are not guilty of the charges and, in fact, played no material role in bringing about Floyd's death.  Instead, the evidence proves that, when he first encountered the police, George Floyd was well on his way to dying from a self-administered drug overdose.  Moreover, far from publicly, brazenly, and against their own self-interest slowly and sadistically killing Floyd in broad daylight before civilian witnesses with video cameras, the evidence proves that the defendants exhibited concern for Floyd's condition and twice called for emergency medical services to render aid to him.  Strange behavior, indeed, for supposedly brutal law officers allegedly intent on causing him harm.

There's No Way to Disprove That George Floyd Died of a Drug Overdose.  George Floyd, a violent criminal who had robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint, and a drug addict, is dead.  That much is clear.  What is also clear is that George Floyd's death was exploited to incite the massive BLM race riots that killed and wounded many people, destroyed lives, wrecked communities, tore apart a nation, and helped the Democrats take power.  The show trial now comes down to a very simple question, a few really, but one of the basic ones is what actually killed George Floyd.

How Stupid are American Voters? Very!  Perhaps stupid is not the right word.  Gullible is not right either.  It's really hard to pinpoint the main reason behind the disastrous state of our country but the cold hard fact is that many Americans have fallen for two of the biggest hoaxes perpetrated by the left, the media and corrupt politicians.  It's too simple to blame the voters of any particular party when the main culprits are the individuals who just can't be bothered with politics.  They don't want to get involved so they don't vote yet they complain when their taxes go up or their civil rights are taken away.  American voters have rarely come out in huge numbers on Election Day.  But last year for the first time in many decades, millions of people whose eyes had been opened to the hoaxes of covid-19 and global warming went to the polls but the damage had already been done.  The left had been planning a coup many years ago because they had control of the mainstream media to spew the politics of fear and envy and of course the stay at home voters allowed the Manchurian candidates to seize the legislatures, city councils and school boards.

Pence "Laying Groundwork" For a 2024 Presidential Bid?  Two media reports [Here and Here] about former VP Mike Pence considering a potential run for President in 2024 present the most laughable political hypothetical in recent memory.  Particularly, and specifically, because even President Trump would likely not include Pence in a short list of people for endorsement.

The Editor says...
Really.  Mike Pence is the least inspirational politician since Spiro Agnew.  Have a nice long retirement, Mr.&Nbsp;Pence.

As We Look For Others.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's recent self-disqualification as a potential leader bids us recall that the public will follow only those who actually lead them by personally defying the oligarchy.  Focusing on themselves is the worst thing that they can do.  Noem had seemed to be such a leader. [...] When the test came, she failed it.  A bill passed overwhelmingly by her legislature would have prohibited biological males from competing on girls' and women's teams.  She declared eagerness to sign it.  Then, the usual corporate executives threatened South Dakota business with boycotts, and the Chamber of Commerce transmitted the pressure.  Her claim to have followed the advice of unnamed "legal experts, legal scholars," was standard responsibility-shifting.

The Trump-Hate Coalition Is Crumbling.  It is remarkable to see how quickly the unified opinion against former President Trump and for the alleged necessity of removing him from the White House has cracked apart since that goal was achieved.  Following the inauguration, there were endless purposeful assurances that the former president would be pursued to the ends of the earth for his iniquity.  Even hard-bitten Fox News commentators like Brit Hume felt compelled to toe the line and denounce claims that the election had been rigged as discredited bunkum.  Questioning the integrity of the election result was considered tantamount to an attempt to continue the quest for insurrection, and questioning whether Trump had attempted to generate an insurrection was itself a racist offense.  The president-elect assured us that the January 6 assault on the Capitol was a white supremacist attack bungled by white supremacist Capitol police.  Racism, like treason with Russia four years before, was everywhere.

The Real Five Laws of American Politics.  To summarize:
  •   The next time a Democrat accuses a Republican of a scandal, start an investigation — of the Democrat.
  •   When Republicans say they'll work together if we just give them a chance — start identifying primary challengers.
  •   Never give up God-given liberties in the name of science — which is never really settled.
  •   When the government says, "we're here to help," ask them to help by leaving.
  •   Finally, the next time a politician "invests" your money, recognize that it's state-sponsored robbery — you're not getting anything back.

The Seventh Crisis and the Millennials.  Over the course of recent decades our country has endured an assault on its institutions, its traditions, and its good and decent people.  This relentless assault has driven the country into a grave crisis, causing it to pass through a great gate of history.  This crisis will be momentous, consequential, and we will be profoundly changed by it.  Our nation has experienced similar existential crises before in the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression/World War II.  Each of these crucibles brought about wide-ranging transformations.  As events have accelerated in the past several years, there appears to be little doubt the nation has entered another such crisis.

Women should not deliberately be sent into combat.  I know I will upset many readers with this column, but I speak from experience.  Women should not be combat soldiers on purpose and should not have combat commands, either.  This has suddenly become a pressing matter because Biden just nominated women to those positions.  I used the phrase "on purpose" because we can't always predict where fighting will occur.  Women in the military must, therefore, be trained and equipped to fight as effectively as possible.  However, we must not throw them into harm's way as a matter of course.

The Nature of Chinese Contempt for Us.  Last week in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese diplomats dressed down Biden Administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.  Both seem stunned by the Chinese broadsides.  Apparently, as elite Americans readily confess to inherent white supremacy and racism — highlighting the complaints of BLM and Antifa — the Chinese are happy to agree that such admittedly toxic Americans should not dare to criticize China's racist policies.  Not since newly elected President John Kennedy was humiliated at the Cold War Vienna summit in June 1961 by USSR strongman Nikita Khrushchev have American diplomats been so roughly manhandled by a Communist government.  China's defiant provocations are not just verbal.  Nor are they aimed only at our high officials.

Whenever You Disagree with Liberals, You're a Conspiracy Theorist.  The fact is that, unlike Jimmy Carter, Reagan and his advisers, including the formidable Jeane Kirkpatrick, knew who our friends were — and who were our enemies — and he backed this knowledge up with a willingness to use force.  That is the only basis for a foreign policy that will ever work.  Now, with Joe Biden, we have another Carter-style president who doesn't know friend from enemy and who wouldn't act if he had to.  That's just the kind of policy that brings on a confrontation, and one is coming because our enemies, sensing weakness, will press Biden as far as they can.

On China, Biden Is an Empty Suit.  The Biden administration continues to show itself to be an empty suit on foreign policy.  In the wake of the crisis, er, challenges on the southern border, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez called Biden "the migrant president."  After President Biden confirmed in an interview that yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "killer," Putin wished Biden good health and challenged Biden to a "basically live ... open, direct discussion."  Add China to the list of countries making us a laughingstock.  The opening remarks of last week's meeting between the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with China's foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Alaska clearly reveal that the Biden administration lacks a credible, substantive China policy.  There were several key takeaways from that meeting. [...]

Taming the Chinese Rare-Earth Tiger.  Synonyms for REE include rare-earth metals (REM), rare-earth oxides (REO), and lanthanides.  Unless writing technical papers, distinguishing among the various synonyms isn't worth the effort.  In general, REE are 17 elements that are critical in our high-tech world.  REE are not rare but are typically not found in significant concentrations anywhere in the world.  For example, large ore deposits with concentrations above 6% are virtually unknown outside South Africa's closed Steenkampskraal mine.  Refining REEs presents its own problems, since the refining process often produces significant amounts of toxic and radioactive waste, like thorium and uranium.  The takeaways are (1) feasible mining concentrations of REEs are scarce and (2) refining REEs imposes environmental risks.

Don't investigate this.  The Washington Post reports that "momentum is stalling amid congressional efforts to swiftly investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."  Good.  The Democrats want to use the riot for political purposes.  They hope, with assistance from the always-obliging media, to present it as the tip of an insurrectionary iceberg spearheaded by hardcore Trump supporters.  To this end, Nancy Pelosi favors a 9/11 style commission.  She would like this small riot, in which only a handful of people died, to live in infamy the way the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in which thousands of American perished, does.  But comparing Jan. 6 and 9/11 is absurd on many levels.  For purposes of determining the need for a a commission, a key difference is this:  It was clear after 9/11 that the U.S. needed to overhaul its approach to combatting the persistent threat of international terrorism.  We even created a new cabinet level department for this purpose.

Hooray! The Government is Handing out Free Money.  If you and your spouse had income of $150,000 or less last year, you are about to receive another windfall from the Federal government.  It will be $5,600, counting the free money for your two kids, your wife and you.  It doesn't matter that you didn't suffer any income loss this past year.  The money is there for you to spend as you please. [...] In addition to the free money, for those that were hurt by being laid off from their job, last May the Federal Government added up to $600 per week on top of the state unemployment compensation.  That meant about two thirds of the unemployed Americans were bringing in more money not working than if they were working. [...] You may wonder where the government is getting all this money?  It comes from two places:  either they borrow it directly from the public with no intention of ever repaying it, or they simply print the money. [...] For more logical and rational citizens something doesn't seem quite right.

America can only count on freedom.  Watching the childish glee of turn around orders being signed for the sole purpose of reversing successful economic policies is not lost on a now economically educated populace.  They see through the foolish names of these vengeful immature policies.  Unity be damned in the name of toxic revenge.  No mother would let her 5-year-old get away with this slow-motion tantrum we are seeing on the evening news.  The information explosion that has driven the world economy to new heights has also filled the air with debris that has clouded our understanding of what brought us to this level of prosperity. [...] Government is damaging our economy as it doles out trillions in the name of help.  It is not helping anyone except those having their votes bought with government redistribution of the taxes we pay out of our earnings.  We must be reminded that calling this abuse by other names does not change its deadening economic effect.  We are not helped by spending tax dollars and labeling them economic help when in truth they are doing economic harm.  We saw this for eight years of slow growth using this same shell game.  We then saw it reversed for four years when we stopped doing it.  These numbers cannot be denied, but they are by our new political masters and their media peanut gallery.

Prepping for a Two Week Power Outage.  If you're new to preparedness, you may be reading some of the excellent and informative websites out there and feeling quite quite overwhelmed.  While many sites recommend a one year supply of food, manual tools, and a bug out lodge in the forest, it's vital to realize that is a long-term goal, not a starting point.  A great starting point for someone who is just getting started on a preparedness journey is prepping specifically for a two-week power outage.  If you can comfortably survive for two weeks without electricity, you will be in a far better position than most of the people in North America.

Our National Destruction Is a Failure of Boundaries.  Why do the feds usurp authority from the states, and why do the states demand of the feds, and why do people trespass on someone's right to speak?  Why does the Executive Branch make law when the Congress is constitutionally assigned that responsibility?  Why are so many boundaries being invaded, and why is trespassing no longer a crime?  The answer is obvious.  We no longer respect boundaries.  We have become that tribal human animal before religion awoke us to the necessity of morality.  The whole concept of existentialism rides on the concept of organized and lawful conduct.  Some say "social contract."  Pick your terminology; say it how you like.  The ends are the same.  This society is fracturing at an alarming rate.  Nothing can turn the tide until boundaries are once again recognized and respected.  There is no moral code without them.

Time to End the Clock-Changing Madness.  The dreaded time has come for Americans to lose one hour of sleep as we "spring forward" to daylight saving time (DST) and move forward our clocks.  This adds another nuisance, as it is already difficult for Americans to sleep enough with the constant stress of COVID-19, economic woes, and societal unrest throughout the country.  One easy way to improve our sleep is to end this ridiculous ritual, which creates needless headaches and causes the unnecessary aggravation of changing our clocks twice a year.  It may have been a good idea when it was implemented in 1918; however, over one century later, it has lost its usefulness.  In November, it will be time to "fall back" an hour to standard time.  All this clock-changing leads to increased accidents, a higher incidence of heart attacks, a loss of productivity, and pointless confusion for the American people.

Is daylight savings time a health hazard?  Daylight savings time is upon us.  Sunday, March 14 is when we are to turn the clock ahead in order to 'save the daylight.'  No need to go into the genesis of this.  It suffices to say that what may have been useful way back when has dubious value today.  To most people, this fiddling around with the clocks is an inconvenience and an annoyance and leads to a degree of confusion for a day or so.  But did you know that a credible case can be made that it is also a health hazard?  So says Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and director of its Center of Human Sleep Science.

Stop Standard Time Madness:  We Should Be Saving Daylight All Year Long.  It's almost our favorite day of the year:  the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, when we can fast-forward our clocks, stop the winter darkness that descends by mid-afternoon, and crawl out of our stuffy homes after dinner into the evening light.  Amid Biden's "dark winter" of COVID hell, the act of "springing forward" out of Standard Time is especially welcomed this year.  That's why a glorious piece of legislation popping up in the Senate is a bright spot this week — not only because it's bipartisan, but also because it would literally grant daylight to weary Americans.  The Sunshine Protection Act would make Daylight Savings Time permanent across the country, putting to bed the absurd practice we continue year after year of switching our clocks around — or not, and accidentally sleeping through church.

The Current Balance Sheet of American Democracy.  [Scroll down]  Now, 85 percent of Americans do not believe their media on political subjects, over 80 percent of Americans disapprove of the performance of the Congress, and approximately 50 percent of Americans believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.  Many of the more vocal spokespeople for the current narrow majority in government purport to believe that President Trump's and his supporters' allegations of the questionable integrity of last presidential election constitute part of an attempt to overthrow the government unlawfully; that this attempt exploded in the invasion and vandalization of the Capitol on January 6, and that it continues.  The fact that there are some worrisome irregularities in the voting and counting of votes in a number of the swing states is simply denied.  The fact that the Supreme Court in declining to hear a case from the attorney general of Texas and supported by 16 other states that the swing states in question failed to discharge their constitutional duty to assure a fair presidential election, abdicated the coequal status of the judiciary with the legislative and executive branches of government, is ignored.  National political media uniformly refer to questions of the integrity of the last presidential election as discredited and debunked.  At least 95 percent of the national political media and 100 percent of the social media platforms are opposed to the Republicans, who control most of the states and have half of the Senators and are only a few votes short of half of the Members of the House of Representatives.

Kristi Noem for President?  Not So Fast.  Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem made headlines in 2020 for keeping her state open during the COVID-19 outbreak and opposing Faucian dictates about masks, stay-at-home orders, and church closures.  To this, conservatives applauded — and rightly so.  But does holding the line during a pandemic in a state with less than 900 thousand people — about the size of Charlotte, North Carolina — now warrant the frenetic swell of support for Noem among conservatives to be the next vice president or even president?  Absolutely not — especially at time when the fight for constitutional conservative values is more important than ever.

I Haven't Used Amazon For Almost 3 Months And I Don't Miss It One Bit.  My husband and I have been Amazon users for about 15 years.  In college, I used it to buy and sell books, rolling the cost of last semester's books I didn't plan to keep into the next semester's set.  We became Prime members in July 2017 and delighted in two- and even one-day shipping of everything from diapers to canned goods to dry erase markers to work boots, eliminating the annoyance of running to the store over one or two items. [...] It seemed fun, easy, and exciting.  And then it wasn't fun, easy, and exciting any more, because Amazon became evil — and I learned how evil they had really been all along.  Using it to indulge my own greed and materialism was one problem.  Amazon's use of its market power is another.  Both are a big deal.

Leftists Start a Pillow Fight with Mike Lindell.  Is there an American who doesn't know Lindell?  A college dropout and serial entrepreneur, he became addicted to crack cocaine.  He lost his home and was divorced.  He credits his sobriety to his Christian faith.  He's passionate about it, as anyone should be after escaping the talons of the devil.  There but for the grace of God goes any of us.  He invented his revolutionary pillow in 2004.  My pillow is a MyPillow.  It costs a lot, but [it does] exactly what it claims.  The typical box-store pillow is shot after a year at most.  MyPillow soldiers on.  Lindell's son is running the company now, though Dad's familiar face still sells the products on TV.  His new ambition is politics. [...] With his highly visible support of the Orange Man, the benevolent bedding-peddler with the cross around his neck quickly earned a place on the Public Enemies List of the mainstream media and the radical left.

The U.S. Economy Is Rigged.  The economy's "rigging" has developed gradually over time and often from the best of intentions.  When politicians, corporate executives, pundits, journalists, academics and activists alike propose ways to make society more just or efficient or globally competitive, they invariably call for some kind of government-corporate cooperation.  Such calls always seem to offer an answer for the public good, but in practice these arrangements inevitably drift into a self-serving collusion among those charged to cooperate.  Economic and financial history over the past few decades offers ample evidence of this building trend.

Is Mulberry Street racist?  You decide.  People of my generation learned to read with Dr. Seuss.  Sure, there were some child-like hijinks in the doctor's prescriptions but to many toddlers the rhyme and rhythm were music to the ears, tonic to the souls and tutors to the unschooled.  Mostly, they were exactly what Dr. Seuss intended them to be — entertaining, mischievous children's literature.  Dr. Seuss succeeded for nearly a century.  In that time, millions of children learned to read and Dr. Seuss was awarded numerous prizes.  President Barack Obama lauded him in 2016:  "March 2 is also the birthday of one of America's revered wordsmiths.  Theodor Seuss Geisel — or Dr. Seuss — used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear."  Dr. Seuss is the Left's latest victim.  They cancelled him.  eBay has banned many of his books including "And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street."  (While continuing to sell Mein Kampf).  The company that survives him, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, grovels that, "These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."

What We Know And Don't Know About The Events Of January 6th.  It takes three days after any event to find out what happened, and 30 days to find out what really happened.  The dust storm of information and misinformation takes a while to settle in the perpetually-online United States.  The truth lodges in fewer places now.  Emigres from the 1970's Soviet Union advised us that the only real information in Pravda lay between the lines.  So it is with the bulk of U.S. media, which doesn't even try to hide its role as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party anymore.  After 60 days, what do we, and don't we, know about the events of January 6th?  What we don't know concerns me.  When information that ought to be public isn't, there's a reason.  It's seldom good.

Mike Pence Discovers the Need for Election Integrity, Jumps into MAGA Ship Before it leaves DeceptiCon Dock.  In an article written by Mike Pence and published today [3/3/2021], the former Vice-President has suddenly found a need to focus on election integrity.  After the timeframe has passed for his actions to bear any significant sunlight upon the 2020 election, Pence now expresses some concerns.

Amazon's Banned Book:  The Full List.  Hate is a one-way street at Amazon, and the class of people protected from it are the self-Chosen.  Hatred toward goyim is not grounds for a ban, obviously.  None of the volumes on the list below are hateful.  They may be right; they may be wrong.  But your right to read them should not be obstructed by the world's largest online book distributor.  These revisionist books are attempts at offering scientific, technical and historical skepticism toward the Holy Writ that is supposed to be the secular history of World War II; that Writ however, is far more sacred than Jesus Christ.  His resurrection can be denied; Bezos is fine with that.  The homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz cannot be denied.

Coke Goes Woke and Broke.  "Get woke, go broke", is a conservative meme about the cost of political correctness that has it the wrong way around.  Brands don't go broke because they get woke, they go woke because they're going broke, and don't know how to stop the slow but steady collapse of their business.  The big brands that go woke infuriate conservatives because, like Coke, Gillette, or Nike, they have a storied name that seems entwined with America and the success of capitalism.  But it's those old, familiar brands that go woke because their products and business models are dated.  Virtue signaling is their way of adapting to a changing market without really innovating.  Behind every big woke brand is a company slowly going broke and with no clue what to do about it.  The wokeness vocabulary joins the thesaurus of corporate buzzwords used by executives trying to hide from their investors that they don't know what they're doing.  Making headlines for their wokeness changes the conversation from their business model to their politics.

The Federal Reserve Is Taking Us into Uncharted and Deadly Waters.  At the Federal Reserve semi-annual testimony before Congress this week, Chair Jerome Powell should have been asked whether the Fed has become the national Reddit.  The Reddit stock frenzy created a pool of motivated buyers, irrespective of the value of the underlying company.  For more complicated reasons, the federal government is the biggest Redditer of all, Reddit on crack cocaine.  Instead of billions, the government plays in the trillions.  Instead of a handful of small cap stocks, it has hijacked the entire stock market.  But the mechanism is the same.  Flood the market with funds, and for good measure force interest rates to zero, eliminating alternative investments.  The recent congressional Reddit hearings are parody in comparison to the government's role in driving market prices, in particular the Fed.

Is the U.S. Arming an Adversary, China, Intent on Overpowering Us?  China's greatest financial weakness remains its continued dependence on Western capital markets, crucial for a growing economy that, if official statistics are to be believed, is trying to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic's toll.  To grow, China depends on massive inflows of capital that surge through the capital markets based in the U.S. The Trump administration made several moves during its term to delist Chinese companies that are not forthcoming about who really owns them and what businesses they are really engaged in.  In addition, since 2013, Chinese state-owned enterprises (SEOs) have enjoyed exemptions from Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements that also force greater transparency from these companies.  They were the only ones granted these exemptions while still being listed on New York stock markets.  What if those exemptions were removed?

A short primer on the importance of our Second Amendment rights.  There is no greater killer in the world than the government. [...] In 1915 alone, the Turks slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians.  In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviets murdered around 7 million Ukrainian farmers who resisted socialism, as well as killing another 7 to 20 million people in its various purges.  In the 1960s and 1970s, with its Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, China is estimated to have killed 23 to 50 million people.  Over 12 years, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews, 250,000 gypsies, 220,000 homosexuals, and up to 10 million Slavic people.  Those deaths were just a small part of a world war that is estimated to have led to the deaths of somewhere between 70 million and 85 million people.  In Cambodia, between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot killed 1.2 to 2.2 million people out of a population of 8 million.  In America, that would have been equivalent to our government killing 66 to 85 million people.

After Action Review:  Texas Winter Storm 2021.  You've now seen our grid under stress.  Cold snaps in 2011, 2018 and the worst cold on record in 2021, along with the boil water order of 2018, provide real world examples of what the local grid will do when it's stressed.  You are now on notice of the grid's limitations.  What if the next emergency isn't in the cold, but in the 105 degree heat of a Texas summer?  And what if the power is off for a week or more?  What if the failure is caused by a cyber attack which not only shuts off the power but causes physical damage to the grid?

Trump Versus Big Tech.  Remember IBM?  Sure, you do.  Are you aware that they lost $95 billion in valuation in the last decade?  Scale does not matter when the ground changes under you.  Actually, scale becomes its own burden, keeping you from adapting to the agile, flexible new entrants who eat your lunch.  IBM missed the PC or failed at it; it also missed the phone, the tablet, the cloud, and it is sure to miss the edge, a new technology being deployed right now.  Just look at that $95 billion haircut.  IBM is not done.  This will continue unless it finds a way to get out of supporting and selling the obsolete current tech stack.  Let's not pick on IBM.  Add Hewlett Packard, Dell, and scores of other formerly high-flyers that are in life-sustain mode rather than hair fluttering growth.  There is no technology behind Twitter or Facebook.  They were simply there first, built the audience, went public, and continued building the audience.

The ERCOT grid is a very complex beast.  [Thread reader]  ERCOT is a 501c3 nonprofit that is charged with managing the market, but above all, reliability (keeping the lights on).  In my experience some of the smartest people I've ever met work there.  Wish I could name some of them because they're absolutely brilliant.  Transmission and Distribution is regulated.  They get a guaranteed rate of return ~10% for every dollar of capital they spend to keep the system reliable.  So they always want to build new projects.  Distribution is where most outages are because 1) there's so much of it and 2) they're smaller lines and substations.  So trees, squirrels, and snakes can cause an outage.  Transmission is 69kV and up.  Generators in Texas and any market since FERC order 888 are independent power producers.  Every plant is its own company.  So a single gas plant is looking at its own profit and loss statement and has its own financiers.  This means that upgrades are paid by the specific owner.

Our Descent Into Collective Madness.  It might have been understandable that trillions of dollars had to be borrowed to keep a suffocating economy breathing.  But it makes little sense to keep borrowing $2 trillion a year to prime an economy now set to roar back with herd-like immunity on the horizon.  Trillions of dollars in stimulus are already priming the economy.  Cabin-feverish Americans are poised to get out of their homes to travel, eat out and socialize as never before.  Meanwhile, the United States will have to start paying down nearly $30 trillion in debt.  But we seem more fixated on raising rather than reducing that astronomical obligation.

What Role Are Big Government Federal Regulations Playing In Texas Freezing In The Dark?  Defenders of green energy and fossil fuels are pointing fingers at each other for the failures that led to dangerous blackouts in Texas — but could both sides be missing the bigger picture?  How big a role did regulations sent from the desk of some faraway bureaucrat play in this catastrophic failure?  Much has already been written about the failure of wind turbines to deliver an adequate load — and whether they should have been winterized.  About failures of natural gas delivery, and even sensors in the nuclear power stations.  Not much has been said about the role federal pollution standards have played on Texas failing to get ahead of the problem by ramping up supply.  Yes, Federal pollution standards.

Rush Limbaugh:  A Tribute to a Master of Words.  Rush Limbaugh, a longtime friend of The Heritage Foundation, was the great popularizer of conservative ideas.  He revolutionized talk radio in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan deregulated AM radio, with his unique blend of shrewd analysis and often biting humor.  No progressive idea was safe when Rush took it on.  For more than 30 years, he was No. 1 in the ratings — with 15 to 20 million listeners per week.  No one could talk or think faster than he — for three hours every afternoon five days a week.  He spent hours reading and studying for his program — no one was better prepared than he.  He loved to mock the hypocrisies of the left, like the moralizing of Sen. Ted Kennedy, the "Hero of Chappaquiddick," who savaged Supreme Court Justice nominee Robert Bork on the Senate floor, where he couldn't be sued for libel.  Rush was a deeply rooted conservative whose favorite magazine growing up was National Review. [...] Rush appealed to conservatives of all kinds.  When The Heritage Foundation published Bill Bennett's monograph "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators," Rush made it a bestseller with one broadcast — 73,000 people contacted Heritage for a copy.

The post-Limbaugh era will be awesome.  President Reagan created Rush Limbaugh.  To be sure, Limbaugh did have talent on loan from God, but he did not have a national audience.  By repealing the Fairness Doctrine, which silenced conservatives, Reagan made Limbaugh's success possible.  And Limbaugh availed himself of that opportunity.  His show created a network of radio stations, mainly in the ghetto of AM radio.  He made money and saved many a radio station.  Before Reagan's action, the conservative side nationally was limited to William F. Buckley's Firing Line and Paul Harvey's daily radio commentary.  Limbaugh's commercial success gave the opportunity to other conservative radio hosts to be aired nationally because station owners saw that conservative radio made money.  Mark Steyn, Sean Hannity, and other radio hosts will carry on the work Limbaugh began.

Limbaugh's finest hour.  My memories of Limbaugh as a broadcaster are limited to his speech to CPAC on February 28, 2009.  His performance was so outstanding that Saturday afternoon that it defined him and the two generations his national radio show spanned.  By the way, he saved AM radio by giving hundreds of stations on that dying medium a 12 pm to 3 pm (Eastern) tentpole whose ads covered the station's expenses.  He closed that CPAC convention in the miserable days of the nascent Obama regime.  Conservatives were devastated by the failure of McCain to keep the Reagan dream alive.  Into this depression, Limbaugh waltzed.  His stirring, extemporaneous speech was his finest hour.  Being Limbaugh, it lasted 90 minutes.  C-Span archived the video.  Real Clear Politics posted a transcript.  Memory recalls how uplifting Limbaugh was that day.  He turned despair into hope.

The 20 Greatest Quotes From Rush Limbaugh.  Rush Limbaugh was one of the greatest figures of the last half-century and he could personally take credit for millions of people becoming conservative.  He was a legend, an icon and he will be missed.  In honor of a great man, here are Rush's 20 greatest quotes. [...] [For example,] [#7] "End results that work that don't involve government threaten liberals."  [#8] "No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity."

The Indispensable Man.  Usually, in this line of work, if you're lucky, you get a moment — a year or two when you're the in-thing — and you hope to hold enough of that moment as it slowly fades away to keep you going till retirement.  Rush [Limbaugh] did something unprecedented in the history of TV and radio.  Commercial broadcasting began in the United States in 1920:  The Rush Limbaugh Show came along two-thirds of a century later, became the Number One program very quickly, and has stayed at the top all the way to today — for a third of the entire history of the medium.  And throughout all those decades Rush and his show stayed exactly the same: a forensic breakdown of the day's news, punctuated by musical parodies, satirical sketches, and Rush's own optimism and good humor, even through this last terrible year.

Sen. Manchin holds key to Biden's progressive agenda.  U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's position as a moderate Democrat in the red state of West Virginia has propped him up to be a powerful man in Washington these days.  Even though Manchin has signaled support with Republicans on several issues, the Biden administration is wooing him in order to push progressive ticket items in its economic stimulus package.  Yet, West Virginians are holding out hope that the senator stands firm on opposing items that could be detrimental to some of the state's most important industries and small businesses.

West Virginia's Joe Manchin will keep Senate's 'Byrd rule' flying.  In a Zoom interview from his district office in Charleston, West Virginia, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a Mountain State Democrat, said his deference to the decision of the Senate parliamentarian is no different than his position on the filibuster.  "The Byrd rule and the filibuster are one in the same," the former governor said of the sometimes complicated rule that restricts nonbudgetary provisions from being included in reconciliation legislation in the Senate.  In short, the Byrd rule makes certain no extraneous provisions are snuck into a bill.  The Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is the nonpartisan official whose position is to interpret which policies comply with the Byrd rule.  The rule was named for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, whom Manchin replaced in a special election when the longest-serving senator in history died at the age of 92 in 2010.  "The Byrd rule makes sure that legislation stays within its guardrails or its lanes, which is basically budget-related," Manchin said in a 44-minute interview with the Washington Examiner.

Who Is In Charge, Anyway?  Finally, the most important question to be raised concerning the Capitol riots on January 6 received a hearing in the New York Times:  "What Trump Did as the Capitol Was Attacked."  The three-quarter page exposé canvassed meticulously all that President Trump was doing, save the single most important thing.  The essay by reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin relates details of conversations with officeholders and White House officials, with a timeline of decisions and nondecisions, all to demonstrate that Trump sat on his hands while the riot unfolded.  It failed, however, to ask the obvious follow-up questions the answers to which reveal the likelier truth.  Where was Trump's national security team, and what counsel did they provide?  The gravity of this obvious lacuna should instantly appear to anyone who considers this was a national security event of the greatest significance, equivalent to the firing upon Fort Sumter or the raid on Harpers Ferry more than 150 years ago or the bombing of Pearl Harbor 80 years ago.  That it was a national security event is apparent from the immediate and since daily repeated descriptions of the riot as an attempted "insurrection" or "coup."  It is also apparent what protocols prevail in such an event:  a national security team exists precisely to appraise and respond to such threats.

Given How Flawed Human Nature Is, America Has Been Remarkable Moral Achievement.  Those who acknowledge how flawed human nature is compare America to reality.  Those who do not, compare America to some utopian image:  a country free of inequality, prejudices, intolerance, sexual misbehavior, greed, etc.  This divide helps explain why those who hold a biblical worldview — usually religious Jews and Christians — are more likely to appreciate America than those who do not.  It is fundamental to Judaism and Christianity that "the will of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21).  I offer a partial list of bad traits inherent to human nature.  When perusing it, one can only marvel at how good a country America became.

How Your Government Really Works.  Some of the harshest critics of government corruption are thoroughly corrupt — and everyone in the upper reaches of government is complicit due to their silence.  I spent over 40 years in government service.  I don't consider myself an expert on the subject but after 40 years you cannot avoid acquiring a more than basic knowledge of a subject.  One of the lessons I learned is that knowledge is power.  There are people in government who keep their ears to the ground in order to gain as much knowledge as possible.  I was not one of them, but I could not avoid learning who was sleeping with whom and other supposedly private matters.

Gina Carano Was Fired by Disney Because Her Popularity Extended the Reach of Conservatism.  Between 10 and 15 million voters in this country decide the outcome of Presidential elections and the partisan makeup of the Congress.  These are the voters who "swing" from one party to the other during election cycles.  Capturing the majority of these voters is the path to winning control of the government. [...] The Presidential election now is won through prevailing by narrow margins in several closely contested states, while each side has significant majorities among the remaining states.  Issues and messages that swing voters in the middle in one direction, and then back in the other direction, are where the keys to victory are found. [...] Hollywood and popular culture have always been a "one-way street" for liberal political views to be force-fed to the broader population, including swing voters.  This goes back to World War II — and before — when there really were Communists in prominent positions in Hollywood working to popularize communist ideology through film and later TV.

Bad week for Democrats of all stripes.  Shouldn't the Democrats be in the catbird seat?  After all, they've "won" the election, including the House, the Senate and the White House.  Apparently, the country was just itching to become another California.  And the courts, the big state, Hollywood, and the press are all on their side.  But somehow, even with President Trump silenced, impeached, and out of power, things aren't going so good for Democrats.  Impeachment is failing.  The verdict will likely come today.  Their aim was "political vengeance" as Trump's attorney said Friday, and the bid fell flat.  Their spin, and lies, and low-grade informercial for themselves in this Senate impeachment trial persuaded no one.  And their bigger aim, which was keeping President Trump from running for office, same as third-world dictators do to their opponents, backfired. [...] It gets worse.  Now two of their fairest-haired boys, their pride and joy, the governors billed as the future of their party, are both going down like the Titanic.

The Icons of the Left Collapse.  You would have to look far and wide to find a person more celebrated by progressives and most of the national media in 2020 than Andrew Cuomo.  You would have to look far and wide to find a political group more celebrated by progressives and like-minded media in 2020 than the Lincoln Project.  And you would have to look far and wide to find a place more celebrated by progressives and like-minded media in 2020 than California.  And in the last 24 hours, all three fell from their high pedestals and landed with a hard "thud."

Firing Actors for Being Conservative Is Another Hollywood Blacklist.  If you think blacklisting is only bad if its targets have sensible views, I have some bad news for you about communism.  While some victims of the McCarthy-era blacklist were liberals or progressives who refused to turn in the names of their colleagues, others were bona fide communists.  Dalton Trumbo — a Hollywood writer who was blacklisted, then wrote under front names, and whose story was told in a recent hagiographic movie starring Bryan Cranston — followed the Communist Party line in the Stalin era.  When many fellow communists dropped out of the movement after Stalin formed an alliance with Hitler, Trumbo followed the new party line.  Trumbo gained some martyrdom when he was hauled to Washington to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  "This is the beginning of the American concentration camp," he warned.  (Fortunately for Trumbo, his antagonists, unlike Carano's, were not witless enough to confuse hyperbolic Nazi comparisons with anti-Semitism.)

The China model has come to America.  Far too few Americans grasp the implications of such a view taking root among their own elite.  Though more and more Americans are awakening to the challenges inherent in China's growing economic, technological, and military capabilities, few understand the threat that China's governing philosophy and structures pose to the US.  As David Goldman has explained, though the CPC is nominally Communist, China is what it has been for millennia:  an empire run by oligarchic mandarins.  The appeal to an American elite that sees itself as a worthy meritocracy enamored of governance by bureaucratic experts is obvious.  Americans need to understand that beyond mere appeal and envy, there is a growing convergence of interests between China's entrenched communist oligarchs and America's emerging progressive oligarchs.  Today's China, like all imperial powers, seeks to exploit the resources of anyone and anything outside its central oligarchy to enhance the prosperity, prestige, and power of that center.

China's War With the World.  Americans get to elect their presidents.  Not so in China.  We may have moved from the 45th commander in chief to the 46th, and the attendant changes already are legion, given the dozens of executive orders issued by President Joe Biden.  But our relationship with China, and the man who recently made himself leader for life, hasn't.  Chinese President Xi Jinping is now the functional emperor of the world's largest dictatorship, one we must understand is at war with any nation that has a representative government, or which refuses to kneel before it.  Just ask the residents of Hong Kong.  As such, we should understand the threat that Xi's communist regime comprises.  As the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu teaches us:  "Know thy enemy."  Well, here are the essentials all Americans should know. [...]

Stop Calling It an 'Insurrection'.  What happened on Capitol Hill was a few dudes dressed like Conan the Fauxbarian acting like fools and occasionally fighting with the cops while a few hundred other dudes took selfies in the Rotunda.  We were in the 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry, the first combat arms unit on the street during the LA Riot, a riot brought to you by Maxine Waters and other idiots, by the way.  There was burning and looting and dozens we can say with absolute certainty were murdered by the LA rioters, unlike at the Capitol.  It lasted for days.  You wouldn't know it from Rep. Stolen Cower, who seems to claim she suffered PTSD from being at the far end of the same ZIP code as the bruhaha, but what happened on January 6 was no "insurrection," and Republicans need to stop playing along with the Establishment talking point that it was.

If You Think You Can Just be Silent and Obedient and They Will Leave You Alone, You Best Think Again.  The world is laughing at us Americans.  Here we are, armed to the teeth, larger than any army in the world, and we have allowed our country to be stolen from us.  We have allowed the Communist to just do as they please.  And all we do is sit and stew in silence.  People keep asking, "What can we do?  Is there a plan?"  I don't know the answer to those questions.  I would have never imagined that we would have allowed things to get as bad as they are.  It seems as though the real enemy of liberty is the average American.  Our complacency and attitude of just wanting to be left alone has gotten us into this situation we find ourselves in.

What Jeff Bezos Hath Wrought.  If I had to guess who inspired Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, to kick himself upstairs and appoint Andy Jassy, a deputy, as his successor as chief executive, I might wager that at least part of the blame can be laid on Lucy McBath, the freshman Georgia congresswoman, and her understated grilling of one of the world's richest men at a July hearing held by the House antitrust subcommittee.  At the hearing, widely regarded as a watershed moment for America's tech giants, most of the subcommittee members — and all the Democrats — had coalesced around a consensus:  The business models of the four biggest tech companies depend on cementing and exploiting their statuses as gatekeepers to the internet, and scheming to bring down anyone who threatens their power to exact ever higher tolls on every minute we spend on the internet.  Only Mr. Bezos, however, had explicitly set out to become a ubiquitous "middleman" of all internet commerce.

The United States Should Follow North Dakota and Florida in Dealing with Unconstitutional Executive Orders and Social Media Censorship.  Florida and North Dakota take the lead in dealing with Joe Biden's unconstitutional executive orders and Big Tech's anti-free speech censorship.  The rest of the states who cherish our Constitution should follow.  The Biden administration, Big Tech, Big Media, Big Pharma, the DOJ, the FBI and the courts joined forces to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden.  Now they continue their illegal and unconstitutional actions with unconstitutional executive orders and continued censorship of Americans on social media.  Florida and North Dakota have come up with excellent ideas in how to deal with these unconstitutional orders and Big Tech censorship.

Will a Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?  The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter-Reformation of reformist, and more zealous, Catholics.  The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring '20s were followed by the bleak, dour and impoverished years of the Great Depression.  The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon's landslide victory in 1972, as "carefree hippies" turned into careerist "yuppies."  So social, cultural, economic and political extremism prompt reactions — and sometimes counterreactions.  The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state.  Trump and his "Make America Great Again" agenda were its pushback.  The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset — or Trump himself — is as of yet unsure.

How Socialism Wiped Out Venezuela's Spectacular Oil Wealth.  Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves and yet the country has run out of gasoline.  The socialist government has lost the capacity to extract oil from the ground or refine it into a usable form.  The industry's gradual deterioration was 18 years in the making, tracing back to then-President Hugo Chávez's 2003 decision to fire the oil industry's most experienced engineers in an act of petty political retribution.  The near-total collapse in the nation's oil output in the ensuing years is a stark reminder that the most valuable commodity isn't a natural resource, but the human expertise to put it to productive use.  "At this moment Venezuela is living through its worst nightmare," said Luis Pedro España, a professor of sociology at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, who has studied the nation's economic collapse.  "We are witnessing the end of Venezuela as a petro-state."  Gasoline shortages have crippled the economy, made travel within the country prohibitively expensive, and it has increased prices at grocery stores.  Shortages and price restrictions have given rise to a vibrant black market.

The 'Tells' of the Deep State Poker Players.  I've never been much of a poker player, but I understand that expert players can read the "tell" on their opponents' faces. [...] Why would President Biden shovel out a boatload of executive orders in the first week of his presidency advancing climate change and fighting systemic racism?  Why would the Deep State sic the FBI on candidate and then President Trump, and then let Kevin Clinesmith, the guy that falsified a document, off with a tap on the wrist?  Why would the rulers nod and wink through a summer of riots that caused death and destruction in many American cities, and then build fences and call out the National Guard to protect them against a few "far-right" LARPers?  And if that isn't enough, mount an impeachment against a president who has already left office?  Oh, and by the way, How come it was Vice President Pence that ordered up the National Guard to Washington D.C.?  Why not Trump, the commander-in-chief?  Inquiring minds would like to know.  What is going on here?  These "tells" show that the ruling class, for all its power and its domination and hegemony, is terrified by the barbarians at the gates.

Are We In The Winter of America?  Will There Be A Spring?  Civilizations do not last forever.  They go through cycles.  Even in Classical Greek times, historians such as Polybius had noticed this.  As German philosopher Oswald Spengler more recently put it, civilizations experience a Spring; a Summer, marked by youthful vigour and exploration, an Autumn, in which they achieve great things but also start to decay, and a Winter.  Fascinatingly, the turning point — when you know that the civilization is definitely past its best — is when the legislature is invaded by a mob.  This shows that democracy, and the trust and high intelligence that have been shown to be central to it, have broken down.  The good news (sort of):  it's not necessarily the end.

When Resistance Became Sedition and Sedition Became Resistance.  In 2008, "dissent" went from being the "highest form of patriotism", a quote by Communist revisionist historian Howard Zinn that Democrats falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, to treason when George W. Bush made way for Barack H. Obama.  The old bumper stickers about the patriotic value of dissent were swiftly replaced with others touting the value of change.  In 2020, resistance just as quickly turned into sedition once the political tables were turned.  In one month, questioning a presidential election went from a commonplace proposition to a shocking attack on our democracy.  And we all know that if President Trump had been inaugurated for a second term, there would be no censorship or censure of the Democrat politicians and pundits claiming that he was only reelected because of Russia or UFOs.  Nor would we be hearing any talk of "sedition" and "insurrection" as if they were bad things.

The Non-Incitement & The Instigators.  In this posting I'll be providing links to video of the event I attended along with a link to the full text of Trump's speech.  It is long, not that exciting, and very much lacking in any "incitement".  Toward the end, many folks were leaving early due to the cold and the lack of anything really exciting.  I'd guess about 10% were sneaking out.  We'd been there from the very start.  About 3 hours before first speaker.  All told, we stood in a cold wind for about 8 hours straight.  At the end, pretty much NOBODY had anything on their mind other than finding a bathroom, getting out of the cold, and finding a place to sit with back support.

The River of Forgetfulness.  Riotous rogue Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on January 6 were properly and widely condemned by conservatives.  They were somewhat reminiscent of the mobs of fanatic leftists and union members that a decade ago stormed the Wisconsin state capitol at Madison, or the unpunished hundreds of rioters who created havoc on Washington, D.C. streets during the Trump 2016 inauguration.  We expect the Capitol stormers will be punished, and not in the lax fashion of the latter two groups that were not.  Within a few days, the talking points were finalized that all of Donald Trump's supporters deserved blame for the violence.  That riot, the Trump defeat, and the loss of the Senate have greenlighted left-wing talk of "deprogramming," "de-Baathification," "re-educating," and "reprogramming" half the country to ensure they think correctly and act properly from now on — the exact methodology of such brain rinsing apparently to be announced later.

The Editor says...
On January 6, there was a Trump rally in Washington, DC.  Way down the street, there was a riotous break-in at the U.S. Capitol.  The half-million people (more or less) at the Trump rally had nothing to do with the break-in, but now all Trump supporters are getting the blame, thanks to the pernicious news media.  From where I'm sitting, it appears there were no "riotous rogue Trump supporters."

Eviction moratorium is sure to backfire.  On her first day in her role as the new CDC director, Rochelle Walensky announced that the Biden administration would extend Trump's moratorium on evictions through the end of March and perhaps beyond.  To justify this decision, Walensky said, "[Coronavirus] has also triggered a housing affordability crisis that disproportionately affects some communities."  But the real housing crisis is looming just around the corner.  It will come not in spite of this moratorium but because of it.  Eviction bans are decimating small landlords and causing an even larger bubble that will inevitably pop.  Roughly half of rental units in the United States are owned by "mom-and-pop" landlords.  These small landlords typically own only a handful of units, if they even own more than one.  While wealthy real estate firms are getting heaping sums from stimulus packages such as the CARES Act, mom-and-pop landlords get almost nothing.  On top of this, they are now being deprived of one of their main sources of income.

About That Guy Who Can't Access His Bitcoins.  [Scroll down]  Bitcoins are also scarce.  Not just because the underlying protocol is programmed to eventually stop making new ones, but because the ones that are already out there can be lost or stolen.  Bitcoin is the first scarce digital asset in history.  That's really important.  Lack of digital scarcity has ruined the internet.  Just ask any musician whose music streams online.  Since Bitcoins are scarce, and you can't just call Satoshi Inc. to get a replacement if you lose access to yours, then owning them is risky — as it should be.  You can hire someone to help you protect your coins or access them through an intermediary like PayPal, but it's important that someone along the ownership chain is taking the risk of loss or theft.  Without that risk there'd be no value. [...] Bitcoins can be lost or stolen, and that loss hurts, because the coins can't be replaced.  So Bitcoins are scarce, like diamonds, physical cash and vinyl records.  That means Bitcoins are valuable.

The Ominous Meaning of the Keystone Diktat.  We are continuously told by our betters that high voter turnout is to be celebrated because it is a measure of the civic engagement of our citizens.  I hold the opposite view:  high turnout is an indicator of serious civic breakdown.  High turnout in other struggling democracies is usually a sign of things going very wrong.  The point is:  you get high turnouts when people believe everything is at stake in the results of the election.  Middling voter turnout in American elections is a sign of the relative health of our political order, because it means that much of the population doesn't think everything important is up for grabs in the result.  Elections are supposed to determine who rules, and we take turns in ruling and being ruled.  Our presidents are supposed to run the government, not every aspect of our lives.  I've long thought it overwrought to hear people on both sides of the spectrum say, as has become typical over the last couple decades, that the current presidential election is "the most important election of our lifetime."  If every election is now a life-or-death matter for the republic, then the republic is already lost.

What Happened to 'the Storm'?  Despite the hype and expectations for "a storm," Jan. 20 marked another relatively peaceful transition of power, from one presidential administration to the next. [...] Federal prosecutors quietly closed the General Flynn leak investigation, finding no wrongdoing.  This sounds familiar, just like the 2020 presidential election, where former Attorney General Bill Barr found nothing amiss.  This was echoed by state and federal legislators as well as a slew of courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.  The kraken remained as elusive as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and JFK Jr, the latter rumored to magically appear as Trump's running mate before the November election.  There were white hats and black hats, although in reality most wore one of the fifty shades of gray, some days looking like good guys, other days like bad guys.  Who really knows?  None have been indicted and none are heading to prison.

Actually, Bojo, There Is EVERYTHING Wrong with Being Woke.  Woke means statues being torn down by historically illiterate mobs; the race-baiting divisiveness of Black Lives Matter and the physical aggression of Antifa; the dumbing down of universities and the indoctrination of college kids with anti-intellectual drivel like 'decolonising the curriculum'; men who have designated themselves female being put in prison with women — and then raping them; turning a blind eye to organised Muslim rape gangs for fear of being racist or Islamophobic.  Almost everything wrong with the world today can be laid at the door of the 'woke' ideology — which is essentially just an updated version of Marxism.  That's why Margaret Thatcher would never have argued — even when caught on the hop by a difficult questioner — that there was 'nothing wrong' with being woke.

After the Fall.  [Scroll down]  As it stands, roughly half the country thinks the election was rigged and that future elections are going to be rigged.  It is pretty much impossible to sell the whole democracy thing when half the voters do not trust the voting process.  Lost in all the excitement is the fact that Congress has an approval rating of just 15%.  The fact that the "people's house" now sits behind layers of razor wire and is patrolled by the army does not help their image, either.  One way the ruling class could rebuild their reputation is to find a way to turn down the temperature in public discourse.  The best way to do that is the old bread-and-circuses approach, mastered by the Romans.  Get people out having fun instead of engaged in politics and things will calm down a notch or two.  Of course, that means people must be able to go outside, and they must have the wherewithal to go have fun.  That is going to mean winding back the Covid panic.

What's Next?  Great Awakening or Great Reset?  While most of the country happily checks their social media feeds and watches TikTok videos, an epic battle is playing out in the nation's capital, one that future historians, if they are allowed to discuss it, will describe as the turning point of western civilization.  On the one hand, we have been promised a great awakening, showing the people the crimes and corruption of the ruling class, as described by Trump before he was elected in 2016 in a little known but epic speech.  Those claiming to be in the know or able to read the stitches on the fast ball, promised "The Storm" and "The Kraken".  Yet so far, it's only a light breeze.  On the other hand, Washington, DC is locked down tighter than post 9/11, with checkpoints in and out of the city, almost like under martial law, all for a mostly virtual Biden inauguration.  That doesn't make sense.  Crimes against humanity were to be revealed and the guilty would not be able to walk down the street.  Except they can and are.

Suppose They Gave an Inauguration and Nobody Came?  The increasingly fascistic American left is setting a trap for the rest of their fellow citizens — often termed "deplorables," but more appropriately dubbed "normals" by Kurt Schlichter — by warning that we intend violence all over the country during Joe Biden's inauguration.  This is nonsense, of course, but any kind of demonstration can be declared violent by a complaisant media or, more ominously, manipulated in that direction by provocateurs, with the slightest incident magnified beyond recognition.  Part of their intent is clearly to undermine the Second Amendment — actually to disarm us.  Another part is to justify yet more censorship and "canceling," furthering their assault on the No. 1 principle that makes America America:  freedom of speech.  Do not fall for it.  There is a much better way to protest the inauguration.  Don't show up!

Autonomous County Project.  The Constitution was written for an overwhelmingly rural people, not considering that at some point the number of people in the cities would outnumber those in the whole rest of the state. [...] The thing to think about in the Autonomous County project is that there are 3,142 counties in the United States of which Joe Biden won either 477 or 504 depending on your source.  We are quickly becoming a republic that functions as a democracy in that the dense population centers in a few counties control everything about state and national politics.  The people in these cities do not have the same concerns as the wider population, but because they have many of the same concerns with others in the dense population centers, they control all legislation.  But, that leaves residents of some 2600 plus counties without a voice, never having their concerns addressed at either the state or national level and many state and national laws override county ordinances.  But, it doesn't have to be that way, because until they actually burn and eradicate the Constitution, it still says what it says and even though a bloated Supreme Court might rule against it in every decision, it still says what it says.  If they choose to do away with it all together, then they can no longer claim its authority and that is the crucial part of the moment.  The minute they disavow the Constitution, they become a body of individuals with no rights and no protections.  Oddly, this is exactly what happened when the Constitution was written to replace the Articles of Confederation and why it was largely done in secret.  So, don't think they won't try something similar.

What Now?  And then the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.  Republican officials in the states affected by the steal sat on their hands.  State legislatures, ditto.  Even the justices he'd named to the Supreme Court refused to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania, absurdly maintaining that a state didn't have standing to challenge the conduct of a presidential election in another state.  Trump's supporters, ever civilized, waited patiently while every possible means of stopping the steal was dutifully exhausted.  When it came down to the final vote certification in Congress, an army of MAGA folk gathered peacefully in Washington to show that they had Trump's back.  Then a tiny percentage of them foolishly entered the Capitol building.  And a tiny percentage of that tiny percentage — at least some of whom seem to have been Antifa goons — caused minor damage.  Most of them appear to have milled harmlessly around the building, leaving paintings and statues untouched.  The contrast with the conduct of Antifa and BLM insurgents during the previous year could hardly have been more striking.

The "Crisis" is Corporate Liberal Authoritarianism.  The mob that barged into the Capitol Building on Wednesday accomplished a few things. [...] It was clear within about ten minutes of the intrusion that the most severe consequences would stem not from the incident itself, but the deliberately-stoked over-reaction.  The bipartisan political and media class, whether cynically or sincerely, is broadcasting their steadfast conviction that this was something like a "MAGA Terrorist Insurrection" — which is literally how it's being described on CNN.  Under such allegedly extreme circumstances, of course extreme remedial action is going to be demanded.  Few entities capitulate to upswells of political hysteria more reliably than the tech companies.  Knowing that there will soon be a Democratic presidential administration and Congress to appease, they launched this week what is the most drastic corporate censorship offensive in modern history.  Not only was Trump banished from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — the latter being his primary communications platform (for better or worse) — multiple high-profile Trump allies were likewise purged.  Steve Bannon was nuked from YouTube.  Trump and his supporters are being neutralized online not because he currently poses any kind of bonafide "threat" to the Republic, but because his enemies are desperate for revenge.

Know Justice, Know Peace.  Violence against the U.S. Capital is a crime so heinous that a sitting U.S. President, in 2001, commuted the sentences of two people convicted for it.

An Ascendant Left Silences and Excludes Its Enemies.  The best show on television right now features a major city, the capital of an unsteady government, that is gradually being pulled apart by two competing political parties.  The center can't hold; it's being steadily overwhelmed by a pair of rival Socialist groups who don't hesitate to take their conflicts into the streets as they sweep away their country's past and head into a glorious future.  Meanwhile, the citizens of this increasingly fractured metropolis take refuge in a variety of vices, including transvestitism, casual sex of all permutations, part-time prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction, financial speculation and, when necessary, murder — and these are just the cops trying their best to hold the Republic together.  Meanwhile, outside the elegant halls of authority, armed gangs roam the streets, setting upon each other with abandon in the ultimate game of thrones.  Washington, D.C., in 2021?  No, Berlin in the late 1920s.  "Babylon Berlin," now in its third season on Netflix, isn't only brilliant storytelling for grownups, but a cautionary tale for our times.

I try to avoid posting conspiracy theories, but this one caught my attention.  Because it comes from Lt. General Thomas McInerney:  Following the storming of the Capitol building on Wednesday by what appears to be mostly Antifa members, apparently, there were also some others mingled in with them that General Thomas McInerney claims were Special Forces who seized several laptops from offices of politicians who are engaged in treason against the United States.  [Video clip]

General Thomas McInerney:  Special Forces Grabbed Traitors' Laptops.  [F]ollowing the storming of the Capitol building on Wednesday by what appears to be Antifa members, apparently, there were also some others mingled in with them that General Thomas McInerney claims were special forces who seized several laptops from offices of politicians who are engaged in treason against the United States.  [Video clip]

Gen. McInerny Says Special Ops Got Pelosi's Laptop:  "This is high treason!"  I've been telling you the next 10 days will be unlike anything you have ever witnessed in America.  And now it's not just me telling you.  How about a three star general?  General McInerny just released several videos where he breaks down everything that happened at the Capitol.  And it's NOT what you think!  There were several Special Operations being ran all at the same time.  The guys with heavy military gear that you've heard about?  Those were the white hats.  They went in and seized multiple pieces of evidence, including Nancy Pelosi's laptop.  [Video clip]

Political Amnesia:  Look at All the Democrats Who Boycotted Trump's Inauguration.  Donald Trump announced he will not attend Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, becoming the fourth American president to choose not to witness his successor taking office.  Joe Biden calls it "a good thing" and said the president was "an embarrassment," which is pretty rich coming from The Big Guy.  It's also rich when you look back at the reaction by Democrats to President Trump four short years ago. [...] Four years ago, Joe Biden didn't call those ditching the inauguration "an embarrassment."  Hardly.  The Democrats boycotting were feted in the media for standing up for their belief that Trump was not really the legitimate president.  Maxine Waters was made Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year for promising that "by the time I'm done with him he'll wish he had been impeached."  A nationwide effort to "boycott Trump" began.

It's not over yet.  [Scroll down]  So, what comes next? I don't have the particulars but I can give you milestones to watch for as the coming days unfold:
  [#1]   Expect the emergency broadcast system to be activated.  The FCC just recently released a memorandum speaking to the requirements under Federal law to send messages from the president to the public.
  [#2]   Expect confusion.  We are in a battle for our republic against elites that are attempting the very coup that they are accusing Trump of doing.  In battle, there will be disinformation but know that plans are being fulfilled.
  [#3]   Expect high profile arrests to take place over the next 12 days and at any time.  You may wake one morning to find someone in high office is no longer there.
  [#4]   Expect this to be a bumpy ride to the very end.  This is not a television show where things are resolved in 45 minutes.
  [#5]   Expect more bombshell evidence to be released between now and Jan. 20th.
  [#6]   Expect some sort of internet blackout or outage:  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Gmail are likely going to be affected.  If you don't have alternate forms of communication established now, it would be a good idea to start forming them even if it's just checking on your nextdoor neighbors.
  [#7]   Expect Trump to be inaugurated on Jan 20th!
  [#8]   Expect the executive order from 2018 and/or the Insurrection Act to be enacted.  This DOES NOT mean martial law.  Remember that we have been under a state of emergency since 2018 which gives the president many powers to act.

The Editor says...
The article above means one of two things:  Either there is about to be a tremendous upheaval in this country and a lot of chickens will come home to roost unexpectedly, or there are some prolific and talented fiction writers at work, making baseless yet plausible predictions about the events of the next few weeks.  I would like to see President Trump spring his trap at long last, if indeed it exists.  Maybe there is some basis for all the predictions after all.  Nancy Pelosi, in particular, seems to think the President is holding three aces, judging by the way she's acting:  She's frantically pushing for a last-minute impeachment, and/or removal of the President via the 25th Amendment.  If she thought she was in no danger, she would just keep quiet and let the clock run out.

Only In Your Imagination Was That An Attempted "Coup".  At no point yesterday was the American government at risk of being "overthrown," as members of Congress have laughably suggested.  Per usual, our guardians of consensus can't bring themselves to describe what unfolded with any degree of dispassion or calm.  Instead we're told by the incoming Senate Majority Leader, for example, that January 6, 2021 will now "live in infamy" right alongside December 7, 1941.  Elected officials issued emotional notices that they were "okay," like they had just narrowly avoided being crushed in an earthquake, or escaped the World Trade Center on 9/11.  This is made all the more odd because the only person upon whom lethal force was committed appears to have been a Trump-supporting woman who was shot point-blank in the throat by a Capitol Hill police officer.  She's now dead.  Congress was temporarily inconvenienced.  Journalists and pundits, glorying in their natural state — which is to peddle as much free-flowing hysteria as possible — eagerly invoke all the same rhetoric that they'd abhor in other circumstances on civil libertarian grounds.  "Domestic terrorism," "insurrection," and other such terms now being promoted by the corporate media will nicely advance the upcoming project of "making sure something like this never happens again."  Use your imagination as to what kind of remedial measures that will entail.

The Left Finds Time for One More Big Lie Against Trump.  Donald Trump believes he was robbed.  So do many of his followers.  Indeed, not only the vast majority of Republican voters in America — some 70 percent or more of his 75 million voters, comprising more than 50 million Americans at least — but also between 10 percent and 30 percent of Democrats believe the election was stolen; either figure is remarkably high.  So Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington in the frigid cold of a January Washington winter to demonstrate their support for him and for his insistence.  And they came out.  It was a demonstration — to demonstrate widespread massive support for his insistence that the election was stolen.  There was no Madonna intimating blowing up the White House.  As can happen, and sometimes does — witness the Left's anti-Kavanaugh demonstrations that included confronting and badgering Senators in the Halls of Congress and attempting to bang down the Supreme Court's front doors — the January 6 rally got out of hand and became a riot.  Some of the more-intense people, after a year of watching Antifa and Black Lives Matter gatherings devolve into riots, decided on their own that their turn had come to storm the building that was the object of their scorn and anger.  An important lesson is learned once again: what goes around comes around.  When the Left condones unacceptable behavior from its corner, it often will find that one day it will rue that decision when copied by its adversaries.

The breach of the Capitol was an obvious set-up.  What happened at the Capitol building on Wednesday [1/6/2021] obviously was a stratagem to destroy the President's popularity and support and overshadow the challenges to the Electoral College vote, to my eyes.  The building was breached at the beginning of that process and, of course, riveted the media news feeds.  Members of Congress were evacuated with hoods over their heads as if they were in grave danger.  As a group of protesters approached the building, a policeman removed the barricade and appeared to invite them in.  That group entered the rotunda peacefully and stayed behind the rope line.  Those who observed this noted that there were several instigators embedded among the crowd.  They were using bullhorns to agitate and move people.  A couple of them set off flash bangs.  We now know that several known Antifa activists were among the agitators.  As they broke windows, Trump supporters tried to stop them.  But the distraction worked, frightened the pathetically spineless Republicans who were set to challenge the stolen election.  They quickly capitulated and Biden was certified.  The Republicans, even the ones we thought had grit, got rolled.

A Time for Choosing:  A Test for Our Souls.  The political crisis the United States is now facing brings into the open a contest for the soul of our country.  As important as this recent election is, the stakes transcend particular political arrangements — they go to fundamental issues, about which each of us must make a choice and take a stand.  A peculiarity of our current situation is this:  While every American is intricately familiar with the pandemic and the effect it has had on our lives, this is not the case for voter fraud, despite the evidence being overwhelming.  Some Americans are ignorant of these facts because they have been misinformed by a media that willfully withholds information.  The reason for this might surprise you.  There has been a force quietly at work in our country, in plain sight, that has gradually taken over ideological control of most of our institutions, businesses, and media, and even our culture.  This force is Marxism and communism.  For those who have been following this story, there is no surprise here.  For those who have never heard of this, it may sound far-fetched and unbelievable.

A Capitol Offense.  [Scroll down]  "We're going walk down to the Capitol," Trump said, "and we're going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women.  We're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you'll never take back our country with weakness.  You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."  What happened next should cause heads to roll among those responsible for securing the Capitol and its grounds.  How on earth, in a city that sees protests every day, could there not have been sufficient security there?  After all, it wasn't as if the event hadn't been planned for weeks.  As Power Line's John Hinderaker writes, "It is outrageous that security was so lax that rioters were allowed to occupy the Senate chamber, sending senators and Vice President Pence, as I understand it, fleeing.  Armed guards should never allow such a thing to happen — that is why they are armed.  The entire country has been embarrassed today, not just Republicans."  As Fox News's Chad Pergram noted, it was the first time that the Capitol building had been breached in such a way since the British, fresh off their victory at the Battle of Bladensburg, did so in 1814.

The tech monopolies have sprung into action.  On Wednesday [1/6/2021], more than half a million peaceful people showed up in D.C. to support President Trump.  A minute percentage of that group ended up in the Capitol and the police killed an unarmed Air Force veteran.  (Defund the Police has been silent about this killing.)  Debate will rage about whether Trump supporters were set up.  For the purposes of this post, the only thing that matters is that it was the justification the tech monopolies needed to start a purge.  The tech companies contend that Trump instigated violence and his supporters can no longer be trusted.  And no, it doesn't matter that for much of 2020, Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioted, burned, looted, and threatened, beat, and murdered people.  Not only did they stay on social media, but they were also lionized on social media and mainstream media for their thrilling, empowering exploits.  Trump did not instigate violence.  The tech tyrants have systematically deleted Trump's words and the search engines will not help you find them, but you can, with difficulty, discover what he said on January 6:  ["]We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.  I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.["]

Left's Hypocrisy On Full Display After D.C. 'Insurrection'.  The angry election fraud protest that led to the temporary takeover of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday perfectly illuminates the hypocrisy of the Democratic far left when it comes to political violence.  Republican officials and rank-and-file GOP conservatives immediately and forcefully condemned the pro-Trump rioters.  Nothing unusual about that:  During this riot-torn year, Republicans have consistently, loudly and frequently denounced violence, no matter who did it.  What about the Democrats and their extreme-left supporters?  Tragically, for them, violence is always acceptable when it's in service to their cause.  That's especially true since the riots and mass protests began in late May following the death of George Floyd.  But, as usual, congressional Democrats, the legacy press and social media giants have misreported, distorted and twisted facts to suit their own leftist agenda and inflame public opinion.  Republicans, however, have taken a mature and responsible path.

Capitol Breach 'Stole From The Hundreds Of Thousands' Of Peaceful Protesters Concerned About Election Integrity.  The Federalist Senior Editors Mollie Hemingway and Christopher Bedford, who were on the ground in Washington D.C. on Wednesday during the Capitol breach, told Fox News's Laura Ingraham on Wednesday that, while the destruction of the Capitol was sad and wrong, it also showcased the hypocrisy of the left and in corporate media.  "Over the last year, political violence has been completely condoned.  This has been allowed," Bedford said.  "Groups that attacked police officers and [perpetrated] riots and burned buildings have their own park named after them right in front of the White House.  There was a chorus from media critics and politicians saying that this is justified, that it is in the service of good," he continued.  Both Hemingway and Bedford also noted that while the rallies for President Donald Trump were "massive," many people were simply there to protest, not prepared to riot.

Kamala Harris Called Riots 'a Movement' Last Summer, Said 'They Should Not' Stop.  Violence is never the answer to resolving conflict, but it's hard not to see the hypocrisy of the left when they act surprised or condemn what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday [1/6/2021].  In June 2020, in the aftermath of the nationwide rioting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Kamala Harris even gleefully predicted that the rioting wouldn't end, telling Stephen Colbert, host of "The Late Show," that they shouldn't end.  "They're not going to stop.  They're not going to stop," she told him.  "This is a movement, I'm telling you.  They're not gonna stop.  And everyone beware because they're not gonna stop.  They're not gonna stop before Election Day and they're not going to stop after Election Day.  And everyone should take note of that.  They're not gonna let up and they should not."
[Emphasis in original.]

Congress Is the Real Threat, Not Protests.  Somewhat lost in the chaos of the DC protests was the fact that Democrats won both Georgia Senate runoff races.  That effectively gives the Democrats control of both houses of Congress.  In his podcast, Peter Schiff made the case that Congress is the real threat to America, not the protesters who broke into the Capitol building.  Peter said he thinks that Trump's threat to veto the spending bill unless Congress upped the stimulus checks to $2,000 was a key reason the Democrats won. [...] The bottom line is now the Democrats are going to be able to get a lot of things done that they wouldn't have been able to do had the Senate stayed in Republican hands.  You can almost certainly count on tax increases on corporations and "the rich," and more regulations.  As Peter put it, "Democrats will keep their promises when it comes to making government bigger and more expensive."  None of this is good for the market.

Dan Scavino Relays a Message From President Donald Trump.  Almost everyone around the MAGA community has clear-eyes on the strategies deployed against our assembly.  We are, quite simply, not naive to years of institutional manipulation and gaslighting. [...] President Trump is a non-politician and a risk to the GOP wing of the UniParty congress.  The republican establishment never supported President Trump; he was always adverse to their UniParty interests.  The GOPe needed a cover position now to hide and justify their baseline contempt.  The scripted and coordinated events of the last 24 hours gave them that justification.  However, despite their insufferable attempts to justify their current attacks we are never going back to that time when we did not see the strings on the political marionettes.  President Trump has created a movement and collected the largest factual constituency of voters in the nation.  The indefatigable leader of the MAGA movement gathered 74 million votes for his re-election.  That is the monster vote.

Welcome to a Wilderness of Lies.  [Scroll down]  he structures and institutions of American society have all been in place with little real change for nearing a century.  Nothing lasts forever though, particularly when they are run by grifty idiots.  The disruption caused by the tech revolution has helped speed up inevitable processes of change — you know, the creative destruction we hear about in unwoke economics courses.  The institutions we relied on — our churches, the NFL, the political parties — are now focused entirely upon preventing that inevitable change.  The lackluster losers who inherited their sinecures in these institutions (not literally but by being adopted into the establishment by going to the right schools) want to maintain a status quo that is great for them and poison for the rest of us.

This Is a Coup.  Why Were Experts So Reluctant to See It Coming?  Wednesday morning [1/6/2021], like most mornings, I woke up to the usual round of politics news sites and newsletters:  Politico Playbook, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.  Most of the day's news concerned Tuesday's runoff elections in Georgia, which apparently delivered control of the Senate to Democrats; other articles concerned the ongoing pandemic and the future of commuting in the post-pandemic world.  One article caught my eye:  a Washington Post article by David Nakamura about whether the protests and petitions against the counting of Electoral College votes added up to a coup attempt.  The piece quoted several liberal commentators and historians as saying that it obviously was, but the thesis was that what we were seeing as of Tuesday did "not yet meet the formal academic definition of an attempted coup."

Are Sen. Josh Hawley, Republicans really a threat to democracy for questioning election?  [Scroll down]  Moreover, the last time some Democrats in Congress didn't officially contest a Republican presidential victory was way back in 1988.  That would be three Republican presidential wins in a row now that have been objected to in Congress (George W. Bush's two wins, and Trump's).  We've somehow managed to make it this far without having our democracy toppled.  And is 2016 such a distant memory?  Where was the left's angst about destroying democracy when there was open talk in their ranks and in the media hoping that electors would switch their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton — despite no legitimate concerns about voter fraud?  In contrast to the hyperventilating going on today about Republicans not voting to certify some states' electoral results, USA Today ran an objective and dispassionate look at calls to deny Trump his 2016 win.  It's not so academic a question now, for some reason.

Explaining the Twelfth Amendment for Those in the Media Who Seem to Be Reading Impaired.  The Twelfth Amendment was adopted in June 1804 — ahead of the Presidential election of 1804 — and replaced the provision regarding the function of the Electoral College that was set forth in Art. II, Sec. 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution as originally drafted.  The purpose of the Amendment was to address the extraordinarily close outcomes of the Presidential election in 1796 and 1800.  The process set forth in the Constitution had resulted in the election of a President and Vice President from different political parties in 1796 — which turned out to be problematic since the one-party was pro-British and the other was pro-French in the armed hostilities between the two countries at the time.  In 1800, a tie in the Electoral College vote led to 36 ballots in the House of Representatives before it finally elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr — both from the Democrat-Republican Party.  Both had received the same number of Electoral Votes since under the original system each elector cast 2 votes without distinguishing between a vote for President and a vote for Vice President.

A Time For Choosing:  A Test For Our Souls.  There has been a force quietly at work in our country, in plain sight, that has gradually taken over ideological control of most of our institutions, businesses, media, and even our culture.  This force is Marxism and communism.  For those who have been following this story, there is no surprise here.  For those who have never heard of this, it sounds far-fetched and unbelievable.  This decades-long communist subversion of our nation came to a head in the 2020 election.  While before our major political parties didn't differ that much on a fundamental level, gradually one of the parties was subverted by communist groups.  During past elections, both parties would wave the American flag and sing the national anthem, but now one side genuinely believes America is a fundamentally flawed nation.  Over the summer, Marxist groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), which was founded by self-proclaimed Marxists who have hijacked genuine concerns over racism for political purposes, and the far-left Antifa group, were behind riots and violence.  These groups have direct ties to communist groups connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Some Hard Truths We Face as Patriotic Americans as We Near January 6th:  Americans have absorbed the truth that the institutions long depended upon for redress are compromised.  For years we had always suspected this, but in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election this has been confirmed with much dismay and sadness. [...] Here are 25 hard truths Americans can no longer rationalize away:
  [#1]    A presidential election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump in the most brazen and in your face way possible.
  [#2]    The government elites in all three branches, and in both parties, appear to be in on or complicit in the steal either by omission or commission.
  [#3]    The strings of our government are being pulled by China and other global interests that have no qualms about tearing down our time-honored values of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion.
  [#4]    The Supreme Court, except for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito has allowed partisanship, virtue signaling and cowardice to influence the merits of the cases they have deigned to accept or reject.
  [#5]    There is no Democrat and Republican Party, only a UniParty.  Both parties are merely two sides of the same coin, dedicated to selling out the country to China for power and enrichment.
  [#6]    News is not what the corporate media delivers, only leftist/globalist propaganda that rarely speaks ill of China or George Soros.
  [#7]    China has invaded America without firing a shot, first by exploiting the moral weaknesses of people in the upper echelons of the political, educational, corporate, and entertainment world and second by using the Wuhan Virus as a bioweapon to psychologically place America under siege without an overt military effort.
  [#8]    If Joe Biden is sworn in as president, he will make a mockery of American ideals of honesty, integrity, and fair play.
  [#9]    The police in blue cities have lost the trust of patriotic Americans due to their willingness to blindly follow orders of mayors and governors even if those diktats infringed upon the constitutional rights of the citizenry. [...]
  [#12]   America is becoming a nation of free states and communist satellite states.
  [#13]   The Democrat party has thrown out the constitutional rule of law in favor of socialism/communism.
  [#14]   Unless liberty is vigorously taught and fought for, it will devolve into tyranny. [...]
  [#17]   Our public schools are not dedicated to teaching our children, but to indoctrinating them to leftist ideas.
  [#18]   The Wuhan Virus lockdown demonstrated the eagerness of far too many Americans to surrender liberty for safety.
  [#19]   The Republican elites destroyed the Tea Party and wish to do the same to Trump supporters.  They are doing so by willfully ignoring election fraud evidence and declaring Joe Biden as the president-elect by saying "the electoral college has spoken." [...]

The timing is perfect to decentralize DC.  Much has been written about the pandemic-driven favorable aspects, promise, and implications of virtual working compared to traditional in-person interfaces. [...] Much less has been written about virtual management's implications for decentralizing the federal government and putting the decision-makers physically among the decision-affected — real instead of virtual reality.  How about considering the following departmental tectonic shifts:  Interior to Wyoming, Utah, or Colorado; Agriculture to Iowa, Nebraska, or South Dakota; and Commerce to Florida or Louisiana?  Regulators of the environment could literally step out their back doors and visit a forest, see a farm, soybean, cornfield, or cow; or visit a vibrant multicultural economy on the hemisphere's doorsteps.  Relocating individuals could cash in on D.C.'s inflated housing prices and boost their quality of life with bigger homes and maybe even a back 40, or at least a backyard.

The Etiology of Executive Order 13848.  The fate of Western Civilization, some three thousand years in the making, now hangs by a slender thread.  That thread is Executive Order 13848.  So what is in that Executive Order? [...] It relies heavily on the Attorney General.  The hapless Jeff Sessions was in that role when Executive Order 13848 was signed.  He was replaced on 14th February, 2019, by Bill Barr.  Barr seemed reliable but achieved nothing.  The reason he slow-walked everything, couldn't see corruption in the Hunter Biden laptop etc. became apparent when he recently referred to President Trump as a "deposed king ranting."  Barr outed himself as a Deep State operative too soon, and leaves his position on 23rd December and so won't be involved in drafting the remedies report in response to the report by the Director of National Intelligence.  The fate of Western Civilization hangs on such small matters.

On January 6, we learn whether our Constitution will hold and whether congressional Republicans care.  The 2020 presidential election was, in several targeted battleground states, an unconstitutional electoral exercise.  Even putting aside evidence of significant fraud, virtually none of which received a hearing by our courts, events leading up to and including the November national election constituted a radical and grave departure from the federal electoral system adopted by the framers of the Constitution and the state ratification conventions.  Now, let's be clear:  None of this matters to the Democrat Party, since it and its surrogates perpetrated these unconstitutional acts, as I shall soon explain.  Nor does it matter to the media, which is utterly illiterate on the subject and unequivocally supports the supposed outcome in any event.  But it should be of great moment and concern to the people of this country and especially to congressional Republicans in both Houses, for if the latter do not at least confront and challenge this lawlessness on January 6, when Congress meets to count the electors, it will be the GOP's undoing and, simultaneously, the undoing of our presidential electoral system.  Ultimately, it will be the people of the United States who love our republic who will be the losers.

A Perfect Storm Seeks Destruction of the US.  As 2021 dawns, the war on our culture moves into high gear.  The opportunistic intersection of the resistance to the Trump presidency, the rise of the monopolistic tech giants, the spurious panic over the psychologically weaponized CCP virus in the form of COVID-19 and its concomitant loss of personal freedom, the neo-Marxist hijacking and worsening of race relations, and the legalistic undermining of U.S. laws and institutions have all evolved into a perfect storm of destruction that not only threatens the future of the United States, but actively seeks its destruction.

Is Nothing Happening?  Or is Trump is Channeling Sun Tzu?  I'm impatient, as I expect most American Thinker readers are as well.  We have been promised a coming storm that will be biblical, or a Kraken released on Deep State conspirators. [...] As of yet, there has been no storm, no Kraken.  Trump has followed the Constitution, making legal arguments up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court.  What Vice President Pence does when it is time to again follow the Constitution and certify the Electoral College votes is to be determined.  Will a massive declassification of criminal and seditious activities subdue the Democrats?  Will Trump win without a bloody battle?  Time will tell.  At this point, it's a binary choice.  Either Trump is in over his head and will be dragged out of office.  Or he is executing his plan, on his terms and timing, as he has done since his famous escalator ride at Trump Tower in 2015.  Trump knows the stakes for himself, his family, and America if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden get the keys to the kingdom and promptly hand them over to China.  Want to bet against Trump?  How has that worked out in the past?

It's for Mike Pence to Judge whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All.  On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate.  His power will be plenary and unappealable.  You heard that right.  As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection "out of order" or "denied."  His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.  This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices.  He can roll over on "certified" electors, or he can uphold the law.

How Congress Can Give Americans $2K Relief Checks and Cut Omnibus Pork to Pay for It.  President Donald Trump has urged Congress to increase the amount of the direct relief payments to Americans to $2,000 by cutting out the unrelated pork in the coronavirus rescue package and government spending bill.  Breitbart News has calculated how much that increase would cost and what could be cut from the 5,593-page omnibus bill to offset it.  The House and Senate passed the combined $900 billion coronavirus relief package and $1.4 trillion government spending bill on Monday night [12/21/2020], but the massive 5,593-page omnibus bill immediately drew criticism for sending billions of dollars of aid to foreign countries while only allotting $600 relief checks for Americans.

The Editor says...
The voting-age population of the U.S. is approximately 255,200,000.  $1.4 trillion divided equally among us would be $5,485 per capita.  But the money would come from the national debt, so we would all be undertaking an unsecured loan from our grandchildren.  Either that, or the government would be printing money, which would result in inflation.  (And buying votes.)  Either way, it seems nice in the short term, but it's destructive in the long term.  About 90 percent of the omnibus spending is unnecessary, in my opinion.

A Midwestern Explanation of the 2020 Election.  At the start of this year there was not much question President Trump would breeze onto a second term.  The country was on a roll — low gas prices, fat 401k accounts, low unemployment, real minority economic gains and a relatively peaceful planet.  No masks, no shutdown, no worries.  Even Lil' Rocketman had become quiescent and the Arabs started cooperating with Israel.  Then we were infected with it, the Wuhan virus.  We were politically, immunologically, and socially naive to this new Chinese viral monster that lurked on the horizon and was designed to keep on giving.  We shut down the economy and Democrats never shut up blaming management failure of this unique, novel disease on the political party controlling the White House — despite their state governments being responsible for their own brand of deadly mismanagement.  As the economy ground to a halt, the left (including the deprecating mainstream media, academe, virtue-signaling corporate America and the deep state) saw an opportunity to steal the election by putting in place their steal-the-election "Square Dance Initiative."

The Senate:  Throw Them (Almost) All Out.  Every single member of the U.S. Senate deserves to be fired, vilified and run out on the proverbial rail except — alphabetically — Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).  They were the only ones with the honor, the basic morality, not to vote for a wretched, pork-dripping from its mouth, "America-hating" (as Roger Kimball accurately called it on Parler), miserable excuse for a "COVID relief bill" that sends twenty-five million taxpayer dollars to Pakistan for something called "gender programs," millions more for every liberal arts and humanities boondoggle imaginable (most of them shut anyway), but a miserly six hundred bucks to the terminally-masked citizens of this country who have been locked in their houses since the Paleolithic Age.  And while we're riding people out on a rail, we should build a special one of titanium or whatever metal is most permanent for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and send them back respectively to the feces and syringe-laden streets of San Francisco and the rat-infested walk-ups of Hunt's Point and East New York.  These same supposed public servants, who have been around since before the aforementioned Paleolithic Age, suddenly — as if discovering shame for the first time in their lives — agreed with Donald Trump that the paltry six hundred should be bumped up to an at least palatable two thousand.

McConnell & Pelosi Jumped the Shark.  If ever two people embodied the idea of Swamp Supremacy, it would be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Stated another way, McConnell and Pelosi are the ruling class, personified.  And though their political philosophies may be marginally different, they are 100% joined at the hip in their desire to rid the world of President Donald Trump.  The so-called covid relief bill they slammed through both houses of Congress in about 12 hours, following closely on the heels of their oh-so-certain pronouncement that "President-elect Joe Biden" is to be honored and accepted, may have just assured the re-election of President Trump to a second term.  'Tone-deaf' doesn't begin to capture the out-of-touchness' represented by the re-enactment in December 2020 of the dead-of-night, backroom dealing, 'pass it to find out what's in it' arrogance that brought Obamacare into the world, against the will of the American people.

Mike Pence is being held out as the potential savior of a fair election.  For the most part, Americans assume that the Vice President lacks power.  The President may assign him responsibilities, but the Constitution does not.  Instead, he's the understudy, there just in case something happens to the president.  Except that, in this strange year of 2020, we may learn that the Vice President is the most powerful man in America.  Ivan Raiklin, a constitutional lawyer, claims that the Constitution grants Mike Pence the power to overturn a manifestly fraudulent election.  On December 22, Raiklin sent out a tweet urging Pence to inform the Secretaries of State in those six contested states that, despite overwhelming evidence of fraud, certified Electors, that he cannot accept those certifications because the electors were not legally appointed.  The tweet has attached a memorandum for President Trump that purports to come from the White House itself, for it's written on what appears to be official White House letterhead.

Concede only that Trump won.  President Trump stands tall amid calls to concede from his enemies and those who want to destroy our constitutional republic and replace it with a banana republic.  Those enemies of America include Mitt Romney and anyone who has defended as free trade Red China's devastation of our economy. [...] Concede nothing to these people who oppose 3.5% unemployment and the 15% increase in household incomes in the first 3 years of the Trump presidency.  The[y] do not want to Make America Great Again.  And that includes all those corporations running pro-BLM ads.  None of them ran MAGA ads because the companies sold out to Red China.  Apple makes most of its junk in Red China, not America.  Ditto Nike and on and on.  These companies also promote covid 19 as if it were the Black Plague.  After nearly a year, 1 in 1,000 Americans have died of it — fewer than die of cancer or heart disease.

Don't Let Biden Kill Trump's Post-COVID Economic Boom.  After growing at a blistering 33.1% pace in the third quarter, the economy is poised for another double-digit leap in Q4.  Now there's talk of a roaring '20s-style revival on the way as two new vaccines start making the rounds and the nation gets back to normal.  None of this was supposed to happen — at least not in this time frame.  And none of it will continue if Democrats gain control of the Senate.  Let's rewind the clocks a few months to understand why.  Once the economy came to a screeching halt amid what turn out to be reckless and largely pointless lockdowns, mainstream economists started predicting another slow recovery, while bashing President Donald Trump for saying otherwise.

Congresswoman-elect: Lawmakers Who Think Elector Challenge Is Futile Should Resign.  Incoming freshman House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Republican senators convinced about the futility of the plan to challenge electors in Congress on Jan. 6 should resign.  "It is absolutely not futile," Taylor Greene told The Epoch Times on Dec. 22.  "Anyone holding office who doesn't think they can give the effort to stop our country from plunging into socialism with a stolen election should really resign.  They shouldn't hold office if they don't think this effort is worth trying."  The congresswoman-elect made the remarks in response to a question about some of the rationale floated by Republican senators who oppose the idea of challenging the electors.  Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told Newsmax on Dec. 21 that the challenge will go down like a "shot dog."  "The thing they've got to remember is, it's just not going anywhere.  I mean, in the Senate it would go down like a shot dog," Thune told reporters.  "And I just don't think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be."

Face It, Nordic Countries Aren't Socialist.  One of the most common fallacies of the new populists is to say that their model is the "Nordic" one and that those countries are successful examples of how "socialism works".  When I mentioned it to the Finnish Finance Minister Petteri Orpo at a recent ECR dinner, he could not believe it.  Expropriations, massive tax increases, appropriation of savings and subordinating the growth model to political control is what populists defend.  The same as Venezuela, which all of them praised — from Bernie Sanders to Owen Jones or Corbyn and Chomsky — until it collapsed.  Then they moved on to the fallacy of "the Nordic model".  Do you know what interventionists forget about the Nordic nations?  They are leaders in the economic freedom index (Heritage) and ease of doing business according to the World Bank.

Trump as a One-Term President Would Become DC's Nightmare.  What it failed to accomplish through four years of Deep State sabotage and bipartisan efforts at thwarting the MAGA agenda, the D.C. Club may have finally succeeded through good old-fashioned vote fraud.  The District of Corruption is salivating over the possibility of freeing itself from a foe who has singlehandedly damaged the Swamp forever.  No victory could be more pyrrhic.  Forcing Donald Trump from the presidency while half of all likely voters believe the election was stolen from him (including a stunning one-third of Democrats) would backfire on Washington spectacularly.  Trump is too ferocious a competitor and too powerful a cultural force to ever disappear into a retirement not of his choosing.  At least 75 million Americans voted for the president because, among other reasons, he is seen as an "outsider."  Now Washington insists on making him a martyr, as well.  What will happen if President Trump leaves office in January?  He will instantly become the most consequential and powerful ex-president Americans have seen.

It's time for the 'Deplorables' to become the Unconquerables.  Democrats won the election, but they don't seem very happy about it.  And with reason:  The election failed in its main purpose, which was to shut down the Deplorables.  The Deplorables, in Hillary Clinton's infamous term, are working- and middle-class people who haven't bought into the progressive agenda.  They're people who don't see the rise of the tech oligarchy as a plus, who don't think "woke" politics makes sense, who have jobs that produce tangible outputs.  They're nearly half the country.  This election was supposed to demoralize them, crushing President Trump and his supporters in a double-digit landslide that would give the Democrats solid control of the White House and Congress — and, with a little judicious court-packing, of the judicial branch, too.  The Deplorables would be made to realize that they aren't in charge, that if they want to ride, they'll have to (in Barack Obama's famous words) ride in the back.

Fighting back against government-imposed victimhood.  Conservatives in Democrat enclaves tend to feel especially helpless.  We spin our wheels and don't complain too loudly because somebody might shut us down.  Our neighborhoods still spout Biden signs on lawns but we keep the "Stop the Steal" signs in a closet for fear that, if they show up on our lawns, our houses could be firebombed.  Moreover, when you're surrounded by leftists celebrating a stolen election (thanks, often, to help from a weak and corrupt local GOP), it's hard to imagine that anything you do could make a difference.  Everyone around you hates Trump and what he represents:  The individual, freedom, hope, patriotism.

Gaming Out a MAGA Party.  The modern Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party.  Its first nominee, Abraham Lincoln, managed to thread the needle through a hopelessly split Democratic Party to win the Presidency in 1860.  Some of these conditions are present today.  Both of our major parties are splitting into factions, as the Democrats had in 1860.  And there is a candidate available to lead a new party who not only came close to winning, but has served as the President of the United States.  President Trump must have at least toyed with the idea of forming a new party.  Although the Republican Party's voters nominated Trump in 2016 and elected him President, the party's establishment figures never accepted Trump, or his agenda.

Georgia Rep. Vernon Jones Says Election Allegations Have 'Awakened a Sleeping Giant'.  Like tens of thousands of other supporters of President Donald Trump, Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones was in Washington, D.C., this weekend showing support for him amid swirling allegations of vote fraud and election irregularities.  And he also had a warning of sorts for the president's political (and real?) enemies:  You have just stepped in it big time.

After SCOTUS's knife in the back, what Trump must do now.  [Scroll down]  The question now is, will he muster the energy to do the right thing?  The right thing is to somehow swallow this absurd and evil election result and soldier on to Georgia once again to try to salvage the Republic by supporting two Republican senators hardly worthy of mention.  Donald Trump deserves better.  We all deserve better.  And it is the fact that we all deserve better, and the fact that Trump seems to care about such things, that gives me hope.  As we know, 50 thousand Trump voters can fill a stadium or a huge field — whereas Biden can't draw a baker's dozen with free ice cream.  However, 400 thousand Biden voters can fit in a small mail truck, or perhaps an even smaller thumb drive.  It is this unsettling knowledge that threatens the upcoming Georgia Senate races, and with it, the future of the Republic.  There's no doubt that Georgia conservatives would defeat the Dems probably 60-40 in a fair fight.  But what are the odds of that?

China's leaders understand all too well from their own historical experience how to control America: use compradors.  There is a very large, rich, and influential class of Americans who owe their wealth and standing to China, having mightily prospered through business ties to the Middle Kingdom.  Every educated person in China understands the way such ties linking a wealthy elite beholden to foreign interests can be used to bring down even the mightiest of nations.  The word "comprador", referring to the Chinese businessmen that allied themselves with Western imperialists, becoming wealthy, and, in the view of the Chinese Communist Party betraying the nation, is a curse word among Communists.

Republicans Are Blowing It in Georgia, and We May All Pay the Price.  It's not alarmist to state that the future of our country could be defined by the two Georgia Senate races. [...] Regardless of the merits leading to this perceived case of injustice, it's a fact that many Democrats are out for revenge.  If they have the White House, the House and the Senate, the pressure on President-elect Joe Biden to enact a pretty extreme agenda is going to be immense.  Will Biden have the strength to push back against this?  Will he even want to push back?  The games he played during the campaign on the question of packing the Supreme Court and the fact that his own vice president is all for a more radical agenda do not bode well for those hoping Biden will stand in the way of the radical elements who have all the energy in his party today.  A Democratic Senate looking to change America would start by killing the Senate filibuster so they no longer need 60 votes to pass a bill.  They don't need any Republican votes to do that, and once it's done, the Republicans won't be able to stop anything.

Joe Biden, the Manchurian President.  [Scroll down]  China, not Russia, clearly interfered with the 2020 elections.  The only question about this interference is whether the release of COVID-19 was accidental or on purpose.  Before the pandemic crippled the U.S., Trump was headed to reelection by a historic landslide.  The economy was roaring, and a record number Americans were enjoying prosperity and freedom.  In spite of Democrat efforts to remove Trump from office by impeachment and the economic shutdown because of the virus, the president still earned ten million more votes than 2016 and in any other election would have crushed his political opponent.  The virus not only had a horrific detrimental impact on our economy, it was used as an excuse for making substantive changes to the electoral process through unprecedented millions of mail-in votes.  Even if it was an accidental release from a Wuhan lab, the Chinese are responsible for the criminally negligent deaths of U.S. citizens and the economic damage caused by the virus.  If the virus was deliberately released, it was an act of war.  So, are we at war with China?

George Orwell, Our Contemporary — Almost.  In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell divides the world into two conflicting superpowers perpetually at war with one another.  Much of the action of the novel takes place in Oceania, whose capital is London.  Authority is exercised by the Ministry of Truth, which instructs people what to think and also invents most of the country's art; the Ministry of Peace, which runs the military; the Ministry of Plenty, which runs the economy; and the Ministry of Love, which runs the prisons.  Endless wars keep the people busy and focussed, and the thought police aggressively pursue people who commit, or are alleged to commit, thought crimes.  In Oceania, words lose their conventional meanings, or rather, they assume their opposite meanings.  For example, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.  A faceless enemy is constantly held up for repudiation.  Periodically the regime orders two minutes of hate, or even a hate week.  Nowadays, we have more up to date perversions of the truth, such as, for example, the alleged non-existence of sexual differences or the inversion of racial superiority.  Still, the similarities are too obvious not to strike a responsive chord.

One Thing That Astoundingly Got Twice as Good During the Titanically Stupid Government Lockdowns?  [Scroll down]  US ISPs were met with orders-of-magnitude more demand for their services.  Not only did our Internet networks not collapse in a smoldering heap — the speeds thereon almost doubled.  This is an astounding private sector success.  The result of less government from the Trump Administration — allowing for more investment and thus more expansion of the private sector networks.  To not just handle the lockdowns — but to manhandle them.  Thanks to anti-Status Quo Government President Trump.

Woke Corps Lobby D.C. to Keep Their Slaves.  When most people think of Nike, they think of Colin Kaepernick, the disgraced racist ex-NFL player advocating for a cop killer who became the public face of the company, but a more accurate picture would be one of its lobbyists like Michael McSwain or Jesse McCollum.  McSwain worked as Obama's Senior Associate Director of Scheduling before joining Nike and is now its manager of Government and Public Affairs, which is to say, top lobbyist.  These days he divides his time between cheering Democrats and booing Republicans on Twitter, while denouncing tariffs on Communist China, but also his quieter work behind the scenes for Nike.  Slave labor is the lifeblood of Nike.  And it's not only tariffs, but human rights legislation, that threaten its survival.  Even while Nike spends millions lecturing Americans about racism, it's desperately fighting to keep its slaves working on their plastic plantations in Communist China.  It's one of the reasons why the sportswear company spends over $1 million a year on lobbyists.

Time to take steps to preserve our history.  Last Thursday night, I watched President Trump deliver an astonishing speech concerning the 2020 election and the fraudulent activities of the Democrats in the key swing states.  After the speech ended, I had the thought to download the YouTube video of Trump's speech onto a thumb drive so it would be preserved for my four-month-old grandchild.  Yes, preserved.  If Biden prevails, all pre-January 20, 2021 downloadable internet videos and news broadcasts about the Trump administration successes will not so slowly disappear, or worse, they will be edited by the new Ministry of Truth.  No socialist nation has ever allowed the free flow of information, history, and national culture.  A Harris/Biden administration will surely be no exception.  So, thinking forward a bit more, I'd like to suggest to all those reading this article that we begin to preserve our internet history, in fact our entire cultural history for future generations.

Our approach to election fraud is lunacy.  Tens of millions of Americans feel with good reason that the election is tainted.  There are hundreds of well documented anomalies including over a thousand affidavits stating under the penalty of perjury that significant irregularities occurred.  But we are relying on a skeleton crew of privately funded lawyers to try to get to the bottom of what by all accounts appears to be a massive fraud.  Why is this all-important effort left to a few brave souls and not the main focus of our government's efforts?  Where is the Justice Department?  The FBI?  Why doesn't the Defense Department do a review of military mail-in ballots that inexplicably went 100% for Joe Biden?  How about a forensic analysis of the tens of thousands of Biden-only mail-in ballots that weren't folded and appeared to be on different paper?  Who rented the P.O. boxes used for tens of thousands of illegal voters in Georgia and other states?  Where is the investigation of postal officials who ordered carriers to throw away Trump mailings?  Why aren't the poll workers who sent observers home and then illegally continued counting in the dark of the night arrested and charged?

Is Lin Wood trying to destroy Republican control over the Senate?  Lin Wood, who seems to support Trump, is beginning to show all the signs of a loose cannon or even a spoiler.  I'm really not sure what's going on, so I thought I'd just give you a brief history of the man and what he's been saying recently, so you can draw your own conclusions. [...] More recently, Wood became well known to conservatives when he represented Nick Sandmann, whom the media horribly slandered for smiling at a threatening drummer.  We don't know how much money CNN and The Washington Post agreed to pay Sandmann, but most people are reasonably sure that it was a lot.  According to Breitbart, though, Wood has been a longtime Democrat voter and a consistent Democrat donor.

The Supreme Court and the Electoral Coup.  [Scroll down]  And today, it's quite obvious — for Supreme Court justices and all Americans to see — that we are in the last stage of the takedown and final usurpation of the Constitution of the United States.  With distrust, division, and corruption being so prevalent in the big cities and lower courts of many of the contested states — as to nullify the seriousness of over 400 affidavits documenting vote fraud and polling place irregularities, documenting that there were more votes cast than registered voters in quite a number of jurisdictions, and overwhelming evidence of massive computer driven vote manipulation associated with key states' use of Dominion Voting Systems, and pay-to-play corruption at the highest level of Republican Party-led Georgia government to contract with Dominion to use their voting machines — the Supreme Court is compelled to adjudicate. [...] The Supreme Court needs to do its job of adjudication and protect and save the Constitution at this critical time.

To Vote or Not to Vote, in Georgia.  I am going to say something that seems extreme, but only three times in my fairly long life have I seen political figures who absolutely exude charisma — one was Bobby Kennedy, whom I watched address a crowd of Chicanos in East Los Angeles two days before he was shot, the second is Donald Trump, whom I have seen speak more than a dozen times from Anaheim, Calif. to Manchester, N.H. while covering the 2016 campaign, and Sidney Powell on Dec. 2, 2020 in Alpharetta, Georgia.  The crowd was shouting "We love you" in the same way they do with Trump and it seemed equally heartfelt.  This was both moving and slightly unnerving, but it was real.  Sidney has a way of just standing straight up and speaking truths in simple declarative sentences that has immense impact.

Is the Democrats' Election Heist 'Too Big to Fail'?  President Trump and Fox News enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship, until, loyalty already fraying, Fox betrayed Trump on election evening by prematurely calling Arizona for Biden.  Only stalwart reporters such as Mark Levin, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity remain by Trump's side.  Republican elected officials who retained power are mostly mute.  Although the predicted Blue Wave never materialized as Republicans flipped House seats and Senate control is so close it will only be decided after the results of a Georgia runoff election are known, feckless state governors and attorneys general overseeing election preparations stood idly by as Democrats set up the apparatus for the big election steal.  Republicans in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania were the exception.  Resisting the illegal power grab the Democrats had implemented by a massive mail-in-ballot scheme and extending, by three days, the deadline to vote, Republican state officials appealed to the Supreme Court.

Yes, They Cheat.  We Have to Win Georgia Anyway.  The good news is, Republicans are finally talking about vote fraud!  Going forward, the GOP's sole objectives should be:  1) End mail-in ballots;  2) End early voting;  3) Ensure that the Democrats don't steal the two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5, 2021.

Confused About the Election?  You're Not Alone.  What exactly happened on Nov. 3 may never be determined.  There is zero appetite on either side to really figure this election out for many reasons.  First off, putting doubts in American's heads about a fair election is incredibly poisonous to society.  Second, if our elections look shady, imagine what happens to our standing in the world, and the world's comfort levels with respect to investing in our country.  Third, most traditional politicians on both sides are happy to get Donald Trump out of Washington, and get back to the good old days.  And fourth, the media got the outcome it wanted, Biden won.  For these reasons, anyone who thinks this election was suspicious is labeled a psychopathic, conspiracy-theorist MAGA hillbilly.  So at least we know who we are.

Why traditional masculine attributes still matter on the battlefield.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, just 70 years ago this week, the First Marine Division fought its way into the pages of history with their gallant stand at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.  In temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees, the Marines held off some 100,000 Chinese attackers and fought their way in hellish conditions back to the allied lines.  Today, however, we live in a decidedly unheroic age, one in which the traditional masculine attributes of courage, physical strength, and moral fortitude have been disparaged by feminists and soy boys nearly into oblivion.  Dismissed as outdated and derided as "toxic," masculinity and the martial virtues so vital to the maintenance of society and social order have been stuffed into the cultural closet in favor of wishful thinking, politically correct fantasy, and dangerous good intentions.  It seems we're too rational, too sophisticated, too civilized for definitive brutality anymore.

Seven Quotes to Lay Out a Totalitarian America.  [Scroll down]  We have lived through the decades of gradual transition of socialist sentiments and actions in our country, becoming more socialist every day through the transition.  We have seen universities, K-12 school systems, the media, large companies, philanthropic organizations, and other entities transition from idealistic to socialist, largely unnoticed — until now.  Would Biden's administration be a massive socialist revolution into a totalitarian state?  No.  But given what has happened already, it could be the straw that breaks democracy's back.  Our transformation to a totalitarian state must be resisted.  Buckle up and stand tall.  Do not fear Black Lives Matter, Antifa, social media, the press, your school's curricula, your employer, or any of these forces.

The Cunning Plot to Kill Kennedy.  [Scroll down]  The assassination itself had all the earmarks of a classic military ambush, one in which shooters were firing from both the front and back of the president.  It is a virtual certainty that responsibility for the ambush lay with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been waging a vicious war against Kennedy practically since the time he assumed office.  While the JCS were experts at preparing military-style ambushes, they lacked the intellectual capability of devising the overall plot and cover-up, given its high level of cunning and sophistication.  That responsibility undoubtedly lay with the CIA, whose top officials were brilliant graduates of Ivy League Schools.  Moreover, practically from its inception the CIA was specializing in the art of state-sponsored assassinations and in how to conceal the CIA's role in them.  To ensure that the role of the Pentagon and the CIA in the Kennedy assassination would be kept secret, they had to figure out a way to shut down the investigation from the start.

Multilateral Dreamin'.  The American people strongly approve of President Trump's emphasis on an "America First" foreign policy, and will not look kindly on re-subordinating America to the establishment's hobby horses.  Trump was elected to end pointless military adventures abroad.  Whatever the establishment might prefer, nobody now is going to send U.S. troops to fight overseas, especially not in the Middle East.  He was elected to be "tough on China."  Returning to business as usual with China is the establishment's top international priority.  But public opinion has so shifted that candidate Biden promised to be even tougher on China.  His administration will have to pretend.

3 things to prepare for when President Trump is declared the winner.  As more evidence floods in that the 2020 elections were rife with an obvious mountain of voter fraud, it's becoming increasingly clear that President Trump is going to be reelected.  The last two weeks we've seen patriots losing hope and progressives celebrating, but we've witnessed many turns of events as momentum now appears to be siding with the President, his legal team, independent attorneys, and the mounting evidence.  There are three things we need to prepare for when President Trump is announced the winner.  That's not to say we need to take it for granted or get complacent, but if we believe truth will prevail, then we know President Trump will prevail.

Republican Business Interests Separate From Sidney Powell.  Within the business part of the GOP there are massive territorial fights amid those who live on the donations from within political campaigns.  The Trump MAGA file is being exploited like a bloody carcass dropped into a pool of piranha.  Once you know how the business end works, then a lot of other stuff makes sense. [...] This is all about who is getting paid by the campaign and RNC.  The Trump campaign isn't going to reimburse Sidney Powell for any expenses, nor is she allowed to make offers of financial payment from the GOP or Trump campaign.  The vultures assembling and protecting their paychecks do not want Powell getting paid, nor do they want any financial liability.  That's all this statement is.  This statement by the Trump Campaign has nothing to do with Donald Trump, it is directly related to those interests who derive financial benefit from the Trump campaign.

'Very strange': Devin Nunes says Democrats lack confidence in Biden victory.  There is something "very strange" about the way Democrats are treating the 2020 election, according to Rep. Devin Nunes.  The California Republican, who is the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said even President-elect Joe Biden and his team are not acting like winners, although they are putting up "a facade" of victory.  "There's a false media narrative that's been created to move us past the election that started essentially election night," he said to the Epoch Times in a recent interview, insisting that House and local races would not have been called if they were so close.

Q Was Right.  After exhaustive meetings with sources in Ukraine, who provided reams of documentary evidence for hours, CDMedia has been exposed to a massive international criminal conspiracy which spans continents and decades.  Q was right.  Our wold is run by a criminal syndicate unlike mankind has ever known.  Global financiers are involved.  Former Presidents of the United States are involved, on both sides of the political aisle.  The uni-party exists.  Media titans are involved.  Silicon Valley is involved.  Our security agencies and most politicians are compromised. [...] This is what President Trump and the Deplorables are up against.  The cabal pulled out all the stops to unseat the Trump presidency which was the only thing standing in the way of their complete power.

Cucker Tarlson sells out.  [Scroll down]  According to Carlson, the country won't heal unless Sidney Powell goes on his show.  [Indeed], even Bill O'Reilly at his zenith was not this insufferable. [...] Powell has better things to do, such as prepare a Supreme Court case.  This is why people give press conferences: so they don't have to explain the same thing over and over again in 10 different interviews.  Carlson knows this.  He is using this refusal to answer His Summons as an excuse to distance himself from the president and his supporters.  You know what would be refreshing?  Having Democrats come on Carlson's show where he would grill them about the living dead voters and 3 AM dumps of 100,000 ballots all marked for Biden.  But booking a Democrat on his show would be difficult because Democrats prefer to work behind the scenes at Fox.  And face it, he is scared.  If Fox dumped O'Reilly who built that time slot, Fox will not hesitate to dump Carlson.  Which explains why Carlson who stood up to the Conservative Establishment 4 years ago has hopped off the Trump Train.

What the Fake News Media Still Hides About Lee Harvey Oswald.  [Scroll down]  For 34 years Markus Wolf was the chief of East Germany's foreign intelligence service, a branch of the STASI with many contacts and operations in Castro's Cuba.  It was the STASI rather than the KGB that undertook the training of Castro's police and intelligence services.  Wolf's autobiography is titled, "Man Without a Face" and subtitled, "The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster."  Most intelligence experts agree that the subtitle fits.  Wolf was once asked about the Kennedy assassination and quickly replied.  "Don't ask me — ask Fidel Castro."

Shamalot.  Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what the Kennedys ever did for your country.  Bring the monkey's paw of being telegenic into politics?  Of all the things that the American political system needed, this was the last.  And whatever it was that the Kennedys did, they did most of it a long time ago.  The assassination of John F. Kennedy is almost as distant in time as the assassination of William McKinley was when Kennedy took office.  McKinley, by the way, also had great personal popularity.  And greater political support, having won reelection in 1900 by a margin of almost a million votes out of some 14 million cast.  McKinley's murder by anarchist Leon Czolgosz grieved and shocked the nation (and gave rise to conspiracy theories) the same way Kennedy's murder did.  And yet we didn't endure six subsequent decades of public figures deemed "McKinleyesque."

2020 Election Fraud vs. 2016 Russia Collusion.  [Scroll down]  Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.  The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign "coordinated," a much lower standard defined as an "agreement, tacit or express," with Russian election interference activities.  They did not.  Everything — everything — else we have been told since the summer of 2016 falls, depending on your conscience and view of humanity, into the realm of lies, falsehoods, propaganda, exaggerations, political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment, simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions.  Undeterred by the facts, many in the media — and thus, many like-minded Americans — still insist that Trump-Russia collusion was a real thing.

The Biblical Book of Esther Playing Out Again Today.  [Scroll down]  America is at a crossroads.  Sidney Powell has rightly characterized the next two months as the most important in the history of America.  The context of Queen Esther's "trial" of courage was really the age-old but simple struggle between good and evil.  So is this one.  It is the good of preserving the American constitutional structure and heritage of individual freedom and responsibility under God versus the evil of a Deep State ruling class determined to impose godless, tyrannical socialism on America.  Here's to American Esthers everywhere, and to the judges who will hear the cries of the American people that are not really about legal arguments per se; they are about heartfelt anguish as to whether the American rule of law can still stand as a bulwark for preservation of their exceptional nation from the evil that seeks to destroy it.  And they are pleas to see the Hamans of today outed and appropriately dealt with.

Transition marks precarious period for Russia and Hunter Biden probes.  With the conclusion of the election, Washington is now in that precarious period known as the lame duck.  Unlike the wounded waterfowl, lame duck presidents tend to be more active in the waning days of their terms.  From those midnight judicial appointments of John Adams to those last minute executive orders from Barack Obama, presidents often cement policies or officials before the chiming of the constitutional clock.  This year, however, it could be prosecutors who feel the greatest pressure to move.  Months before the election, many Democrats demanded that the Justice Department refrain from bringing additional indictments or releasing new information in either the Russia investigation or the Hunter Biden scandal.  Andrew Weissmann, who worked for special counsel Robert Mueller, told prosecutors not to assist the Justice Department to prevent some harmful disclosures for then candidate Joe Biden.  However, despite pressure from President Trump, the Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr did appear to hold the line before the election as is tradition.

Pardon My Perplexity, But Why Should We Be Gracious?  It is for me truly mind-boggling that after the Democrats and their allies behaved maliciously to undermine Trump's presidency, his devotees are expected to act like kindly losers.  I've heard from Republican leaders that Trump should "graciously concede," although in the meantime, he may be allowed to investigate the election results with his lawyers pro forma.  One might also infer that Trump lost in what is imagined to have been a fraud-free election.  Somehow the fact that until now not nearly enough patently false ballots have turned up to change the election results means that the electoral process was entirely on the up and up.  Unfortunately, too many irregularities occurred, which this website has documented, to permit such confidence.  Perhaps our congratulators are scared that the new administration will follow Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's exhortation, quickly seconded by neoconservative columnist Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, that those who openly supported Trump should be ridiculed and professionally isolated.  In Germany, such a fate awaits anyone in public life who is known to have voted for the Alternative für Deutschland, the only significant non-leftist party in the German parliamentary spectrum.

Republicans, You Better Be Ready For What's Coming In Georgia.  The left has a history of attacking Republicans, but just because President Donald J. Trump may not win re-election doesn't mean the lies about the GOP are going to stop.  Republican leaders around the nation, especially in Georgia, need to step up to the plate, stand up to defend the GOP from Democrat shenanigans, and stand for the integrity of U.S. elections.  The upcoming Senate runoffs between incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue and his challenger Democrat Jon Ossoff, as well as GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock in Georgia, are critical to the GOP's ability to keep the Senate majority.  Democrats are coming for them, with every trick in the book and a whole lot of campaign cash.  Millions of dollars were already poured into the Democrat candidates' campaigns to challenge the Republican incumbents for Georgia's two Senate seats.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already signaled Democrats' intentions to use these challengers in Georgia to "change the world" with their leftist policies.

Why Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame And I Say Trump Wins This Thing - Bigly.  [Scroll down]  The 290 Electoral vote total includes 20 from Pennsylvania.  There is a ton of fraud in that state and you are seeing all kinds of reports of ballots coming in at 4:00 AM and all that.  Skip it.  That does not matter.  Focus people on the Justice Alito Supreme Court Order.  Justice Alito, not a man with whom to trifle, is in charge of day-to-day activities for a group of states and Pennsylvania is one of them.  The Justice told Pennsylvania to "segregate" any vote that came in after 8:00 PM on election night.  You will recall, DJ was winning bigly (a Scott Adams word) at that point.  Around midnight, Texas time, the Pennsylvania vote counters stopped counting.  Then the truckloads of new ballots came in, reportedly voting for Biden and no other candidate for any lower office.  The Supreme Court ruled, sort of, in this case already.  They said, with 4 Justices led by Justice Alito that ONLY the Pennsylvania legislature can make or modify voting rules.  Read the opinions — this thing is NOT going to go to Biden.

Does Anyone Care about the Truth Anymore?  Ferreting out political and historical truth from the welter of partisan voices and official disinformation, so far as this is possible, is no easy task.  Not many of us are capable or desirous of doing so.  This is perhaps the major debit in a prosperous democratic polity, many of whose citizens, like pampered children, have grown spoiled and lazy.  Common sense is needed, along with moral fortitude and the willingness to dig for documentary sources and artifacts that are not easily falsified.  One cannot allow the media to do one's homework for one but must instead subject what one is told to believe to hard scrutiny and diligent research.  This process is not only an epistemic necessity but also a moral demand.

12 Ways For Trump To Bomb The Battlefield While Biden Claims The Presidency.  President Trump is right to refuse to concede the 2020 election until every legal vote has been counted and allegations of significant fraud have been fairly investigated.  His voters deserve and need to know if we were beaten fair and square.  Otherwise, Democrats are poisoning the nation's political well and ensuring Republicans never wield power at the federal level again after having established that Republicans will not fight fraud.  Since the president's team has begun releasing increasingly good evidence of large-scale voter fraud in key states, the tide may yet turn again.  At the same time, the same media-Democrat complex whose lies have been running the country for four years — think Russian collusion, impeachment, and now endless COVID lockdowns unhinged from science and prudence — typically prevail through their well-amplified echo chamber of lies that operates key institutions Republicans have conceded for the last century.

American Pravda: the JFK Assassination, Part I - What Happened?  Summarizing a half-century of conspiracy research, the [David] Talbot and [James W.] Douglass books together provide a wealth of persuasive evidence that elements of organized crime, individuals with CIA connections, and anti-Castro Cubans were probably participants in the assassination plot.  Oswald seems to have been working with various anti-Communist groups and also had significant connections to U.S. intelligence, while his purported Marxism was merely a very thin disguise.  With regard to the assassination itself, he was exactly the "patsy" he publicly claimed to be, and very likely never fired a single shot.  Meanwhile, Jack Ruby had a long history of ties to organized crime, and surely killed Oswald to shut his mouth.  Many others may have suffered a similar fate. [...] Dorothy Kilgallen was a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist and television personality, and she managed to wrangle an exclusive interview with Jack Ruby, later boasting to her friends that she would break the JFK assassination case wide open in her new book, producing the biggest scoop of her career.  Instead, she was found dead in her Upper East Side townhouse, having apparently succumbed to an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills, with both the draft text and the notes to her Jack Ruby chapter missing.

Fox News pays the price for betraying its viewership.  Under Roger Ailes, Fox News was reliably conservative.  When he left, and when Rupert Murdoch handed the reins over to his sons James and Lachlan, things started getting shaky.  James, the fiery leftist, only left Fox this July.  Now Lachlan, who is married to a fiery leftist, is at the helm, helped by Paul Ryan, the RINO rodent, among others on the Board.  With this leadership, while voters have rightly suspected creeping NeverTrumperism in the newsroom for some time now, it all came to a head with this election.  Things went pretty sour for viewers when Chris Wallace turned the first presidential debate into a three-way affair, with Wallace siding with Biden.  Nevertheless, viewers were willing to give Fox another chance on election night.  Fox failed that test.  The kill switch for many viewers was that Fox News hired a hard leftist to run its election desk on Election Night.  Predictably, Arnon Mishkin called the race in ways only a leftist could love.  With hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding, he called Arizona for Biden.  Meanwhile, he refused to call obviously pro-Trump states such as Texas and Alaska.  Things have gotten worse since then.

The collapse of American progressivism.  Had it not been for the polls predicting a landslide, Joe Biden's victory would look very respectable — both in terms of the popular vote and Electoral College margin.  At the start of the year, when the economy was strong and Trump's favorability was rising, most Democratic strategists would have bitten their hand off for such a result.  They view their results in Congress, however, as a great disappointment.  Countless Democratic incumbents fell in the House where they had expected to gain seats and the party may only make a net gain of one seat in the Senate.  Biden's victory on a centrist platform and his refusal to accept the more extreme parts of the progressive agenda has left organizations like Justice Democrats in a bind.  Many had predicted that only the likes of Bernie Sanders could mobilize enough voters to achieve victory.

SD Gov. Noem: 'We Gave Al Gore 37 Days to Run the Process' — Trump Voter Deserve Same Consideration.  Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) noted Sunday [11/8/2020] on ABC's "This Week" that during the 2000 election, former Vice President Al Gore was given 37 days to run the process of legal challenges to the election.  Therefore, she said we should "afford the 70.6 million Americans that voted for President Trump the same consideration."  [Video clip]

Meet the New Consensus Coalition That Wants to Rule Your Life.  What will life be like when Trump, that bright orange "Sun King" around which all social and cultural commentary revolves, finally goes out?  His legacy will be examined by historians, and for all the talk of hyperpolarization and harsh rhetoric surrounding him, perhaps he ought to be best remembered as a unifier — unifying his most loyal partisans, certainly, but also bringing together a motley anti-Trump coalition comprising the FBI, the CIA, Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Google, China, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations and their Bill Gates-tier sugar daddies, the NBA, Bill Kristol and fellow Bush-adjacent NeverTrump Republicans, and every other company or public figure looking to set aside their differences to #Resist Trump.  Talk about strange bedfellows!  Even if one can't stomach Trump, the alternative entails aligning oneself alongside these variegated, surplus value-appropriating creatures of neoliberal capitalism.

Lincoln Project's delusional Never-Trumpers think they can lead the GOP in post-Trump resurrection.  It was highly predictable that the Never-Trump grifters at the Lincoln Project would look to come back into the fold should President Trump be defeated, though they may have miscalculated how conservatives would respond to members who sold out to cash in on the left's quest for Trump-hating Republicans.  That assessment taking the huge leap to assume they had principles to begin with.  Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who was quick to turn on the party and the president after vacating his seat, said in an appearance on MSNBC that the Lincoln Project "and other Republicans and former Republicans out there will continue the work of trying to resolve internally and resurrect the party in a way that it can become a governing majority in the future."

How Far Should the Republican Senate Go in Supporting Biden's Agenda?  The calls for Donald Trump to accept his election defeat grow louder with each passing hour.  But Trump still has some legal cards to play and we shouldn't expect him to concede until every pathway to victory has been blocked — no matter how dubious his claims.  But there are calls for Republicans to submit on all fronts — bow to Biden's triumph and, "for the good of the country," swear fealty to the new president by giving him what he wants in Congress.  Biden will have no trouble getting most of his agenda items through the House, but what about the Senate?  Republicans probably won't know if they've maintained their Senate majority until the two Senate races in Georgia that are headed to a January 5 runoff have been decided.

The Editor says...
That's soon enough, since Biden won't be the POTUS until January 20 — if he is sworn in at all.

The Presidential Election, Corruption, and Deception.  We are living in an unprecedented season in American history, one of massive consequence for the nation as a whole and for conservative Christians in particular.  (All the more does this hold true for charismatic Christians, as I'll explain shortly.)  Please allow me to lay out the stark, contrasting possibilities.  I've written about this briefly in the last few days, but I'll expand on things more fully here.  On the natural, non-spiritual side, either Donald Trump has pulled off the political feat of a lifetime, convincing tens of millions of Americans to reject the results of a fairly contested election.  Or Trump is the victim of the most massive electoral fraud in our history, the exposing of which will shake our nation to its foundations.  On the spiritual side, either a multitude of prophetic voices have been jointly misled, prophesying in total unison that Trump will serve a second term.  Or the words of these prophetic voices will prove true, shocking the nation with the reality of God.  Are these not very high stakes?

The Last Bush Betrayal.  Republicans fought Gore's attempt to steal an election by supporting this drunk brain-damaged cokehead.  How does he repay us?  By calling Biden "President-elect" and congratulating him.  No Bush can be permitted to ever win office again.

This Isn't Just the Theft of an Election, This Is a Message to All of Us.  Over the past week, we've witnessed the theft of an election.  Not merely the sneaking theft of an election that is the stock-in-trade of the Democrat party.  The kind of election that we are used to seeing in Democrat strongholds where there just "happens" to be more votes cast in a precinct than there are registered voters.  Or the "finding" of missing votes that propels a mouth-breathing, room-temperature-IQ has-been performer into the Senate.  Or the underhanded spreading about of cash that carried a key jurisdiction in a presidential race; here what we've witnessed is a blatant, above-board, in-your-face theft of an election.  It is cheating that is designed to be seen.  It is cheating that is intended to send a message.  What purpose would this serve, you ask.  Why would anyone openly cheat?  Isn't the purpose of cheating to win but let the other rube think you did so legitimately?  Easy.  They want to show you that they can make you do what they want, based upon arguments they don't even believe, and there is [nothing] you can do about it.

Deplorables Don't Riot.  For months, the media has warned us that a narrow Joe Biden victory in the presidential election could lead to civil war.  President Donald Trump would refuse to accept the result and his supporters would resort to violence.  Well, the first part seems right; Trump is clinging on to the bitterest of ends.  The second part, however, is wrong — so far, at least.  There have been no outbreaks of Trumpist violence.  The Proud Boys are not marauding the suburbs and 'pivot counties' with AR-15s.  Buildings are not being set on fire.  Yes, there have been entirely (not just 'largely') peaceful protests.  In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a 'Stop the Steal' rally was held to demand an 'audit' of the vote.  'We're not asking for much,' Rep. Scott Perry told the crowd.  'We want the ballots and the votes that are counted to be legal, to be valid.  We want to have a postmark on them either on or before election, not after Election Day.'

Went to Bed in America, Woke Up in a Banana Republic.  On November 3, we all went to bed looking at those red-or-blue maps of the states, more or less secure in the knowledge that President Trump was on course to win a historic victory.  A massive Republican wave was giving Trump a 3.6 point lead in Florida — by Florida standards, a landslide.  Other states were coming along — could Trump really do much worse in Arizona, or Pennsylvania, or Michigan?  And so, on Tuesday night, we fell asleep in America.  The next morning, we woke up in a banana republic.  Take it from someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, and who knows what democracy is and isn't.  Watching democracy shrivel and die right in front of our eyes is a surreal experience.

Election post-mortem.  First, most of the media and pollsters are both biased and incompetent.  This is a very serious problem.  If people don't trust the media, and they don't, for good reasons, where are they supposed to get the news?  If they don't get the news, on what basis are they supposed to vote?  Second, assuming the current results hold after court challenges, Joe Biden will be a weak president because he's a weak man.  He's incompetent, unprincipled, inane, slightly senile, spineless and pretty shady. [...] Fourth, in the same vein, censoring, silencing and cancelling people for political incorrectness is not persuasive.  It instead illustrates the weakness of your position.  Fifth, street violence also isn't persuasive.  It may feel good to vent your anger, but recognize that the cost is to discredit your position.  "Burn it all down" is not a political position.

2020: This is Why Truth Matters.  Many have observed the steady deterioration over time of our moral underpinnings.  If we assess the so-called seven cultural mountains, we are not encouraged.  Schools do not teach kids how to think but what to think and chastise those who get out of line.  Our arts and entertainment encourages hedonism over honor, our media chooses propaganda over truth, social media businesses entrusted with promoting our First Amendment rights censor them, and the evidence of government corruption within our agencies to include our FBI and Justice Department is stunning.  It is quite possible [...] that we've slipped below the minimum threshold of integrity to keep our nation intact.  The danger of this is far greater than any virus.  We know in various degrees about the corrupt intent to disrupt this administration.  Attorney General William Barr may be a good man, but his lack of production in addressing this threat may be the greatest failure of our government.  The wheels of justice may move slowly, but not necessarily so.  This cancerous threat of treason has now metastasized.  The integrity of our election is now infected.  There has always been voter fraud, but evidence suggests that it has never been close to this level.  The vital connection between the will of the people and their desired representatives is now in jeopardy.

You've Got to Keep the Faith.  You know, Biden's out there running around talking about he's gonna be president for everybody.  No, he won't.  This is the most partisan political party I have ever seen it constituted as in my lifetime, the Democrat Party.  They are not a party for all the people.  What's happening in these vote recounts, what's happening in the resolution of this election is proof that they are not what they claim and that Biden isn't what he claims.  He will not be president of all the people.  Nancy Pelosi is not Speaker of the House for all people, and they never intend to be.

Trump Wins Re-election! Now, the Hard Part.  At this point in the chaos, we know one thing for sure:  President Trump is still the president, and that he won re-election.  Any number of warnings from Twitter or claims to the contrary from "official sources" in the media can't undermine his claims.  In the final analysis, according to the Constitution, electors in the Electoral College vote for the president.  This fact is critical in the days and weeks ahead.  In short, the president is not elected by Twitter or the media.  He is not even elected by "the people."  He is elected by electors picked by state legislators.  Faced with evidence of election fraud, the states can pick electors who will vote for Trump, the legitimate president and legitimate winner.  None of this is a mystery.  This is the way the system works.

The Party of Russia Hysteria Can Shut Up About 'Delegitimizing' Elections.  The media and Democrats are really, really mad.  I know that's not necessarily unusual, but this time it's because they believe Donald Trump is "delegitimizing" the results of the 2020 election.  Of course, we don't even have all the results, nor do we know that Trump has lost at this point.  Arizona continues to surprise, with the President keeping pace for what he would need to flip the state.  Regardless, seeing the consternation among the pundit class this evening over Trump's most recent presser, where he complained about possible fraud, I was struck by the lack of self-awareness.  I'm old enough to remember, because I'm more than four years old, when the left and their media allies spent the entire Trump first term proclaiming that Russia stole the 2016 election with magical Facebook memes.  If there was ever a group that should sit this discussion out, it's these conspiratorial partisans.

A Defunct Republic.  [James] Burnham defined managerialism as the centralization of society in which the distinction between the state and the economy is eliminated, the separation of ownership and control is effected, and, most importantly, power — real power — rests in the hands of "managers."  If it seems there is little room for republicanism or constitutionalism in this scheme, that's because there isn't.  "America still has a written constitution, but it is nearly impossible, theoretically or politically, to comprehend the distinction between the government and the Constitution," John Marini writes.  "The theoretical foundations of social compact theory have been so undermined as to make constitutionalism obsolete as a political theory."  Demystified, the "managers" of our post-constitutional cruise through the truculent waters at the end of history are business executives, technicians, bureaucrats, journalists, administrators; the whole host of technically trained experts who constitute the credentialed class which produces nothing and owns little but without whom mass society would not function.

Why shouldn't conservatives be enraged by Biden's win?  One big difference from four years ago is that the GOP will probably control the Senate.  The 2016 election left Democrats on the outs in both chambers of Congress.  But the president exercises enormous power even when his party doesn't control the Senate.  He runs foreign policy and can direct important aspects of domestic policy through fiat.  He can populate the executive branch with leftists who will undo the good, conservative work of Trump's appointees and create new left-liberal mischief on a large scale.  I hope and expect the Senate to obstruct the confirmation of many of these nominees, as the Dems did after 2016, even though they lacked a Senate majority.

With Diversity Gains, the Grand Old Party is Becoming the New Face Party.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) visited Lou Dobbs' Fox Business show on Wednesday, praising the gains that have been made by Republicans in the House and the Senate.  Without fanfare, posturing or virtue signaling, the GOP is showing itself to be more diverse and inclusive than the other side.  Here is the list of new additions to the Republican House that have increased our minority, other-abled, and female representation: [...]

What you can do to stop the electoral coup.  It seems that virtually all the battleground states — Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, have GOP legislatures.  This is a factor that has escaped most other commentators, and certainly seems like a game changer.  These worthies have, up until this point "been sitting on their butts," as Morris puts it.  Most of them are out of session and doing whatever it is politicians do when they aren't busy spending the people's money.  But it seems that this emergency, in which the standard model of the American republic is in danger of being undermined by what amounts to a criminal gang, is the kind of challenge that legislatures exist to deal with, no less than a flood or a hurricane.  Some of them (though not all — PA doesn't) in fact appoint the electors, which may be of crucial importance.  Morris points out that most state legislators get a handful of calls a session, so getting twenty in a single day would have an impact.  And what of a hundred or two in a single day?  This is something that is easily possible, particularly as involves enraged, and determined Trumpers.

A New Correlation of Forces.  The 2016 loss might have been accounted as a lucky punch, but 2020 was a set-piece maximum effort by progressives backed by money, gangs, social censorship, and deep state support on a massive scale; yet it didn't move the needle.  It should have impressed, rather it showed the limits to the power of the American elite.  It was the most anticipated, polled, forecasted, and analyzed U.S. presidential election in history and yet the expensive estimates proved to be worthless, a massive intelligence failure that paralleled Neil Ferguson's ill-fated projections of the coronavirus pandemic.  The limits of elite prescience of over complex phenomena were demonstrated for all to see.  The embarrassing surprise cast doubt over ambitious progressive projects based on social, biological, or climate engineering since the requisite degree of "scientific" certitude simply did not exist to predict even in a mundane election.

Why is anyone surprised at the Democrats cheating on the vote count?  This catastrophe didn't sneak up on us.  Just one example: there were huge red flags on ballot harvesting 2 years ago in California when so many red districts flipped to blue.  Did anyone do anything about that?  Did no one anticipate loosey-goosey rules for voting to enable cheating with a wink and a nod?  No one saw that coming?  Really?  Did anyone do anything to forestall this?  Here's a bulletin: it's easier to prevent cheating and illegality than it is to correct it once the damage is done.  The Supreme Court isn't likely to come to Trump's aid.  Originalist justices, whom we now are blessed with in abundance, will defer to the states when it comes to enforcing laws written by the states.  No ballots are likely to be tossed or added.  It's over, folks.

2020 election is not really about a choice between Trump vs.  Biden.  In traditional presidential campaigns, the two major parties offer contrasting ideas and policies.  The Democratic and Republican candidates barnstorm the nation to make their cases.  Not this year.  Democratic nominee Joe Biden is more or less a virtual candidate, mostly communicating from home via Zoom.  He offers few detailed alternatives to the first four years of the Trump administration.  Instead, Biden is running on the idea that Donald Trump caused the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession, and that he's responsible for violence in the streets.

Election night reveals three disturbing facts.  Election night revealed a few disturbing items that should trouble freedom-loving Americans.  First that the race is even this tight speaks to disturbing number of Americans who are woefully uninformed.  Second, Fox News has gone over to the dark side, or, rather, the left.  And third, the level of coordination to make this race close is stunning.  That the senile and corrupt Joe Biden could finish so strong speaks to either the gullibility or unseriousness of far too many Americans.  Biden obviously has mental acuity issues and has a history of corruption, but that did not seem to be a big deal to the Americans who voted for him.  I guess the probability of more lockdowns are lost on a number of Americans who are more frightened by the Wuhan virus than the probability of America becoming a socialist, if not communist, nation under a Biden presidency.  Speaking of a Biden presidency, if he were to win, odds are he would not finish out his first term.  Vice President Kamala Harris would become president, a person who dropped out of the Democrat primaries before a single vote was cast based on her lack of voter support, and a politician who is one of the most leftist senators.

This Is Not the End.  [Scroll down]  The Trump Administration accomplished many things, but perhaps most importantly it revealed how deep the rabbit hole now goes:  the fight is both within the federal government and without, and a cancerous corruption has penetrated the core of many of our political and cultural institutions.  What we are up against now is not just a 24/7 propaganda machine dedicated to enforcing recondite woke doctrines inside and outside of our hearts and minds.  Our enemies have moved beyond that to visions of a virtualized world in which good jobs, big families, and strong churches are zapped away, where peons crowd into pods and hook up to holograms of censored news and uncensored porn.  We are going to have to resist all that with everything we have, and fast.

Red Mirage?  [Scroll down]  We are aware that Democrats have already cut television ads they are prepared to deploy to further cement the 'Red Mirage' misinformation, seeking to convince people that all Joe Biden would need for victory is more time, extending well beyond Election Day.  At the same time, we fully anticipate that Democrats will be in court arguing to extend deadlines for accepting and counting votes mailed and received well past deadlines enacted by individual state laws.  Americans should remember that Biden has assembled a massive team of lawyers who will try to loosen election integrity so they can steal this election, and also recall that Hillary Clinton advised Biden not to concede defeat 'under any circumstances.'  The last gasp of the Biden campaign will be ugly and it will be ruthless.

October Surprise:  This Race Is Over.  [Scroll down]  In fact, there's no better source of actionable data than a Trump rally, because everyone who wants to attend has to provide contact information to get a free ticket.  The campaign then uses this data to turn every event into a force-multiplier.  First, each rally reaches millions of voters live at the venue, on cable TV, and on YouTube.  Then millions more engage on Facebook and Twitter.  After the rally, a campaign team targets those who attended with digital ads that recipients can retarget to their contacts as look-alike campaigns on social media.  The party also mines the same data for useful insights and information it can convert into turnout.  Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel noted that 45 percent of the attendees at an October New Hampshire rally were not registered Republicans and 20 percent did not vote in 2016.  Who would wait in line for hours to see a Trump rally in October and then not vote for Trump in November?

High Noon in America:  Will You Fight or Hide?  [Scroll down]  President Trump faces the same overwhelming odds.  The political establishment, the Deep State, practically the entire media, academe, unions, minorities, environmentalists, foreign nations, and special interests of all stripes have piled on, outraged that the president would actually stand up for ordinary Americans.  They thought Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was just words — the usual political rhetoric that would be forgotten as soon as the candidate took office.  That's what Joe Biden — "friend of the working man" — has been doing for 47 years.  But President Trump is not a typical politician, and the establishment hate him for it because he exposes what they are.  The question is whether the American people will back the president by getting out to vote.

America Waking Up to Vaccine Dangers.  The fight to expose the dangers and controversies surrounding vaccines, and to protect health freedom, is being won, HighWire chief Del Bigtree told The New American magazine's Alex Newman at the Red Pill Expo.  The tide of public opinion is shifting dramatically, Bigtree said.  Even the establishment media is reluctantly being forced to admit this.  And the ongoing scandals around the coronavirus COVID19 vaccine are adding even more scrutiny to the industry.  "Now the world is watching the sausage being made," Bigtree said.  [Video clip]

In Pennsylvania, Undecided Voters Are Torn Between Faith And A Party That Was Once A Way Of Life.  It's common for American families to transmit political values from generation to generation, alongside religion, eye color, and heart disease.  In eastern Pennsylvania, it's not that simple.  When working out how to vote, the issues and platform are important, but so is how dad voted, how grandma would have voted.  All of this comes into the booth with the people we spoke to, and for them, the Democratic Party isn't just a choice, it's the working-class, it's the union, it's the grandparents, and until some time recently they can't quite put their fingers on, it was Catholic and it was pro-life.  In 2020, they see full well that something is very wrong.

Liberty is the Key Issue of the US 2020 Election.  Over many decades, the United States has become an oligarchy, a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.  The oligarchy is primarily composed of the Democrat Party, the media, academia, the permanent federal bureaucracy, and the multinational interests that provide its financial support.  Republicans like Mitt Romney are also members of the oligarchy as well as the greedy political operatives, who profit from candidates like him.  Such Republicans falsely claim to be putting "country over party," but are actually putting oligarchy over democracy.  They do so because of their private dislike for Donald Trump or simply for their own power and profit, often both.

Logically indisputable reasons why President Trump should be reelected.  Reelection is the only way of restoring the conditions that Trump created that eliminated unemployment prior to the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.  This, coupled to his near-elimination of illegal immigration (against fierce Democratic resistance), generated greater percentage income growth amongst the lowest 20 percent of income-earners than among the top 10 percent — a noteworthy start on addressing the universal income-disparity problem.  Only a Trump victory will ensure retention of the present relatively low personal and corporate income-tax rates and the avoidance of insane, highly damaging, and counterproductive shutdowns in cowardly terror of the coronavirus, which only mortally threatens 1 percent of the population, who can be isolated and protected.

The Justified Shooting of Walter Wallace Jr..  [Scroll down]  "We cannot accept that in this country a mental health crisis ends in death," said the Biden-Harris campaign in a statement.  We disagree, as should any decent citizen who expects law enforcement officers to leave their families every day knowing that they might not come back.  That job, however, mandates only that they accept the risk of death, not that they forfeit the right to defend their lives.  Was Wallace in the throes of a mental health crisis?  Video of the shooting leaves little doubt.  Only a deranged person would charge, knife in hand, at two gun-wielding police officers yelling at him to drop his weapon.  Sane people know what the outcome of such an attack will be: an entirely inevitable and justifiable hail of bullets.  But mental illness is not a defense for violence.  It does not excuse killing police, or beating spouses, or any of the crimes for which presumably mentally ill individuals like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein are rightly condemned.  Mental illness may mitigate the sentence for a crime, but this was an exercise in the right to self-defense, not due process.

Please Stop Telling Cops to Shoot Suspects in the Leg.  [Scroll down]  As a matter of law, discharging a firearm is the police's absolute last resort.  Employing a lethal weapon constitutes the use of deadly force, irrespective of outcome or intent.  The only valid reason to do so is when officers reasonably believe there is imminent danger of serious physical injury or death.  Despite Hollywood depictions to the contrary, tactics such as warning shots, vehicle disabling fire, and targeting fleeing subjects who pose no active threat are not an ordinary part of law enforcement's repertoire.

Rush Limbaugh Sends Stirring Appeal to America as Amy Coney Barrett Is Confirmed.  Rush Limbaugh has been delivering a consistent, convincing conservative message to Americans for more than 30 years — but his pitch Monday night was in a class by itself. [...] Every American election boils down to divergent views of the country's future, of course.  That's what living in a democratic republic is all about.  But the 2020 election is different, Limbaugh said.  "We're not going to have the kind of country everybody thinks we're going to have.  This is not the old 'Republicans versus Democrats,' where we all have the same objectives, just different philosophies on how to get there.  "They do not have those objectives anymore.  Their purpose is to erase the Constitution, start over rewriting it, eliminating the concept of 'the citizen has rights which prevail over government.'  "It's serious, and it's scary, and we don't have a choice.  You have to get out there and vote Trump."

Sorry, there will be no return to normalcy under Joe Biden.  As the presidential campaign enters its final phase, one of the messages of the Biden campaign is that putting him, a 47-year veteran of national politics, into the White House will return us to something approaching normal.  With Biden in charge, all the Trump craziness will expire, and things will be safe, sane and familiar.  In fact, there's no chance of this happening.  If Biden wins, things won't go back to "normal."  You probably won't even hear less from Donald Trump.  And in a lot of areas, like foreign policy, it turns out the establishment's version of normal wasn't all that normal anyway.  Many of my lefty friends want Biden to win not so much over policy as because they have a visceral reaction to President Donald Trump.  They hate the sight of his face, the sound of his voice, even the mention of his name.  Electing Biden, they expect, will sweep Trump off the national stage.  But will it?

The Editor says...
Donald Trump won't disappear from the newspapers at the end of his second term.  He will continue to tweet as long as Twitter lets him.  He's good for the news business.  They can't ignore him.

China is America's enemy but Joe Biden's friend.  The China Virus is reported to have killed over 230,000 Americans.  China fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is a major cause of the drug overdose deaths of over 70,000 Americans each year.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 [to] 100 times stronger than morphine.  But Democrats and their media lapdogs do not blame China.  Instead, the Democrats and the media blame President Trump for his efforts to combat the China virus and China fentanyl, and worse, the media protect Joe Biden by refusing to report and cover the New York Post stories that reveal China's payments to the Bidens.  China failed to notify the world in December 2019, and specifically our country, that the coronavirus (China virus), which started in Wuhan, had spread.  China failed to stop travel from Wuhan to Europe and other parts of the world.

Will Changes to American Life Become Permanent?  The coronavirus, widespread quarantines, an unprecedented self-induced recession, and unchecked rioting, looting, and protesting — all in a presidential election year — are radically disrupting American habits and behavior.  Rents, home prices, and office occupancy rates in major cities, especially on the two coasts, are dropping fast.  Techies and young professionals have discovered that they can work from home without paying sky-high housing costs in order to be close to the office.  Those more fortunate wonder why they should get bogged down with commutes and urban traffic — or navigate city sidewalks amid homelessness, crime, racial tensions, and urban unrest — when they can make as much money while staying distant in quieter landscapes. [...] Why are Amazon and Walmart booming while smaller businesses are going broke?  Largely because home delivery better serves those who are barricaded at home, terrified both of the virus and government reaction to it.

Do the Chinese Own Joe Biden?  Americans will need to come to grips with a mounting, deadly serious crisis.  The Democrat nominee for the presidency appears saturated with corruption, and worse — yes, there's a worse here — he's compromised himself to foreign powers, one of which — the People's Republic of China (PRC) — is rightly regarded as an enemy of the U.S.  Sly Vlad Putin and whoever runs the Ukraine owns Joe Biden, too.  Russia and the Ukraine having the goods on Biden is bad enough, but China is the U.S.'s principal rival for global dominance.  The blackmailing of a President Joe Biden is a chilling prospect.  Biden as president imperils the nation in ways never experienced before.  What does this mean to the Sino-American rivalry?  It means that with Biden blackmailed and in the White House, the Chinese may never fire a shot to gain hegemony over the U.S. — the domination that tyrant Xi Jingping dreams about.

It's starting to look ugly for Democrats.  How long before their candidate goes completely off the wall and is no longer able to be protected by the accommodating media?  Biden has already twice repeatedly claimed to nationwide audiences that he's running for a Senate seat.  His behavior to both fans and interviewers has increasingly shown his mean side.  He's ready to implode under the pressure.  In addition, Trump's almost miraculous recovery from the coronavirus and the massive crowds cheering him on at his open-air rallies indicate another 2016-like disaster for the left.  Leftists know it.  And this frightens them.  Throw in the exposure of Hunter's exploits that have his dad's fingerprints all over the scandals that are slowly leaking out and raising the awareness to those who have yet to cast their ballots.  The laughably rigged "polls" reminiscent of those in 2016 are fading in relevance.

The Libertarian Betrayal.  Back in the day when some of us were uneasy both with GOP preaching on social issues and with Democrat statism, the libertarians seemed to offer a sensible place in between.  I also remember having the impression that, even if you disagreed with them on some issues, at least they were ideologically consistent, which meant that they were principled.  But then I met some libertarians.  I liked and respected a few.  But others proved to be world-class oddballs, misfits, potheads, and crackpots.  If they weren't hatching plans for independent countries built on abandoned oil rigs, they were writing mad, elaborate political manifestos that seemed to have zero to do with liberty.

Trump Is the Integrity Candidate.  It is now clear from intelligence declassifications — now temporarily taking the place of indictments by the special counsel on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation — that the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, knew that she was transmitting reports compiled by Russian intelligence agents and transmitted via former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.  These were presented to the U.S. intelligence and justice communities and ultimately to the public through the media as hard intelligence evidence of treasonable conduct by her opponent Donald Trump.  The solid evidence of these facts is now in the public domain.  Yet the Trump-hating media dismiss it all as an insane conspiracy theory.  The special prosecutor, John Durham, was supposed to enable the voters to make an informed decision this autumn.  Instead, he is dawdling along at his own pace — enhancing the possibility of the election of a regime that will as a first priority try to sweep the whole ghastly outrage under the rug yet again.  This administration was hobbled for the first 60 percent of its term with an investigation that should never have taken place, [...]

Do you want a Trump or Biden economy?  When you strip away the media noise, the fundamental question is: do you want a Trump or Biden economy in 2021 and beyond?  Thankfully, both men have records in leading the country so the question isn't a speculative one.  Additionally, given that the states are experiencing dramatically different post-pandemic economic recoveries, we can see what a Trump economy is doing under conservative leadership and policies compared to what a Biden economy is doing under progressive leadership and policies.  As the accompanying chart vividly shows, 14 out of the top 16 strongest economic recoveries are occurring in Republican-led states with conservative policies, whereas 12 out of the bottom 16 weakest economic recoveries are occurring in Democratic-led states with progressive policies.

Yelp Cannot Help Itself.  [Scroll down]  It's no secret that Silicon Valley is doing all it can to make sure Donald Trump loses on November 3.  They feel they did not do enough to prevent his victory in 2016, and they won't make the same mistake this time.  It is not only plausible, but nearly a mathematical certainty, that Yelp's BARBA will be abused to accuse any Trump-supporting business owners of being "racist," however this is defined.  Given BLM's close relationship with Antifa, an idea that is somehow capable of burning stuff to the ground, it's not a stretch to see Yelp as another front in the radical Left's war on everything that stands in its way.

Nobel Peace Prize is beyond a joke and now a mark of shame.  This year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is a notorious scandal-ridden organization, guilty of heinous crimes for many years.  Instead of recognizing the magnificent achievement of President Trump and Jared Kushner in bringing together leading Arab states and Israel, which is the very obvious thing to do if peace-making is to be recognized, the 5 members of the Nobel peace Prize Committee — Norwegian politicians appointed by that country's parliament, the Storing — have disgraced themselves and killed any remaining credibility and prestige the prize once carried.

Russiagate Hoax Mastermind Must Be Exposed.  In the bureaucratic struggle to declassify Russiagate-related documents before the Nov. 3 elections and help ensure they aren't buried forever, some valuable nuggets have just been partially unearthed by the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe.  Like handwritten notes by then-CIA Director John Brennan.  During the summer of 2016, he briefed President Obama and top advisers that the agency learned of startling intelligence about the Clinton campaign and Russia. [...] Yet many questions remain — such as who was the Russiagate Hoax Mastermind alluded to by Brennan?  Americans need to know.  The smear campaign wasn't just a political dirty trick.  Nor was it proportionate to combat Trump supporters chanting "lock her up."  No, the malicious lie was the acorn from which the mighty oak grew — one that launched the crime wave of the century.  Unprecedented and wrongful surveillance of a presidential campaign.  Then a prolonged stealth coup to overturn the election.  President Trump and over 50 associates were subjected to seemingly limitless investigations, Privacy Act violations, criminal leaks, defamation and ruthlessly pursued by overzealous prosecutors, including numerous Obama and Clinton political donors.

Will America Survive the Democrats' Arrows in Their Quiver?  Events are hurtling towards the election with strange and disturbing developments every day.  Writers are openly discussing the possibility of a violent coup and civil war. 2020 feels like an unprecedented year, and in this context, a recent threat by Nancy Pelosi sounds particularly ominous.  Asked about the possibility of President Trump placing Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, Pelosi replied, "We have arrows in our quiver that I'm not about to discuss right now."  What might those arrows be?  How much damage will they do?  Let's examine some recent events, in light of her remark.

Will Joe Biden Go Peacefully If He Loses?  Democrats and the media have repeatedly raised the question in the last several weeks of whether President Donald Trump would leave office peacefully if he loses the election in November.  Some may actually believe their own propaganda about Trump being a "tyrant" — a point on which they agree with the knuckleheads arrested for a kidnapping plot in Michigan.  Others know they are preparing a justification for pushing Trump out of office if the result is too close to call, if vote-by-mail is as messy as expected.  But the real question ought to be whether Joe Biden, the Democrats, and the media would accept a Trump victory.  They rejected it last time, and spent the last four years spinning bizarre conspiracy theories about Russian "collusion."  Biden himself was involved, to an unknown extent in that effort.

Evidence Surfaces of John Durham Grand Jury.  [Scroll down]  Within the article — which everyone should read — some names are very important.  The article is framed around defending the New Yorker's previous reporting on the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory, so the intent of the article is defensive.  However, the events being described in the article, and more importantly the people being outlined in the article, are accurate.  Especially Daniel Jones and his lawyer William Taylor; and the connection of both to Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson.  According to the article there are two parallel efforts underway to untangle the background of how the false Alfa Bank story was originated.  One effort is a set of civil lawsuits by the owners of Alfa bank against those who created the fraudulent story that flowed through Fusion GPS, into Chris Steele's dossier, into the FBI, and ultimately into the Buzzfeed reporting therein.  The owners of the bank are taking all of these entities into court and demanding discovery of sources who framed/created the false impression.

7 Quick Takeaways On The 2020 Vice Presidential Debate.  [#1] Pence's Superpower Is Debating:  Mike Pence, a former congressman and talk radio host, started off strong and just kept getting stronger.  He clearly came prepared for the debate.  He had a ready recall of facts and figures to bolster his points.  He nailed the questions he wanted to answer and deflected on the questions he preferred not to answer.  While he let several zingers fly, he stayed calm and steady, pushing back at what he perceived as unduly false statements but without the constant interruptions of the Trump-Biden debate.  He spoke slowly and left few cards on the table unplayed.  He was nice, firm, decent, and likable.  Pence's weakest points were when he was on defense about the global pandemic gripping the country.  However, he came into the debate prepared to lay out how a Trump-Pence vision for America is better than the one put forth by Biden and Harris and he accomplished that consistently throughout the debate.

Are Americans Tired of Being Called 'Racist' Yet?  [Scroll down]  How is it that America, which twice elected Obama president, has apparently regressed so far so fast as to deserve these repeated denunciations as irrefutably guilty of "systemic" injustice?  Two words:  Hillary lost.  For three years, we were dragged through the "Russian collusion" hoax as a way of explaining what, to Democrats, was the electorate's otherwise inexplicable rejection of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid.  Democrats believe it is always wrong for Republicans to win elections; they had convinced themselves in 2016 that they were "on the right side of history"; and America was poised to take the historic step of electing Mrs. Clinton as the nation's first female president.  When that didn't happen, Democrats immediately denounced Trump's presidency as illegitimate, the product of a Kremlin conspiracy, and declared themselves the "resistance" to this incipient authoritarian regime that had stolen the election.  All of that was a vast pile of lies, or perhaps a hallucinatory delusion insofar as anyone ever believed it.

Chip Roy and Wendy Davis agree that the other's views are dangerous.  Wendy Davis and Chip Roy agreed on one thing at the first and maybe only debate of their marquee congressional contest Tuesday night:  the other candidate holds views that are dangerous.  "As anyone can see from photos from Congressman Roy's own social media feed as recently as yesterday, he refuses to take basic safety precautions, such as consistently wearing a mask and social distancing," said Davis, an Austin Democrat seeking to deprive Roy of a second term representing the 21st Congressional District, which runs from Austin to San Antonio and includes six Hill Country counties.

The Editor says...
Refusal to wear a mask in October, when the virus peaked in July, is a resumé enhancement, in my opinion.  It shows the world that Chip Roy doesn't buy the media hype, and isn't afraid of the germs in the air.  Ordinarily, Wendy Davis, a/k/a Abortion Barbie is a single-issue politician:  Abortion supersedes all other concerns.  At least that's the only thing for which she's famous.

Who targeted the president?  Obviously, I don't have any proof that the recent COVID-19 infections of POTUS and FLOTUS, several Republican senators, and people working on his campaign and in his administration, are truly random events or something planned, but it doesn't pass the "random cluster of infections" smell test.  Come on, admit it.  You are all thinking it, too.  I'm sure like me, you spent the weekend texting friends about your suspicions.  The virus appears to have targeted Republicans only and left Democrats unscathed. [...] It is odd that in a town as small as Washington, D.C., only Republicans took the hit.  The timing is a second factor.  Key Republicans fell ill after the Barrett announcement, the debate, and Comey's flaccid testimony, and now we are full-blown into October — the final leg of the campaign. [...] They've tried to impeach and remove him, force him to resign, discredit him, undermine his accomplishments, embarrass and ridicule him; they've wished him dead umpteen times; they've relentlessly threatened his life; and they've been clear they don't care about his family or his health.  Why not use the virus further to their advantage?

Learning from Breonna Taylor.  Not every police shooting is avoidable.  Sometimes police do everything right and still end up taking a life.  Other times, police shootings are the result of policy failures, individual missteps, and even malevolence.  Into what category should we place Breonna Taylor's death?  Some key factual questions remain in dispute, and not all the relevant evidence is publicly available.

It is worthwhile remembering what all of this opposition is about.  Most people think when they vote for a federal politician — a House or Senate representative — they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation.  This is the old-fashioned "schoolhouse rock" perspective based on decades past.  There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.  In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct.  This simply doesn't happen.  Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body.

Is the United States in the Midst of an Insurgency?  Insurgency is an organized rebellion to overthrow a constituted government by undermining its legitimacy through protest and disinformation, and ultimately through armed conflict. [...] Initially, when the insurgents are still weak, they organize around a group that is actively dissatisfied with political and social conditions and desires ideological or other changes.  In America, who better to target than the poorest and least educated black Americans, for they already believe they have a legitimate grievance?  Insurgents use propaganda and political efforts to exploit this atmosphere, creating more significant discontent that discredits the government. [...] Leftists are adept at vilifying anyone who defends the current system, even if they acknowledge its flaws and signal a willingness to improve it.  After all, who wouldn't support racial justice?  Nonetheless, if you are not absolutely for the cause as presented, leftists will accuse you of being absolutely against it.  Hence, saying "All Lives Matter" is synonymous with "I'm a racist."

Escape from 2020.  [Scroll down]  But if 2020 happened not from bad luck but the result of trends, then 2021 might be even stranger than 2020.  The cherished establishment goal of a "return to normalcy" may prove unattainable.  With the old world gone and the new one disconcertingly strange, one can only do what circumstances permit instead of waiting on a rollback that will never come.  American anthropologist Joseph Tainter in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), "examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations, and of the Western Roman Empire, in terms of network theory, energy economics, and complexity theory."  He concludes that civilizations fall when they have too many spinning plates to keep in the air.  At some point, they start to fall.

There's too much gold in the universe.  No one knows where it came from.  Gold is an element, which means you can't make it through ordinary chemical reactions — though alchemists tried for centuries.  To make the sparkly metal, you have to bind 79 protons and 118 neutrons together to form a single atomic nucleus.  That's an intense nuclear fusion reaction.  But such intense fusion doesn't happen frequently enough, at least not nearby, to make the giant trove of gold we find on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.  And a new study has found the most commonly-theorized origin of gold — collisions between neutron stars — can't explain gold's abundance either.  So where's the gold coming from?

The Editor says...
Life is very complicated for those who don't believe the Bible.  Gold is much too complex to have formed and distributed itself, and could not have evolved.  There is no reason for gold to exist at all, except as a gift to mankind from its Creator.  When you hear someone say, "no one knows where it came from," that's a person who doesn't believe in creation and spends his or her life puzzled and confused.

Are You Not Entertained?  I have been trying to wrap my head around why so many people disliked the first presidential debate when I enjoyed it so thoroughly. [...] As the American Mind's Matthew Peterson commented on social media, it was like a scene from "Gladiator."  That's what I wanted.  Maybe that's it.  Other people wanted something else — something like a sophisticated, polite, clear-eyed debate about policy.  That seems silly to me at this point.  It seems obvious we are in the midst of Revolution 2020.  We are not arguing about policy.  War is neither polite nor sophisticated.  You get to the objective any way you can: over, under, or through.  But that won't help explain things to someone who doesn't see this as war.  So why should we embrace the entertainment of a fight and leave behind the hopes for polite political discourse?  Because the debate of our dreams — the reasoned discourse, the lengthy responses, the political decorum — is not the alternative to the combat we saw.  It's either a fight in the open or an assassination.  It was never going to be polite or about policy.

Comey's testimony [was a] 'vivid reminder' election won't hinge only on the issues.  The political elite remain puzzled — and in agony — over how Donald Trump could still be in the race.  A bullying debater!  A purveyor of mistruths!  A would-be autocrat!  How has our country come to this?  The answer sat staring at them on a videolink this Wednesday, in the smug countenance of James Comey.  This obvious truth will be missed by the left and the media, which continue to comfort themselves with the fiction that Trump won in 2016 by preying on the weak and ill-informed.  The opposite is true.

A 45-Gun Salvo in the Battle for America's Past — and Present.  In Rating America's Presidents:  An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster, Robert Spencer gives us a strong defense of the greatness, and goodness, of America, through an evaluation of each of the 45 presidential administrations based on the simple criteria of Were Americans safer and more prosperous at the end of this administration than they were at its beginning?  It's a simple and common-sense standard, but one that has been lost amid the prevailing bipartisan commitment to a utopian and messianic internationalism that has had the not-so-paradoxical effect of weakening, rather than strengthening, America's position in the world.  Under both Republican and Democrat Presidents, we have been so busy saving the world that we have scarcely noticed that our jobs are flowing out of the country as well as our troops, while our infrastructure is crumbling and our standard of living is progressively declining.  We have scarcely noticed, that is, until the presidency of Donald Trump.  Spencer here makes a compelling case for Trump, even after just three years in office, being ranked with the greatest of Presidents, in large part because he has put the welfare of America and Americans first.

The pundit class really wants the presidential debates to be canceled.  The pundit class really, really hated the first presidential debate of the 2020 election.  They hated it so much, in fact, that many of them don't want to see another one for the remainder of the election cycle. [...] But more information is almost always preferable to less, even if it means watching two septuagenarians scream at each other for a couple of hours.

The Editor says...
As a public service, here is a handy tip: You don't have to watch the debates, unless you work in the news media.  If the most recent debate annoyed you, don't watch another one.  In fact, you don't have to watch television at all.  Ever.  You would probably be better off and live a lot longer if you removed all the televisions from your house.

Actually, The Debate Was About Issues.  A lot of folks are saying the debate was an ugly, insult-filled shouting match that barely got down to cases.  Actually, I thought it was a highly entertaining exchange that helpfully spotlighted the candidates' differences on issues.  An ugly, angry exchange?  Well, at least it looked like America.  If you took all the people who bite their tongues instead of saying what they really think of folks on the other side, put them in a room together and let them loose, this is what we would sound like.  Pretty?  No.  Honest.  Yes.  The debate's decorum was a snapshot of where we are as a country.

Trump-Biden I: Reality Is Reality.  [Scroll down]  Get this: in a single debate, the Democratic candidate told the president of the United States, on national television, to "shut up, man."  Called him a clown and a racist.  And termed him the worst president in history (an especially ludicrous statement given that Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama held the office in this commentator's lifetime).  The moderator's response to such extraordinary breaks in decorum?  Calling the president out for breaking debate rules, when both men were guilty at various times.  [Chris] Wallace let Biden get away not only with disrespect for the office of president and the conventions of political debate, but also with an approach of slipping, sliding, prevaricating and outright running from his record and his party's positions — for example, repeatedly and simply responding "that isn't true" to charges that were in fact well-grounded.

Debate Recap:  Trump Wins, Biden Doesn't Faint, Chris Wallace Goes Down Hard.  President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden went head-to-head on Tuesday night, and moderator Chris Wallace got knocked out.  Wallace seemed to push left-wing talking points to help Trump and hurt Biden, but both candidates talked over him.  Trump and Biden brought out the fisticuffs and both got in a few good hits.  Biden stumbled but he did not come across as a bumbling fool. [...] President Trump got in more good jabs at Biden than the Democrat got in at him, but Biden did not prove the stuttering fool that many on the Right expected.  I would say Trump won the debate, but it was grating to hear three people talk at once so many times.

Two crucial things emerged from the first presidential debate.  The short version of the debate is that Biden did well if one ignored that almost every other statement he made was a lie or fantasy; Trump dominated him, almost too aggressively; and Chris Wallace may have been the worst and most obviously biased moderator since Candy Crowley.  Most significantly, though, Biden and Trump each made a critical point.  Biden's was a tacit admission that, if he is elected president, he will preside over the end of the filibuster, allowing Democrats to pack the courts and add two new Democrat-majority states.  Trump's point was that he's holding damning evidence about the Democrats' coup attempt.

Trump slaughtered Biden in the first debate.  [Video clip]

The Cleveland Brawl:  First Presidential Debate Was a Cage Fight.  Trump needed to defend his record and show strength; he did that.  Biden needed to show that he had the mental ability to make sense and stand up for 90 minutes; he did that.  In that sense, the debate was a draw.  But Trump succeeded in keeping Biden off balance; clearly, Biden got rattled and flustered.  Biden has a reputation for nasty responses when he's challenged.  He certainly cemented that reputation in the first debate. [...] In terms of substance, Biden echoed the old-fashioned political rhetoric full of generalities, empathetic sentiments, and talk about needing to "bring everybody together."  He was well coached and able to repeat the memorized lines.  Trump was a free-wheeling force of nature and was on the offense throughout the whole debate.  His goal seemed to be getting Biden angry and off-script.  He succeeded.

MSM inadvertently declare Trump the winner last night — by urging Biden to boycott next 2 scheduled debates.  It's crystal clear that the media branch of the Democrat party thinks that Joe Biden blew it last night and damaged his electoral prospects in the first of 3 scheduled debates with President Trump.  There seems to be pretty widespread consensus on the left that when it comes to Biden, the less voters know about him by watching him in a presidential spotlight, the better.  Fox News has assembled a large number of calls on Biden to go back to his basement on the next two debate nights, October 15 and 22. [...] My own take is that Biden has almost no enthusiastic supporters.  His support comes from people who hate Trump, many of them because of his abrasive style.  They are not highly motivated, to say the least.  Last night, Biden demonstrated that when it comes to rudeness, he is at least the equal of Donald Trump.  So, if getting rid of rudeness is the motivation, there is no reason to bother voting for Biden.

The Fox News Staged Presidential 'Debate'.  Debate monitor Fox News anchor Chris Wallace is making the pretence of being "invisible"; the Commission on Presidential Debates just like Michelle Obama in her 'When we all Vote," role, full tilt media-described as "non-partisan".  It's a complete setup!  More than anything else, tonight's debate is a complete concession to Covid-19.  [...] "The two candidates and moderator Chris Wallace will not wear masks at Tuesday's debate, per final negotiations between the campaigns.  Since none of the above really wanted to wear a mask anyway, how much negotiation would have been required?

Trump Must Confront Biden on Democrats' Election Interference Plans.  President Trump on Tuesday night [9/29/2020] will confront the leader of the party currently plotting to rig the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and make sure their candidate enters the White House next year, no matter what.  Joe Biden not only is the ultimate victor in the dry run of the post-election civil war Democratic Party leaders and donors plan to launch after November 3, the former vice president is an old hand at thwarting the so-called "peaceful transfer of power" they now insist the president will frustrate.  Hyperventilating by the media and Democrats aside, the fact is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have done more to tarnish the historical precedent of ensuring the smooth transition from one president to another than any other previous administration.

How the 2014 Midterms Wrecked the Democrats' Supreme Court Hopes.  The 2014 midterms saw historically low turnout.  Only about a third of the registered public voted.  Barack Obama couldn't close the enthusiasm gap, despite telling supporters he was on the ballot in all but name.  Democratic voters didn't see the value in keeping the Senate in their hands; the House was then John Boehner territory, with no significant legislation forthcoming.  A year and a half later, that lazy calculation proved shortsighted.  Democrats didn't envision why upper chamber control would matter in a Supreme Court struggle.  They couldn't see beyond the immediacy of Obama's last yawn-filled term.  And the White House and three Supreme Court seats ended up being the price.

Time to take a closer look at AARP.  If AARP has abandoned its original mission in favor of becoming a tax-exempt subsidiary of a major health insurer, Congress, the IRS, and the people should probably be told.  Someone in a position of authority ought to ask.

Republicans are knocking it out of the park with political ads and memes.  It was already obvious comparing the two conventions:  Even though the Democrats own the actors, they don't own the true creative talent in Hollywood.  That all seems to have crossed to the Republican side of the aisle.  The Democrat convention was drab and oppressive; the Republican convention was bright and open.  It's the same thing with ads and memes.  As far as I know, there are no incredible, knock-it-out of the park Democrat videos.  The Republicans, though, are killing it.  Here are four of the best.

Nothing is Off the Table.  [Scroll down]  McConnell is a man about to meet a big moment.  He's about to lead Senate Republicans in a vote that probably forecloses Democrat thievery as a route to a Biden victory.  On such a moment history pivots.  Democrats get it.  A reelected Donald Trump is a scourge.  They know that this lame duck has no intention of golfing his way through the next four years.  Trump will not only push a bolder agenda but move to right wrongs.  He and Bill Barr have begun laying the groundwork.  The Durham investigation has yet to disclose its findings, meaning, more than one indictment.  If indictments come, they promise to bring justice, redressing an unprecedented conspiracy to destroy a president.  A conspiracy hatched by Hillary Clinton and first orchestrated inside the Obama White House, and then, most notably, continued in the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice. [...] 2020 is a bad year for Democrats, and it's about to get worse.

Lefties at The Nation discover that (non-FBI) feds have been tracing the puppet masters behind Antifa and BLM.  I have been saying for years that President Trump understands better than anyone else that in this age, politics is a reality TV show for most people and that a three-act structure has the greatest impact.  Well, we are in Act Three, folks, when questions and conflicts raised in Acts One and Two are answered and dramatic conflicts start to be resolved.  To put it differently, Rush Limbaugh correctly predicted some weeks ago that the real issues that would affect the election were not yet on the table.  The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the media obsession with her successor may be considered the first of such issues and the beginning of Act Three.  The activities of John Durham and the other federal prosecutors may also figure in the act.  But if the activities of the DHS and U.S. Marshals Service lead to indictments or at least the exposure of the ties behind the rioters, that could provide even more factual basis for voters to reconsider assumptions that the media have foisted on the public.

China is Spying on Millions of People.  And They Aren't in China.  After years of constant media fear-mongering, a sizeable number of Americans continue to believe in the disproven "Russiagate" conspiracy theory.  Putin, the story goes, owns Donald Trump and engaged in a massive propaganda campaign via social media, hacking elections, and other collusion forms to ensure that Trump was elected.  Now, Putin sits like Cobra Commander in the Kremlin, directed Trump's actions, and Trump does what he is told.  Yet these same Americans harbor little fear of China, the nation to which America's economy was sold decades ago (and the one who threatened to withhold all medical exports during a pandemic) and the only real aggressive empire (though admittedly the Russian bear is beginning to wake up) outside of the United States.

Knowing what's at stake, Trump-supporters increasingly refuse to hide in the shadows.  A curious thing is happening in America, and you'd have to work pretty hard to ignore it.  Trump-supporters are emerging from the shadows in large numbers, even in places you might not expect.  One might not be incredibly surprised to hear about masses of Trump-supporters rallying and taking part in patriotic parades in red states like Texas and even swing states like Florida, but eyebrows tend to rise when they begin happening in the capital city of the most important political stronghold of the Democratic Party.

You Don't Have Enough Ammo for the Post-Ginsburg 2020 Apocalypse.  The civil unrest that we've been dealing with since May got out of hand because it was being aided and abetted by elected Democratic officials in each of the riot cities.  Democrats were perfectly OK with looking the other way and pretending that the riots weren't happening.  It wasn't until last week that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi got around to condemning the violence, and that was only after new polling revealed that voter sentiment in the riot zones was shifting to Trump.  D.C. Democrats are already caterwauling about what they will do if the Senate votes to replace Ginsburg before the election and they happen to win control of the White House and Senate in November.

There's a formula to writing a blockbuster White House insider account.  First, leave.  Ideally, be fired in a storm of tweets and a cloud of controversy.  Second, deliver a killer new anecdote, preferably one that mixes proximity to power with mind-wilting triviality.  Three, explain that mistakes were made, but not by you.  Four, sit back and count the cash.  The art of the insider book deal has been perfected by a string of former White House officials amid an apparently insatiable demand from readers.

Attorney General Says BLM Uses Black Americans As 'Props,' Calls Out DOJ's 'Permanent Bureaucracy'.  U.S. Attorney General William Barr said the "law has broken down" in the hands of prosecutors and that DOJ heads, checked by the American people, should oversee these unelected prosecutors to uphold law and order in the nation.  The executive branch has virtually unchecked power in bringing charges, Barr noted.  "That means discretion is vested in the executive to determine when to exercise prosecution power," Barr said to a "legal-sized" crowd at Hillsdale College's Constitution Day Celebration on Wednesday evening [9/16/2020][.]  The only question is:  When should the branch use its prosecutorial power?  The answer is left in the hands of prosecutors who, according to Barr, prioritize cases that they "can get," meaning win, instead of the most important ones to prosecute.

Dan Bongino's Plan To Block A Democrat Coup Attempt Is Elegant In Its Simplicity.  The proactive response comes down to two action points.  [#1] Get every right-of-center outlet you can find to put these Leftist on the record before the election (because afterward will be too late) committing to renounce:  [A] any and all use of 'alternative electors' to sow chaos into the electoral process.  [B] any and all use of secession threats that Governors might be encouraged to use as a cudgel to enforce their will in the election.  [#2] Get everyone (Democrats especially) on record:  will you pledge not to appoint electors contrary to the vote of the people of your state?  Email all of your local and federal officials on those points.  If we get out ahead of this before the election, they can't spring it on us in the Chaos that is likely to follow.

Let's take a moment to applaud that unnamed female deputy's courage.  Within a very short time, we knew a lot about the Compton shooting of two deputies.  We knew that witnesses to the shooting celebrated and did nothing to help; that Black Lives Matter descended on the hospital, hoped for the deputies' deaths, tried to storm the Emergency Department, and blocked ambulances; and that no one in the Democrat party, from Biden down, called out Black Lives Matter for fomenting this anti-police terrorism, with some actually supporting it.  What we did not know until today was that the female deputy showed extraordinary presence of mind, competence, and courage.

It's time to end the lie that a person with a knife is basically 'unarmed'.  Part of what kept the Jacob Blake frenzy alive on the left was the fact that he did not have a gun.  The media and their paramilitary fighters on the street imply that the fact that Blake had a knife was inconsequential.  To them, he was unarmed.  The same thing is happening with Ricardo Munoz's death in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  A police officer shot Munoz when the latter came after him with a knife.  In reality, close-contact knife attacks are horrific and are just as deadly as bullets from afar.  The facts are uncontested:  the police got a call from Munoz's family that he was off his schizophrenia medicines.  They tried calling Crisis Intervention (i.e., the people leftists insist will take over future policing), only to have the Crisis Intervention people direct them to the police.  Within seconds of the first police officer to arrive coming to the front door, Munoz, who had stabbed four people in 2019, rushed at him with a large knife.  The police officer, while fleeing, shot him.

Trump's victory must be a rout.  While benevolence is a wonderful and aspiring trait, it cannot be extended to the ideas of the left.  The field is not fair, and the umpires in the media are one-sided.  Although many may not have the stomach for such defeat, it nevertheless remains the only path to save the country.  Trump simply winning the election cannot be the goal — demolishing and demoralizing the left must remain paramount.  All evidence supports America's existence requiring the 2020 election to be irrefutable rather than a "squeaker."

What happened to Bob Woodward?  Famed reporter Bob Woodward is dropping his new book about President Trump, Rage, next week.  Woodward has already leaked the book's juiciest excerpts to the media, such as the the President telling him during an interview on March 19 that he wanted to 'play down' the severity of the coronavirus in order to avoid a panic among the American people.  This comment has led Trump's critics to call for his resignation or for him to be impeached a second time.  Rage, however, is perhaps more revelatory about its author than its subject.  Let's assume that the critics are right, and that Trump's decision to portray calm in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was wrong and cost thousands of lives.  Didn't Woodward have an obligation to tell the public that the President said the virus was 'deadly' in February and that he admitted to 'playing it down' in March?  Isn't it rather sociopathic to hang on to a potentially life-saving piece of information for five months so that you can sell a few more copies of a book?

Disney, China, & the Ruling Class vs. America.  These days, even Disney movies reveal the deepening divide between Americans that threatens to tear our country apart.  Disney has spent years affixing content warnings to old material, revising and remaking it to conform with contemporary racial and gender standards.  Mulan seems like a perfect fit for this project — the headstrong young heroine who defies "traditional gender roles" to fight for her country (while wearing a binder, no less).  Except that the new version of the film, if you follow its logic, is so nakedly imperialist it would have made Napoleon blush.  The behemoth military complex of the Chinese state is leveraged en masse to defeat an uprising of nomadic tribes whose territory was stolen a generation ago by the current emperor, now an old warlord who demands tribute in blood and treasure from the several diverse regions of his sprawling fiefdom.  The independent nomadic powers are crushed and broken forever, but this time, their oppressor is a girlboss!  Hooray!

Stealing the election.  [Scroll down]  The election itself does not matter to Democrats.  They simply will litigate the election because they know they cannot win it because they screwed around for the last 4 years with witch hunts and impeachment, instead of seeking to flip President Trump's voters.  Without a nice slice of President Trump's voters (about 10% of whom voted for Obama at least once), Democrats are as dead as Biden's brain.  The Democrat riots in city after city are perhaps a training exercise for post-election violence.  Perhaps they believe the Antifa soy boys will intimidate the president's supporters.  Democrats are not exactly rocket scientists.  But I believe the courts are where the Democrats believe they can win the prize they covet most.  The Senate.

China Threatens Total Economic War by Dumping Treasuries.  On September 3, the Global Times, the Communist Party tabloid, reported that Beijing was "likely" to sell some or all of its U.S. Treasury holdings.  More important, the paper suggested the United States might for the first time ever default on its debt obligations.  China is certainly trying to destabilize the United States, and it looks as if it's about to declare total economic war on America.  Beijing has tipped its hand.  The question for the Trump administration, therefore, is whether America should strike first.  Yes, it should, and Washington should hit Beijing as hard as it can.  A vicious attack merits an overwhelming response.

What's going on with the Durham investigation, if anything?  Ever since Attorney General Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion probe, Trump supporters have been waiting for the bomb to drop.  And waiting.  And waiting.  But nothing ever happens.  Judicial Watch's founder Tom Fitton thinks that conservatives are being scammed.  Instead of an investigation, it's just another Washington cover-up.  I suspect (or, maybe, hope), though, that Barr and Durham are holding their fire because of the election.

Catholic priest says Democrats are going to hell — and Texas bishop backs him up.  A Wisconsin priest who condemned Catholic Democrats has the support of a Texas bishop.  Father James Altman, pastor of St.  James the Less Catholic Church, lashed out at Father James Martin, who participated in the Democratic National Convention.  In a 10-minute video posted to YouTube, Altman called the priest a "hyper, confusing spreading heretic" and had harsh words toward Democrats.  "Here is a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there:  You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat.  Period," Altman said in the video posted Aug. 30.  "The party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches, so just quit pretending that you're Catholic and vote Democrat.  Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell."

Hey BLM/AntiFa:  What About the Workers?  [Scroll down]  May I propose a universal principle here?  Governments and politicians and activists and nice liberal ladies have no clue how to help the workers.  And the reason is simple.  You can propose all kinds of pro-labor legislation and unions and benefits and Diversity and Inclusion, and we'll assume that the union leaders and government tax-gatherers and race-card players don't loot the businesses right off the bat.  But what happens to the workers when the next technological revolution comes along and the workers find themselves working for a corporation that is on the skids?  Exactly.  Because the union leaders and politicians and activists have no clue what to do other than tax and bully and regulate.

The Stephen King Election.  Voters start mailing in absentee ballots.  Potential pluralities are cast before the first debate[.]  The debates are alarmingly weighted against the challenger.  A president, at full capacity, confronting each day, every hour, the horsemen of a Communist virus, insurrection, Never-Trump calumny, and Deep State hatred.  Mr. Biden, at the doorstep of his own private Delaware, rolled forth in his dotage, an empty icon representing one of the most corrupt and lawless administrations since the founding.  Trump's retort to Hillary Clinton, "Because you'd be in jail," seems in retrospect like a relative kindness.  At least the former first lady knew what was happening to her.

Q names pedophile politicians vulnerable to blackmail.  You are not supposed to pay attention to anything published on the website QAnon.  Avert your eyes!  Democrat politicians and their media allies are sharpening their attacks against Q, to make sure as few people as possible read what is published there.  Joe Biden, a man fond of touching little girls, recently opined that Q followers should seek counseling for their mental health. [...] Maybe Q is all wrong.  But when the combined forces of the mainstream media and Democrats tell us to avert our eyes, absolute obedience may be a mistake. [...] I've followed Q since the first drop, and I've grown increasingly impressed by the accuracy, breadth and depth of Q's messages.  Q followers were prepared long in advance for the easing of hostilities with North Korea, the deflation of the mullahs of Iran, and the discovery of Ukraine as a hotbed of corruption for American politicians.  They knew a great deal about Jeffrey Epstein's activities before the public did and anticipate even more shocking revelations to come.  As Q likes to say, "Future proves past."  As Q's predictions come true, they lend retroactive credibility to the entire enterprise.

What are the Stakes?  This is an election like no other.  To treat it otherwise would be a grievous and perhaps irreparable misstep. [...] Currently, the ruling classes mostly disenfranchise undesirables through social opprobrium, labeling them "deplorable" and letting their attack dogs in the media do the rest.  But in the Obama era, they began to belligerently "weaponize" the federal government, using the IRS and intelligence agencies to thwart their political opponents.  If granted control of the White House again, the lesson they will draw from defeating Trump is not only that they will not be held accountable for such tactics, but that such tactics work.  They will use government agencies to kneecap their enemies in every conceivable fashion.  Those are the stakes.

What You Need to Know About Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the Kenosha Violence.  [Scroll down]  ["] It would have been helpful if there [were] body camera images, something where we could see from the officer's perspective sort of what the officer saw that made him believe he needed to use lethal force at that moment against Jacob Blake, whether he saw Blake reaching for a weapon or reaching for something, that there is a sense in which if Blake is reaching for a weapon, if Blake had made threats to the officers.  I've seen some reports saying he had threatened to shoot the officers, but again, none of that has been confirmed.  It's just sort of up in the air, this idea of what initiated, what prompted that officer to believe lethal force was necessary.  That belief may be reasonable.  It may be unreasonable.  We just don't know, but the facts are going to affect that belief.["]

The Democrat Lurch Back to the Primitive.  [Scroll down]  Compare the presidential tickets for 2020: Biden is an old New Deal era carthorse; a Budweiser Clydesdale that ought to be spending his last years sniffing the grass in a nice clovered paddock.  Harris is a total fake: the privileged daughter of two Berkeley academics masquerading as an oppressed First Woman of Color.  Are the Democrats dumb or something?  President Trump is a force of nature, that turned millions into billions when he took his dad's modest outer-borough apartment business downtown.  Then he learned, with his reality-show gig, how to relate to ordinary Commoners.  Vice President Pence is the epitome of a decent Christian man.  On top of that the Democratic National Convention was a celebration of youthful activists and helpless victims while the Republican Convention was a celebration of middle-class Strivers and Commoners.  And especially Black Strivers.  I wonder why?

Why Kenosha Police Officers' Use Of Force On Jacob Blake Was Justified.  Well-established legal principles govern the use of "deadly force" by law enforcement officers.  Initially, it is important to stress that the law is clear that an officer cannot use deadly force "merely to prevent a felon's escape."  Thus, shooting Blake would not be justified based solely on the fact that there was an outstanding felony charge against Blake and the officers were attempting to arrest him.  However, while generally police may not use deadly force to effectuate an arrest, the Supreme Court has made clear that deadly force may be used if "the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or others."  In the videos, Blake appeared to be armed with a knife.  It has been established that a knife was found in the car he was reaching into, although whether he possessed it during his altercation with police is unclear.  The mere fact that Blake may have been armed with a knife, though, also does not justify the shooting.  Rather, objective reasonableness is determined based on "whether the totality of the circumstances justified the use of force."

Jacob Blake's Family Attorney Says President Trump Hasn't Called Them; We Should Hope He Never Does.  [Scroll down]  Blake was not at the house to stop a fight.  He was under a restraining order.  He entered the house without permission.  He sexually assaulted his sometime girlfriend.  The car he was trying to get into was not his.  He had an outstanding arrest warrant, and the police knew it.  With this new and improved version of events out there, Jacob Blake is not going to get a multimillion-dollar settlement.  He's going to prison.  The riots and deaths in Kenosha have been caused by a false narrative perpetrated, in no small smart, by Blake's partisans with the assistance of [Benjamin] Crump.  Crump is trying to keep attention on this case by causing a controversy involving President Trump because he sees the gravy train ending.  President Trump did the right thing in calling Blake's mother when he did.  That was then; this is now.  Knowing the facts as we know them now, President Trump calling Blake's family would look like a cheap pander because it would be.

It is the Party of Biden that must lose big in November.  With the upcoming November presidential election, only two months away, the major focus continues to be on Trump and Biden.  Who should win?  Who is better?  Do we want four more years of Trump or another four years of a Obama-type rule?  My readers will know immediately where I stand.  Biden would be major disaster for the country, especially because it appears he is declining both physically and mentally and seems owned by the most radical leftist elements of his Democratic Party.  This essay, however, is a call for voters to not just vote for Trump.  It is a desperate call for voters from both parties and from all ethnic, religious, and racial cohorts to vote for Republicans in every election and at every level of government.  Biden is only the figurehead.  It is the body of the now very corrupt, anti-American, and radical Democratic Party that must be killed, thoroughly and at all levels, including the House, the Senate, and in every state, city, and local council election.

Trump for the Win.  The Democratic National Convention was essentially centered in a Wilmington catacomb and featured an unexciting procession of former officeholders, incanting that Donald Trump had completely failed in the coronavirus crisis and was personally responsible for 180,000 unnecessary deaths and massive unemployment. [...] This will be exposed as the most mistakenly overconfident launch of a major party campaign for the White House since the renomination of Governor Thomas Dewey of New York against President Harry Truman in 1948.  The combination of the two sequential conventions and the performance of the Democratic media in covering them will be a shattering blow to the Democratic strategists who retrieved Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from the prenomination ash heap and put them forward as a respectable camouflage for the party's outright Marxist program.  Whatever possessed them to imagine that they could avoid any comment on the most widespread and most destructive urban rioting in America in over 50 years, could lay the public health crisis entirely upon the president, could maintain their advocacy of an immigration policy that would ultimately result in every poverty-stricken person in the world moving to the United States, while ignoring this administration's reduction of illegal immigration by 90 percent; all of this and many other issues will be as much a matter of interest to psychiatrists as to historians.

David Dorn's Wife Gave the Most Powerful Speech of the RNC, CNN Smeared Her.  David Dorn's widow, Ann Dorn, took the stage at the RNC last night to deliver one of the most powerful speeches in the history of political conventions.  Her husband was murdered by looters in St. Louis after riots broke out following the death of George Floyd.  He was simply trying to protect his friend's shop from lawless thugs.  When I say that every American, regardless of political persuasion, should sit down and watch this speech, I mean it.  It was that important and no one should look away based on their partisan views.

Chaos v.  Order on the Ballot — Again.  Richard J. Daley, the old-school mayor of Chicago, told the city's superintendent during the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination to "shoot to kill any arsonists" and "shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting." [...] They don't make Democrats like they used to.  But occasionally years, and usually not the good ones, reincarnate.  Vice President Mike Pence summed up 2020 as "this year like no other" during his Republican National Convention speech this week.  But a 1968 vibe, when riots challenged a shared ethos of law, order, and patriotism, reverberates in the 2020 campaign.

Jacob Blake Had An Outstanding Warrant and a Knife — Two are Dead and Kenosha Burned Down For Nothing.  Yesterday [8/26/2020] late in the afternoon the Wisconsin Department of Justice released some preliminary findings with regard to its investigation into the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Blake.  Remember that the initial reports were that Blake had come to the location where his car was parked in order to help break-up an alternation between two women.  Blake had his three sons in the car, but it is uncertain whether he had them when he arrived, or if he picked them up at the location of the incident. [...] So, at the very outset we learn that Blake had not been asked to come to the location to help break up an altercation between two females, we learn that his presence at the location wasn't welcome by his girlfriend, and there may have been legal process outstanding against him that made it illegal for him to be there, such as a Protective Order.  Next we learn that the officers were attempting to place Blake under arrest.  Radio dispatch had advised the officers prior to the effort to arrest him that Blake had an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

No Lives Matter.  With many minority groups claiming historical injustices against them and demanding remedial recognition and reparation, with official endorsement by many institutions of those claims and demands, and with their propagation via all major channels of communication, no voices have been raised in support of the indisputably smallest and most persecuted minority group — the individual.  "Individual" and "individual rights" are words that must not be spoken.  Any recognition of the individual draws attention to the fundamental and massive violation of individual rights stemming from coronavirus totalitarianism and governments' encouragement of riots, vandalism, and violence. [...] The game is always the same.  In the name of some collective greater good — safety, anti-racism, fill in the blank — the wealth, property, work, rights, freedom, and lives of individuals are stolen.  Of course the alleged greater good is never realized, but that was never the point.

Jack Cashill's Unmasking Obama.  If journalism is the "first draft of history," Unmasking Obama is a well considered second draft, adding crucial perspective and assessment of the consequences of the real-time reports.  You don't have to wait that long, though.  It went on sale last week, and is well worth your time.

The Mirror-Image Convention.  The first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention was a mirror image of last week's Democratic telethon.  The issues that the Democrats ignored — violence in the cities and China — were mentioned again and again.  Where the Democrats showcased elected officials and celebrities, some of the most effective speeches on night one of the RNC came from lesser-known individuals such as activist Andrew Pollack, Cuban immigrant Maximo Alvarez, and nurse Amy Ford.  The phrase "systemic racism" wasn't heard.  But paeans to American greatness and American exceptionalism limned each address.  Last week, President Obama said that democracy was on the line in this election.  The speakers at the RNC agreed — but for reasons that were the direct opposite of Obama's.

The Things Not Said:  What Do Democrats Have to Hide?  In the case of the Democrats, a kind of poetic justice was achieved last week when a virtual convention nominated a virtual candidate for what promises to be a virtual presidency.  COVID-19 made both major parties opt for political conventions that don't put delegates and others at risk with large in-person gatherings, but for Democrats, lessening the risk of disease also meant lessening the risk of the public finding out that there is less than meets the eye to Joe Biden and his candidacy.  What was obvious from start to finish was that a pre-recorded, pre-scripted, pre-ordained infomercial gave Democrats the perfect opportunity to divert the attention of America away from their doddering candidate and their socialist policies into a fawning celebration of phony feel-good sloganeering and Trump hatred.

America Is Polarized.  One Thing Can Still Unite Us:  Rooting for Joe Kennedy to Fail.  Election Day is fast approaching and the country remains as polarized as ever.  Political meaning has been grafted onto every decision we make in our daily lives.  To have the wrong opinion is to commit an act of violence.  Refusing to take sides is just as harmful, if not more so, than picking the bad side.  There is still, however, at least one upcoming event that can unite our fractured nation and bring joy to the hearts of all Americans, regardless of political persuasion.  On September 1, the Democratic Party will hold its Senate primary in the state of Massachusetts.  The incumbent, Sen. Ed Markey (D.), is being challenged by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D.), a ginger-haired pipsqueak.  Kennedy is also, of course, a member of the degenerate political dynasty whose legacy is defined by death, addiction, sexual assault, and sympathy for the Nazi regime.

'Plot to Change America' Driven by Identity Politics.  America always has been a dynamic country of constant change, with its people looking ahead.  But an elite-driven ethos, which has become the dominant ideology of the country's most powerful institutions, threatens to overwhelm the ideas and traits that made America what it is.  [Video clip]

Democratic Convention Ignores the Elephant in the Virtual Room:  Big-City Violence.  As I keep telling you, when you hear politicians talking, pay attention to what isn't said.  Train your eye to see the negative space between the dancers, because that, too, is often the story.  Urban violence threatens the peace of targeted Democratic suburban voters, like those soccer moms who've just installed police scanner apps on their cellphones.  Trump is taking advantage of this, but he didn't create it.  What America is witnessing in cities like Portland, Seattle, Chicago and New York is a clash between the hard left and the liberal Democratic mayors who lead those cities.  And this Democratic infomercial is all about the swing vote, if there is such a thing, in battleground states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  Naturally, Democrats accentuate the positive.  Yet as the DNC infomercial makes plain, this new left Democratic Party of 2020 sees only two types:  The Oppressed and The Oppressors, a formula that invariably leads to rising conflict and anger that can't be covered over with virtual kindness and virtual empathy.

Democrats Killed Cannon Hinnant and George Floyd.  The deaths of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Minneapolis black ex-con strung out on drugs, and Cannon Hinnant, a 5-year-old white boy from a small city in North Carolina, are both symbols.  Floyd's death during a struggle with police led to nationwide race riots, the destruction of statues and stores, hundreds of millions in damage, severe injuries and deaths, and a political inquisition.  Hinnant's death has been ignored outside the local and conservative media.  The out-of-context video of Floyd dying of cardiac arrest while high on Fentanyl became evidence of police racism, not just by the white officer restraining him, but across the country.  And Cannon Hinnant's murder at the hands of a black felon while riding his bike on a grassy winding street became evidence of a racist double standard and out of control crime.  The truth is that Floyd and Hinnant's deaths were symptoms of the same crisis.

When Half of NYC's Tax Base Leaves and Never Comes Back.  The separateness in New York, and by extension much of the nation curled around it from America's eastern edge, stands out.  There are the hyper-wealthy and there are the multi-generational poor.  They depend on each other, but with COVID who needs who more has changed.  It's easy to stress how far apart the rich and the poor live, even though the mansions of the Upper West Side are less than a mile from the crack dealers uptown.  The rich don't ride public transportation, they don't send their kids to public schools, they shop and dine in very different places with private security to ensure everything stays far enough apart to keep it all together.  But that misses the dependencies which until now have simply been a given in the ecosystem.

What Difference Does It Make?  I've been railing for years against out of control government spending; undeclared never-ending wars across the globe provoked by the military industrial complex; un-Constitutional surveillance of Americans by our Deep State government overseers; the extreme greed and criminality exhibited by Wall Street bankers as they pillage the national treasure; corrupt politicians of both parties paid off to do the bidding of their corporate sponsors; propaganda spewing fake news media corporations; the Deep State running things behind the curtain; and the destroyer of worlds — the Federal Reserve — debasing our currency as they enrich the few at the expense of the many. [...] When I was censored on sites like Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense because they had sold out to the Wall Street cabal, I stumbled into blogging, with partner dust-ups, server issues, denial of service attacks and ad company censorship along the way.  But I'm still slogging and blogging away twelve years later, through presidential coup attempts, market crashes, the Federal Reserve rescuing the .1% once again, the most overhyped flu in the history of mankind used as a means to destroy our last vestiges of liberty and freedom, and the evil oligarchs attempting to seize complete and final control over all the economic, social, political and military levers of our society.  I'm convinced there will be no consensus regarding an agreed upon presidential victor on November 4th, or possibly weeks after, or possibly ever.  The amount of incompetence in handling mail-in-ballots by the USPO and those tasked with counting them will be off the charts.  The level of fraud in attempting to win this election will be on a level never seen before, making Daley's shenanigans to get Kennedy the necessary votes in 1960 seem like child's play.

The Democratic National Convention's virtual production is awful TV.  The Democratic Party kicked off its presidential convention on Monday — with one caveat.  Instead of meeting in person in Milwaukee as they had originally planned, Democrats opted for a virtual, four-night event due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.  Given the significant risks associated with large gatherings right now, the Democratic National Committee made the right call.  But it could have at least prepared a better production than what we're seeing right now.  Because it's difficult to imagine voters lasting through two hours of this stuff, let alone eight hours over four nights.

The Twilight Of Great American Cities Is Here.  Can We Stop It?  The dreadful death of George Floyd lit a fire that threatens to burn down America's cities.  Already losing population before the pandemic, our major urban centers have provided ideal kindling for conflagration with massive unemployment, closed businesses and already rising crime rates.  The forms of disintegration vary.  In overwhelmingly white cities like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis, violence has featured white radicals endorsing the extreme agenda of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter.  In more diverse cities, such as Chicago and New York, protests have devolved into basic thuggery as law enforcement has been curtailed and large portions of the prison population have been released.  The pandemic has shaken the once confident ranks of new urbanists.  At a time when even The New York Times is suggesting that density and packed transit lines worsened the contagion, some still embrace theology over data, with some advocating ever greater density, more crowding in cities, and mass transit.  Fortunately, people tend to be less theological about their locational choices.  According to The New York Times, 420,000 people left New York City between March 1 and May 1.  This nearly equals the city's total population increase from 1950 to 2019, according to demographer Wendell Cox.

Get Your Kids Out of Public School.  We are standing on the precipice of the biggest education revolution in generations.  As schools refuse at union behest to reopen full-time instruction in the fall, parents are flooding into alternative options like homeschooling and pandemic "pods."  For the first time in modern political memory, there is likely to be an exodus from public schools.  It will not just be the worst-served in poorer neighborhoods, to whom most school choice programs are geared, that leave.  It will also be middle-class and wealthier families.  This presents the biggest opportunity for domestic victory the Right has had in 70 years — if the Republican Party does not squander it.

Let's Clear up a Misconception — There Is NO DOJ Policy Preventing Indictments Prior to an Election.  This is one of those subjects where everyone is confident that a policy exists, and they know what the policy is, but no one can formulate in precise terms exactly what the policy says or means.  That's because there is no policy at DOJ which prevents the taking of enforcement action — whether that is an overt investigative step or seeking the return of an indictment — which is linked to the number of days remaining before a scheduled election.  None.  No policy.  Not written down anywhere.  Never cited.  Never quoted.  Never enforced.  There is a policy that prohibits the taking of any overt enforcement action for the purpose of affecting an election.  That is prohibited.  But that policy doesn't prohibit taking the same enforcement action when there is no such nefarious intention.

9 Things Every American Should Know About the Navajo Code Talkers.  Navajo code talkers, once unable to even talk about the role they played in World War II, are now lauded as heroes.[...] The idea of using Navajo as a way to create unbreakable codes against the Axis Powers — Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy — in WWII came from a veteran of WWI.  Phillip Johnson, the white son of a Christian missionary, had grown up on a Navajo Reservation and had learned the language in his youth.  It is possible that he came across the idea of indigenous languages being used as code during his service in WWI.  After Pearl Harbor, he proposed using Navajo, specifically, as a code to the Marines.  There were 29 original code talkers.  By the end of the war, there were more than 400.  Native Americans from at least 14 other nations and tribes were among those 400, working to keep the Axis from breaking encrypted, vitally important information.

The Case for Trump.  Americans who want to remain citizens of a united country that at least makes some desultory attempt to protect them and further their interests have no choice but to stay the course.  As the saying goes, the only way out is through. [...] [T]here's little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn't solve.  More populism.  More nationalism.  More patriotism.  More law and order. [...] In short, more adherence to the 2016 agenda.  The only way to get more Trump is, literally, to get more Trump.  Which means the president being reelected and implementing his core agenda in a second term.  But that alone will not be enough.  Saving America as a unified, self-governing republic is a long-term — possibly generational — project.

War Chief Republicans or Reservation Chief Republicans?  [Scroll down]  As a rule, war chiefs were American Indians who refused to submit to displaced from their tribal lands — whether by other Amerindians or by Americans.  The war chief chose war and its attendant ills over submission.  The reservation chiefs, often without being prompted, sold off tribal lands that were not theirs to sell for cheap trinkets: beads, whiskey, and buttons rather than risking conflict.  When I think of the reservation chiefs, I think of those who sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $24 worth of beads, or men like John Ross or Elias Boudinot who just accepted the idea that their people, the Cherokee, should passively submit to being removed from the Southeast to Oklahoma.  I think of the Chiefs Black Kettle and Little Raven who bowed their heads and passively submitted to being removed to reservations chosen not by them but for them.  I'm sure many of these men thought that what they were doing on behalf of their people was necessary, even praiseworthy.  When I think of the war chiefs, I think of those proud American Indians who fought back against their displacement, who refused to give up their traditions, who attacked despite overwhelming odds.

2020: The Year That Boiled the Frog.  Think of what we've lost:
  •   Professional, amateur, college, and high-school sports, as well as youth athletic leagues:  gone.  (Yes, there is some baseball now, but in empty stadiums — and the prospects for football, basketball, etc. are dim.)
  •   The schools are all closed.  Parents who depend on the schools to look after their children during working hours cannot return to the workforce
  •   The entire movie industry:  gone.
  •   Theater:  gone
  •   Concerts:  gone
  •   Summer camps:  gone
  •   Bars:  gone.  (Here in Massachusetts, they will be closed until there is a vaccine, which for many businesses, if not most, is a death sentence.
  •   Restaurants:  either closed, or operating under draconian restrictions.  Many places still do not allow indoor dining, and those that do permit it only at reduced capacity.  The restaurant business has thin margins under the best of circumstances, and you can be quite sure that nearly all restaurants are currently losing money
  •   Travel:  decimated.  (This includes hotels, car rentals, etc.
  •   Public gatherings:  churches, parties, funerals, weddings, reunions, school commencements, club meetings, cookouts, marathons, and so on: gone.
  •   Gyms and fitness studios, closed—many permanently.
That's only a partial reckoning — but what a list it is!  If one were asked, a year ago, to name the things that make up ordinary civic life in America, it would have been, more or less, the same list.  All of it is gone.

The Editor says...
I guess I'm a wet blanket, because I couldn't care less about professional sports, movies, bars, theaters, concerts, summer camps, fitness studios, or most social gatherings.  And America is better off, in the long run, without public schools, i.e., socialist indoctrination centers.  As soon as the face mask mandates disappear, I'll be back to normal!

Chauvin, Lane, Kueng, and Thao:  The George Floyd Fall Guys.  This is an illustration from the Minneapolis Police Department's official training materials on how to safely and properly subdue a suspect suffering from "excited delirium," a potentially lethal medical condition which, due to the rising use and abuse of illicit drugs, has grown to epidemic proportions on the streets of America.  Look closely.  The depicted suspect is flat on the ground with his head turned to the side in what the illustration calls "the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia."  The officer on the left is kneeling on the side of the suspect's neck.  Look familiar?  Could this and related parts of the officially approved and mandated Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) training curriculum be why former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin saw fit to kneel on the side of George Floyd's neck?  And could it be the reason why former officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao assisted Chauvin as he knelt on the side of Floyd's neck?

Have Conservatives Gone Dark?  Going dark in a general sense means to cease communications or activities. [...] Judging from the results of recent political polls, one could argue that a significant percentage of conservative voters and perhaps even moderates have gone dark. [...] It is not difficult to understand why conservatives feel this way.  They watch night after night as a slow-motion liberal version of Kristallnacht rolls on in many American cities.  Police are attacked, businesses are looted and burned, statues are pulled down, and innocent bystanders or motorists in their cars are harassed or worse.  They know that wearing a MAGA hat or shirt in the wrong neighborhood may get them attacked and beaten.  They know that a Trump yard sign or bumper sticker may get their house or vehicle vandalized.  They know that if they say or post the wrong thing on social media, they may be tarred as a racist, misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe, etc., and could possibly lose their job or career.

Washington's dubious — and pricey — 'stimulus'.  With negotiations over a (yes!) fifth COVID-19 rescue package at an impasse, President Trump took action on his own Saturday [8/8/2020], signing executive orders on a number of "stimulus" measures.  Whether his actions or Congress' ultimately prevail, expect a pretty hefty price tag — and dubious economic benefits.  For starters, unilateral steps by a president, especially regarding the budget, are often legally and politically fraught.  The Constitution gives Congress the power over the purse, and if there isn't enough political will to act, it can be a stretch for presidents to simply use their "phone and pen" (as President Barack Obama put it when he issued his own EOs) and sidestep lawmakers.  Democrats have already questioned the legality of Trump's move, and even he says he expects a lawsuit.

Election 2020: A Republic, if You Can Keep It.  [Scroll down]  Now, connect the dots on a very plausible scenario.  On Election Night, President Trump is ahead and winning in the Electoral College.  Trump and Republicans are elated.  Democrats and the media pundits who have made it clear they are for Biden caution that votes which have not been counted — mail-in and absentees — could well change things.  Late on Election Night, President Trump declares victory, asks Biden to concede victory in the interests of bringing the country together.  Biden refuses.  Days turn into weeks, and the 600 lawyers already hired by the Biden campaign are in courts doing whatever it takes to advantage his candidacy.  Biden slowly crawls from his deficit and starts to take over states, mostly ones run by Democrats.  At some point, Biden decides he has won and demands President Trump concede.  This leaves America with the nine Justices of the Supreme Court deciding which ballots are counted and which are not.  There is only one conclusion to be reached here.  The 2020 election will put a strain on the very foundations of our democracy.

This Election Is a Choice between Freedom and Slavery, Good and Evil.  Ronald Reagan famously observed nearly sixty years ago:  "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same[.]" [...] Before the Chinese coronavirus turned into a weapon for destroying freedom, we were already under attack.  For years, hate speech laws have been used to censor points of view and silence critics.  Public schools have replaced education with "politically correct" Marxist narratives, while Christianity is banned from public life and public squares.  Socialists attack words as violence so they may use violence against our words.  Wherever we look, the left has been nibbling away at liberty and pushing us toward gilded cages under their control.  Now the Democrats' push to "fundamentally change America" is in overdrive.  A combination of their awareness that they have lost ground since President Trump's election and a growing sense of urgency to speed up their revolution before his looming re-election has led them to throw all caution to the wind.

The Disappearing National Political Convention.  The original Democratic National Convention planned for Milwaukee this summer was postponed and then shrunk thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.  And now it's all but disappearing into a virtual haze, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: [...] I'm just old enough to remember conventions that were interesting and spontaneous enough to justify TV-network "gavel-to-gavel coverage," before nominees selected in primaries much earlier crushed the life out of them.  And now they may finally be giving up the ghost.

This is not news.  This is somebody stating the obvious.
Counterintelligence Report:  China Prefers that Trump Loses Election.  William Evanina, Director of National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), issued a report on Friday which concluded his agency believes the communist Chinese government prefers that President Donald Trump does not win reelection in November.  "We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection.  China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China's interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China," the report reads.  The report also found that Russia is attempting to "denigrate" presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden.

Democrat Domestic Terrorism Can No Longer Be Ignored.  Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act defines "domestic terrorism" as activities involving acts in violation of state or federal criminal laws that are "dangerous to human life" and "appear to be intended" either to (i) "intimidate or coerce a civilian population," (ii) "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or (iii) "affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping."  Intimidating a civilian population?  Coercing government officials?  Engaging in mass destruction and assassination of police?  Ding-ding-ding! [...] Democrat domestic terrorists light fires everywhere they go, egg on violence against police and civilians, and threaten businesses who refuse to pay into their protection rackets by "donating" to their favorite money-laundering 501(c)(3)s; and our criminal justice system looks the other way or even actively abets the terrorists by releasing them from jail cells just as soon as they arrive, while leaving Americans to fend for themselves.

75 Years Later, It's Clear Truman Was Right To Drop The Atomic Bomb.  On August 6, 1945, 30-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. took to the sky in the Enola Gay, his Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. [...] Eleven days before Tibbets's fateful flight, on July 26, 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman's "Potsdam Declaration" gave the Empire of Japan one final chance to surrender unconditionally after more than three years of war in the Pacific.  If they persisted in fighting, the Potsdam text promised "the full application" of U.S. military power, culminating in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland."  The closing of the ultimatum rings all the more forebodingly in hindsight:  if the Japanese refused the terms, the alternative was "prompt and utter destruction."

Durham's investigation drags on.  The Washington Examiner reported, "U.S. Attorney John Durham will soon interview former CIA Director John Brennan, another sign that the investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators is ready to wrap up by the end of the summer."  Notice the story did not say which summer. [...] This looks more like investigation theater than holding anyone accountable for the FBI spying on Obama's political opponents.  This case is being slow walked.

Democrats [are] paying for the Mueller Report.  The media is in denial that it matters that there is a gap in enthusiasm between the deplorable dregs of society behind President Donald John Trump and those social justice warriors backing Basement Biden.  CBS reported the other day, "While much has been made of enthusiasm, it may not be the most important measure this year.  An unenthusiastic vote, of course, counts just the same as an enthusiastic one, so this is a useful measure insofar as it indicates who's firmly behind their candidate and who will actually turn out this fall."  The Hill even went so far as to say, "Biden benefits from an enthusiasm gap, not the other way around."  That argument was made by Jessica Tarlov, who argues the Democrat platform matters more than the candidate.

The West is One Vast Social Engineering Experiment.  Many decades ago, I worked for a while in one of the old Victorian lunatic asylums in England.  They were by then called 'long-stay mental hospitals' and the patients were all highly institutionalized, conditioned by years of dull routine to an existence of passive compliance. [...] What is happening today in the West increasingly reminds me of what I saw in that long-stay mental hospital many decades ago, but is less humane.  Today, when a person displays signs of deviating from political correctness, the cultural overseers leap into action and denounce the behavior and the culprit, whose guilt is incontestable.  If confession, contrition, and penance are not instantly forthcoming, the only sentence is to be declared a 'far-right bigot', with the likely result that the mainstream news media will then pick up the story and try to ruin what is left of the pitiful target's life.

Seven Major October Surprises Awaiting Democrats.  [#3] China, China, China.  Trump keeps this simmering on the back burner, but it won't go away.  This week he suggested he would ban the Chinese-controlled TikTok app in the United States.  Supposedly, this was the instrument by which Democrats artificially beefed up the Tulsa rally numbers — perhaps tipping their hand too soon.  Trump has the winning hand on this and anything China.  The virus is, after all, the China Virus.  The Chicoms lied and people died.  Their tech recently has developed mysterious troubles (fires on ships, etc.).  Trump has made it clear to Xi that he can be a trading partner or an enemy, but there is no such thing as a "friendly adversary".  To the degree that the American public hears about Chinese mischief, it works to Trump's advantage.  After all, Democrat Joe Biden practically has "Made/Paid in China" tattooed on his chest.  Any new Chinese shenanigans both enhance Trump's status and damage Biden.

Save Taiwan.  The fate of Hong Kong should make us worried about Taiwan.  China's introduction of a new security law for Hong Kong — which hollowed out the spirit of the 'one country, two systems' notion — is a powerful reminder of the importance of sovereignty for the Chinese Communist party.  We should ask whether Taiwan is next on the list.  In the past few months, as the world battled to control the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing indulged in increased military activity across the Taiwan Strait.  The purpose was to remind the newly re-elected Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, that Taiwan is an inherent part of China and that there is no alternative to reunification with the mainland by 2049.  Westerners may find it difficult to comprehend the definitive nature of such a message.  But events in Hong Kong suggest that Beijing takes it very seriously.

Rich Lowry outs himself as a fraud.  As editor of National Review, Rich Lowry has advocated fewer regulations, lower taxes, and the appointment of conservative judges.  In his latest column, Lowry showed it was all a pack of lies meant to peddle subscriptions and draw donations to his magazine.  As president, Donald John Trump has delivered on all three as no president has.  Even Ronald Wilson Reagan did not cut regulations as severely as The Donald.  It is a tossup as to the better of the two.  President Reagan fought two communist powers — Russia and Red China.  President Trump fights two communist powers — Red China and the Democrat Party.  Lowry showed little appreciation for President Trump's accomplishments in his column on his Never Trump buddies turning into a cancel culture that wants to destroy any and all Republicans.

The Choice Before Us.  Back at home, left-wing radicals burn Bibles, assault and murder policemen and civilians, set fire to courthouses, vandalize and loot all manner of businesses.  On Friday [7/30/2020], thugs in Portland placed a pig's head on an American flag outside the city's Justice Center.  They put a policeman's cap atop it, doused it with a firestarter, and set it aflame.  The name of George Floyd, the career criminal who died in police custody at the end of May, was at first invoked mantra-like to justify or at least to explain this explosion of savagery.  Now, a couple of months later, there are still ritual invocations of his name but, really, you don't hear too much about Floyd.  The real agenda has come more and more to the fore.  Barack Obama summed it up when he said, in 2008, that he was after the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.  Cities like Portland give us a glimpse of what that transformation would entail.  The clips of the savages burning Bibles put me in mind of Heinrich Heine's solemn observation that Dort wo man Búcher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen:  "Wherever people burn books, they also end up burning men."  It may seem melodramatic, but here is the awful choice we face: the choice between the spirit of mayhem, burning pigs' heads, and burning Bibles, on the one side, and the traditional American spirit that cherishes the rule of law, free expression, and fructifying engines of prosperity, on the other.

AG Bill Barr Inadvertently Exposes Real Reason for House Democratic Hearing in Under Five Seconds.  [Scroll down]  In under five seconds, Barr exposed the "hearing" for what it was:  a pathetic show trial designed to give cover for the failed leadership shown by Democrats including the governors and mayors in the impacted states at the expense of Barr and President Trump.  Their hope was that by repeatedly cutting Barr off after their "gotcha" questions, many of which had absolutely nothing to do with a hearing about the federal response to the riots, they could make Barr look incompetent and overreaching and, via extension, Trump.  Barr clearly was not going to have any of that.

What happened to an America where you could freely speak your mind?  Last week, with violence spiking around the country, I wrote a column on the growing sense of lawlessness in America's urban areas.  In response, the Tribune newspaper union, the Chicago Tribune Guild, which I have repeatedly and politely declined to join, wrote an open letter to management defaming me, by falsely accusing me of religious bigotry and fomenting conspiracy theories.  Newspaper management has decided not to engage publicly with the union.  So I will.  For right now, let's deal with facts.  My July 22 column was titled "Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats:  An overwhelming sense of lawlessness."  It explored the connections between soft-on-crime prosecutors and increases in violence along with the political donations of left-wing billionaire George Soros, who in several states has funded liberal candidates for prosecutor, including Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx.  Soros' influence on these races is undeniable and has been widely reported.  But in that column, I did not mention Soros' ethnicity or religion.

They come for John Kass.  Last week I missed the excellent John Kass's Chicago Tribune column on "The Soros-funded prosecutors."  The column was published in the Tribune on July 22 under the headline "Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats:  An overwhelming sense of lawlessness." [...] For calling out [George] Soros, Kass has been accused of promoting an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.  In his column today he cites a few articles supporting the Soros connection in positive terms.  Apparently Soros can only be named if he is to be praised.

Good Riddance To Drudge.  Whatever Drudge was, it's not anymore.  You'd be hard-pressed to spot the difference between the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post.  Aside from his love of weather porn, Tom Brady, and anything Oprah or transgender-related, you might as well go to CNN.  At least with CNN you're getting it from the primary source.

No Holds Barred at the House Lynch Session.  [Attorney General William Barr] is strong and fierce, does not give an inch, does not get thrown off message, sticks to his guns, and sticks it to those who would take him down. [...] For the Democrats the hearing [7/28/2020] was "no holds barred."  No lie was off the table.  No insult was beneath them.  Under the guise of asking the Attorney General to answer questions, they rather used their allotted time to berate him, to berate President Trump, and to lie about the Antifa and other anarchist-driven riots that seek to undermine our Republic and to tear away our freedom.  They were not asking questions, and they did not allow Barr to answer them or speak when he tried.  Rather, they were like a parent on a tear against a child in big trouble, or a boss on a rampage about to fire his or her employee.

Tick, Tick, Boom, Boom, Time's Up, Obama Goons?  Three fuses have been set and are now burning: (1) the explosive origin story of the Russia hoax, (2) the growing backlash against Democratic Party-endorsed Antifa domestic terrorism, and (3) the bottled up economy being shaken right now with one little thumb preventing a carbonated eruption.  They have the potential to redefine the final hundred days of this race in a way that the Democrats' electoral fraud cannot overcome.  It's a contest between a news media establishment that has gaslighted the American people regarding a Russia hoax of the Democrats' creation and all the Americans who have felt that their votes have been taken hostage since 2016. It's a contest between Democrat mayors turning American cities into war zones where Antifa insurrectionists can throw Molotov cocktails and bricks at police officers free from consequences and a growing number of Americans who finally understand that the socialists running the Democratic Party mean to keep going until the whole nation burns.

Don't Lecture Me.  Hardcore liberals are far more apt to engage in public criticism and protest to support their views than conservatives.  A recent poll has just confirmed what we've all known in our gut for a long time:  While conservatives are hesitant to express their political views in public — whether it be at school, the workplace or at social gatherings, for fear of damaging reprisals — extreme liberals have no such reservations.  Emboldened by supportive social media platforms and major media outlets that are unabashedly liberal and decidedly anti-Trump, the far Left has no fear of repercussions as a result of expressing their political opinions.  According to a Cato Institute study conducted in July 2020 of 2000 Americans age 18 and older, "Strong liberals are the only political group who feels they can express themselves without fear of repercussions."  And express themselves they do.

The Establishment Has No Clothes.  America's elite — the world's elite, for that matter — is deeply corrupt.  So much so that it's becoming difficult to understand what makes them elite anymore.

It Is the Resistance, Not Trump, That Needs To Learn To Accept Election Results.  The final 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump gave voters much to think about.  That was the night Clinton admitted that she was willing to engage in a proxy war with Russia in Syria.  For his part, Trump highlighted Clinton's radical support of abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, a charge she could not deny.  But media coverage in the days that followed focused almost exclusively on Trump's response to a question posed by moderator Chris Wallace, a Fox News host.  Asked if he would "absolutely accept the result of this election," Trump said — and you may want to sit down for this one — "I will look at it at the time."  For context, Trump had been talking about election-rigging for months, made easier by the confirmation that Democrats had rigged their primary election against Bernie Sanders for Clinton.  During the GOP primary, Trump tended to complain about rigging in contests he lost.

What to Leave Out of the COVID Relief Bill.  Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have spent the past few months putting off another round of coronavirus relief.  Watching and waiting made some sense, given the fluidity of our condition, but it now leaves them with little time to reach a common position and then negotiate an acceptable outcome with the Democrats.  Senate Republicans have made a good start by ditching two bad ideas.  One is President Trump's demand for a big reduction in the payroll tax.  Under the right circumstances, cutting that tax would be a very good idea.  It does not, however, fit the needs of the moment very well.  The millions who are out of work would not receive any direct benefit from it, while many people who don't need help would.  Federal revenue, meanwhile, would drop.  Deficits will unfortunately have to rise over the short term, but they should do so only for good reasons.

Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is on the right track with activist investor reform.  Should people be able to invest in ventures that aim to have a social or environmental impact?  The answer is yes.  In fact, people should be able to invest in, buy stock in, and even bet on anything they want.  However, fiduciaries (those that manage other people's investments) must follow some rules.  The first rule of a fiduciary should be to put the economic interests of its clients first.  Some haven't exactly followed that rule and have let personal politics and beliefs get in the way, investing in assets that sacrifice returns for environmental, social, and governance activism — also known as ESG.  On the individual level, this is not an issue, but someone else making a political point with your 401(k) money should be a choice that is off the table.  Fortunately, the Trump administration is looking to codify this simple idea and help refocus fiduciaries on their jobs:  making money for their clients.

Communist China:  A History Lesson for Mark Cuban.  After [Dallas Mavericks owner Mark] Cuban affirmed his support for Black Lives Matter, claimed America is systemically racist, and accused [U.S. Senator Ted] Cruz of not doing enough to stop the COVID-19 pandemic (which Cuban failed to note originated in Communist China), he espoused the amoral canard corporate titans have long used to justify their complicit silence about oppression in the face of massive profits:  "But I have never gotten involved in the domestic policies of ANY foreign country.  We have too much to do here."  Cuban and his fellow corporate titans find Communist China's predatory trade practices offensive because they adversely impact American corporations' ability to make a buck.  What does not offend Cuban and his fellow corporate titans is Communist China's systematic crushing of the Hong Kong people's liberty and its relocating of Uyghurs by the trainload into concentration camps in order to exterminate their culture and their persons.  All that has no impact on these American corporations' ability to make a buck from this evil regime.

Election Turns On Five Questions, Such as Marxism.  The presidential election result is now down to five questions.
  •   Can the President override the Democratic press's thunderous campaign to terrorize the country over the coronavirus?
  •   Can the president successfully connect Vice President Biden's campaign to the hooligans, anti-white racists, and urban guerrillas who effectively are being encouraged by the corrupt Democratic mayors of many of the nation's largest cities?
  •   Will the economic recovery and the decline in the unemployment generated by the COVID-19 shutdown continue at its recent pace and strengthen the economy as a pro-Trump electoral argument?
  •   Will the Republicans make adequately clear to the country the authoritarian and Marxist implications of the Biden-Sanders unity document?
  •   Will special counsel John Durham indict senior members of the Obama Administration over their handling of the spurious allegation of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government in the 2016 election and Justice Department violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and how will Mr. Biden himself come through it?
Apart from the Durham question, the president has it in his power to produce answers favorable to himself on the other four questions.

Bobby Jindal slams 'short-sightedness' of never-Trumpers: 'They should admit they are Democrats'.  Former 2016 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal warned "never-Trump" Republicans that their election-season opposition to the incumbent of their own party will not help return the GOP platform to one they closer align with — but instead "elevate" the Democratic forces they claim to similarly oppose.  Writing in the "Washington Examiner" on Friday, Jindal — a former two-term Louisiana governor — said that while many never-Trump Republicans have some policy differences with the president, they instead often target Senate Republicans and the entire contemporary GOP for scorn simply because of their alliance with or acceptance of the commander in chief.

China consulate to State Dept:  You can't make us leave.  What happens when a consulate refuses to close after it loses its diplomatic status?  Likely nothing good, but China's Houston consul apparently wants to find out.  Cai Wei told Politico last night that the State Department order to close the consulate violated international protocol, and he has no intention of closing the facility.

The Editor says...
Turn off the electricity, cut off the water, disconnect the phone lines, surround the building with Wave Bubbles, and bombard the building with Hong Kong radio stations 24/7.  They'll leave.

Why are federal agents in Portland?  Rioters and criminals have been attacking federal law enforcement officers and the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland for over 55 consecutive days.  The mission of the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service is to protect federal buildings, and the fellow officers and civilians inside.  The Federal Protective Service has protected the Hatfield Courthouse since it was erected in 1997.  The Department of Homeland Security has sent cross-designated law enforcement officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to support the Federal Protective Service officers in protecting the federal courthouse and the federal officers inside it from violent rioters.  The Department of Justice's U.S. Marshals Service also is supporting the Federal Protective Service at the courthouse.  Every federal officer protecting the courthouse and staff in Portland have received the service's specific training for that role.

Do Global Elites Commit Crimes Against Children?  The issue of how some of the most privileged people in the world treat children is getting more traction.  After the arrests of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, millions of ordinary people are critically examining the actions of Hollywood celebrities, titans of business, powerful politicians, media corporations, and other elite groups.  Scenarios that previously seemed unthinkable are becoming more thinkable by the day.

Let's stop the nonsense about federal agents in Portland.  There have been conflicting reports about federal agents in camouflage and unmarked vehicles detaining protesters in Portland, Ore., without cause.  This comes on the heels of scenes of federal officers, outfitted in blue shirts and tactical vests but no official patches or badges, protecting facilities in Washington, D.C., in June.  The events have called into question the role of federal law enforcement and how it intersects with traditional policing.  While many federal law enforcement agencies are investigative in nature and have special agents, not police officers, some do have a more traditional police role.  The Secret Service Uniformed Division has been in operation since 1922 and provides traditional law enforcement services around the White House and foreign embassies in the U.S.  Its agents conduct operations around the president and other dignitaries, including K-9, explosive ordnance disposal, and counter-assault teams.  The Capitol Police is approximately 1,500 police officers strong and functions much like a traditional police department.  Many other agencies have uniformed police officers as well, including the FBI, whose police officers protect the agency's headquarters, FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., and its enormous field offices in Washington and New York.

The Threat That Tucker Carlson Poses to the Media.  On Monday night [7/20/2020], Tucker Carlson blasted the New York Times for preparing to publicly reveal his new home — a home he had to move to when progressive activists vandalized his previous home and repeatedly threatened his family. [...] I want to explain exactly what it is that Carlson is doing and why they find it so dangerous.  Carlson approaches the news as someone who understands and feels the populist ideas that have long been ignored in the United States, but he does so as someone uniquely gifted to give an intelligent voice on them.  He has gained a following by explaining the very things that led to President Donald Trump being elected, and he has done so without swearing absolute fealty to Trump.  In fact, the relationship is rumored to be somewhat reversed:  Trump himself pays close attention to what Carlson is saying because he recognizes that those views are largely the views of his base.  So when Trump does something that Carlson disagrees with, and Carlson voices his disagreement, you can bet the President has heard him and is seriously considering a change of course.  This is also what makes Carlson so unique on his own network.

Unraveling "The Golden Thread": The Suspicious Cold War Death of Dag Hammarskjöld.  In 1961, Cold War tensions and the legacy of colonialism came to a head in the nation known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Early that year, Patrice Lumumba — who had played a crucial role in Congolese independence — was assassinated as part of an ongoing civil war in the country.  Lumumba wasn't the last statesman whose life was claimed by this conflict, either.  On September 18, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace among the conflicting factions.  In the nearly 60 years since then, Hammarskjöld's death has been analyzed from a host of vantage points.  Was the crash a tragic accident, or were more sinister forces at work?  It didn't help matters that the initial investigation was marred by imperialist, racist attitudes that led to information from several Black eyewitnesses being discounted.

Spending As If There Is No Tomorrow.  Perhaps now is not the time in the middle of a pandemic, job losses and threats of even higher unemployment, to mention the national debt.  Or, perhaps it is.  One of the common characteristics of the fall of past empires and superpowers is massive national debt.  Ours is currently at $26.5 trillion and growing by the second.  Americans should regularly consult the real-time debt clock and ponder the future.  The interest on the debt, which also grows daily, is higher than the nation's gross domestic product for the first time since World War II.  With more borrowed money going out the Treasury Department's door because of the pandemic and Joe Biden promising to spend additional trillions should he become president the debt will become an even greater economic albatross.

Trump has been right about China for years.  Back in the summer of 2015, all the cleverest people made fun of Donald Trump for obsessing about China. [...] It seems distinctly less funny now.  There is a reason that the novel coronavirus is popularly denominated the Wuhan flu or CCP virus.  As Bill Gertz observed in How China's Communist Party Made the World Sick, 'the world does not need to prove that the communist regime in Beijing was responsible for the escape of the coronavirus from a lab' in order to cast a jaundiced eye upon its many malefactions. 'It is now clear,' he writes, 'that decades of international engagement and cooperation with communist China was a mistake that seriously undermined fundamental American values of freedom, democracy, openness, honesty, and free markets.

How to Cancel 'Cancel Culture'.  The woke left has awakened to the fact that it can destroy almost anybody's career and livelihood by just surrounding him or her with controversy and bad press, which convinces the person's employer that the simplest way to avoid the controversy is to fire the person in question.  The same techniques can and should be used against the enemy's own livelihoods and careers.

Democrats get ready for a Wellstone funeral for John Lewis.  Rep. John Lewis, a notable ally of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s during the days when civil rights work was dangerous, died Friday, and already the thumping can be heard from the Democrats for a Wellstone-style funeral.  As in that sorry 2002 episode, the funeral for Lewis won't be about honoring Lewis, it will be about Getting Trump.  From there, it won't take long for it to become a foot-stomping political rally, as happened in the case of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash.

For America to function, Americans must have a healthy fear of police.  The emotion-based group consensus that supports police use of authority and force becomes strained and fragile during times of intense political campaigns and ideological divisions accompanied by large group demonstrations that can shift quickly toward aggressive mob mentality, anarchic behavior, and chaos.  One elemental aspect of the normal dynamics of police power and authority is fear of arrest, detention, and possible citation or fine.  Policemen can be kind and helpful and embrace the best in community police values, but at a certain tipping point, their authority and exercise of it demand respect and submission.  Period!  Resisting arrest or assault of a police officer is and must be verboten in our society.

About That George Floyd Judge Judy Video.  One of the bits of fake news currently making the rounds on the geriatric circuit purports to show George Floyd, at age 17, on the Judge Judy show, where he admits to being a carjacker.  The message — that he was a rotten [person] and more or less deserved what happened to him at the hands of Minneapolis police — is impossible to miss.

A Silent Majority Isn't Good Enough In The Culture War.  The "Silent Majority" comes up a lot these days, often in the context of a warning to Democrats about an electrified coalition of under-the-radar voters motivated to support President Trump by the left's culture war.  It's true Democrats aren't helped politically by their proximity to radical leftism, although I'm not sure I buy the argument it'll cost them the Oval Office in 2020.  Whether the Silent Majority is enough to swing an election, it's certainly no longer enough to swing the culture.  If such a group exists, it needs to speak up.

Who Funds The Lincoln Project?  Exactly Whom You Expect.  If the Lincoln Project was exclusively campaigning against Donald Trump, one might be tempted to believe it wasn't merely an arm of the Democratic Party.  If one of its co-founders, John Weaver, hadn't been registered as a foreign agent lobbying for a Russia-owned nuclear-energy company against U.S. sanctions not long ago, one might accept that the group believed the conspiracy theories it spreads.  If the group wasn't working against the moderate Republicans senators for the sin of supporting originalist Supreme Court justices, who will transcend the Trump presidency and help preserve the traditional constitutional order, one might believe that its mission was to preserve the system.

Will the Federal Reserve Cause the Next Riots?  The Federal Reserve manipulates the money supply by buying and selling government securities.  This means that when the Fed decides to pump money into the economy, it does so by putting it in the pockets of wealthy, and oftentimes politically-connected, investors who are able to spend the new money before the Fed's actions result in widespread inflation.  Wealthy individuals also tend to be among the first to invest in the bubbles that form when the Fed distorts interest rates, which are the price of money. [...] In response to the government-caused economic collapse, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about a trillion dollars from mid-April to early June.  In contrast, it took the Fed all of 2019 to grow the money supply by 921 billion dollars.  Even before the lockdown, the Fed was massively intervening in the economy in a futile attempt to prevent economic crisis.  A coming crisis will likely be triggered by a collapse in the dollar's value and a rejection of the dollar's world reserve currency status.  The economic collapse will be worse than the Great Depression.  This will result in widespread violence along with government crackdowns on liberties, accelerating the US slide into authoritarianism.

McGruff The Crime Dog Put Down.  In response to a growing anti-police sentiment, McGruff the Crime Dog has been taken to the vet and put down.  "We just didn't feel safe with him around," said activist Ray Clarke, one of the people who demanded McGruff be euthanized.  "He was always urging people to 'Take a bite out of crime,' and we don't need more violence like that from law enforcement.  He has to die."

Trump Needs to Scale the Real Wall of 2020.  America's small towns are underpopulated, while big cities of plague, protests, and panic are overpopulated, overpriced, and overpopularized. [...] The crisis of the inner city is not just the erosion of the black family, high crime, fatherless children, dismal schools, cynically concentrated abortion clinics, racism, and tribalism, but the old nemesis of segregation.  Black families should have the alternative of moving out of Chicago or Baltimore into smaller towns and the countryside, where race far more easily becomes incidental, not essential, to one's persona.

The Time Is Now:  Abolish the Department of Education.  The Department of Education should disappear, simply, because each university, each business, each person ought to be able to impose whatever rules of justice they wish on all people and institutions they deal with voluntarily. [...] We got along without the Department of Education before 1979 and we can do so again.  The value of a college education will not disappear if the federal government takes a hands-off approach.

How to help Hong Kong and kick-start our economic recovery at the same time.  Republicans and Democrats are largely united in horror at the Chinese Communist Party's crackdown on freedom in Hong Kong, with the semi-autonomous state now facing increasing censorship from the mainland and rampant civil liberties violations.  We don't have to just watch in despair.  We should follow the United Kingdom's lead and open our doors to immigrants and refugees from Hong Kong. [...] The immigration boost wouldn't have to be an influx of unskilled laborers, a controversial prospect among some factions of the Right.  We could make visas "merit-based" — a shift President Trump and other immigration hawks have supported in the past.  Too, we could even restrict the program to skilled doctors, nurses, researchers, and scientists to help us combat COVID-19 and skilled programmers or technology experts to help us challenge the Chinese Communist Party's growing influence over global technology.  Suffice it to say we would be admitting people with the skills and resources to make contributions, not wards of the state or additions to the welfare rolls.

Police Shoot Tuning Suspect, as He Points Revolver at Officer.  A bit before 6 p.m., in downtown San Diego, California, two police officers noticed a man in a red track suit.  He was wanted in connection with a recent robbery.  He had a distinctive face tattoo, which is how the officers identified him so quickly.  In the ensuing confrontation, the suspect flees from the police, and is shot.  Protestors claim he was shot without justification.  The next day, a hundred protestors gather.  They threatened to "burn down the system".  The San Diego police act quickly.  They released video of the shooting from four sources, including two police body cameras. [...] The well done release by the San Diego Police took control of the narrative.  It is worth watching and studying.  It shows how easy it is to justifiably shoot someone in the back in defense of self and others.  Many have said shooting someone in the back is never justified.  That is false.  Real world defensive shootings are seldom static.  They are fast, dynamic, and changing quickly.  Adversaries are often moving, twisting, and turning.

Republicans must hold firm and reject unemployment extension.  After months of being crippled by the coronavirus and the resulting lockdowns, the economy is gradually improving.  Jobs are coming back, and businesses are reopening.  But that progress will hit a brick wall if Democrats get their way and lawmakers recklessly extend enhanced unemployment benefits, which will create a significant disincentive for people to return to work. [...] On July 9, weekly jobless claims slowed to 1.3 million.  While still high by historical standards, the number was lower than expected and well below the stunning 6.6 million claims filed in just one week of April.

Tucker Carlson rips the mask off the Democrat party.  I was working on a post about how the Democrat party is cynically hiding their presidential candidate, Joe "Who's My Wife" Biden, from public view, while using the Wuhan virus, mobs, and cancel culture to silence any opposition to Democrat politicians or their plans for America.  Then, while I was looking for a specific link, I stumbled across Tucker Carlson's monologue about Biden and the debates.  I knew I had nothing to add.  Carlson is getting increasingly angry about what's going on in this country.  The thread of humor that used to underlie his opening monologues is gone.  Instead, he's gone full constitutional warrior, tackling the Democrats' cynicism, and calling out the dual leftist practices of violence and censorship.  Every day, Carlson is better than the day before, and that's certainly true with this monologue.

You Know What's The Ultimate 'Place Of Privilege'? Living In The USA.  When I was about 10 years old, my mom brought me to the United States.  She had come to the U.S. many years before with only about $200 in her pocket when she stepped off the plane.  She made a life for herself, and when she was finally able, she brought me.  She eventually met my dad, and he later adopted me.  It was one of the happiest days of my life.  My mom and dad are amazing people — caring, salt of the earth, hard-working people.  Thrift shops and Goodwill stores were our malls when I was younger, and to this day I feel a sense of excitement when I enter one.  My parents gardened in the backyard, spent their money frugally, and continued to save for part of that American Dream:  their own house.

The Great Fireworks Rebellion of 2020.  If Donald Trump's Independence Eve address at Mount Rushmore was a battle cry for the republic, millions of Americans seemingly joined forces with the president the next evening with their own sort of ammunition: fireworks.  Lockdown orders and "social distancing" decrees canceled official Fourth of July fireworks displays across the country — the latest in a long list of cruelties inflicted on the public to suffocate freedom and joy — but fed-up patriots from sea to shining sea were having none of it.  Families and friends gathered in defiance of government bans on well-attended gatherings to celebrate our nation's founding.  Then, as the sun set, Americans lit up the skies with red, white, and blue bursts of pride in a not-so-subtle rebuke of leftist mobs intent on destroying our nation's past, present, and future.

Kanye West:  Removing God and Prayer from Schools Meant More Drugs, Murders, Suicide.  Removing prayer from schools has led to "more drugs, more murders, more suicide," said rap megastar and fashion mogul Kanye West, who unveiled his unfiltered thoughts on President Trump, God, and politics in an interview with Forbes just days after tweeting about his presidential bid.  "Reinstate in God's state, in God's country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations and you chill the fear and love of everything else, so that was a plan by the Devil to have our kids committing suicide at an all-time high by removing God to have murders in Chicago at an all-time high because the human beings working for the Devil removed God and prayer from the schools," the "Follow God" rapper said.  "That means more drugs, more murders, more suicide."

If Republicans Extend Federal Unemployment Benefits, It's Game, Set, Match For Democrats In November.  In March, a so-called "drafting error" in the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill led to laid-off workers receiving an extra $600 in federal unemployment benefits on top of the state benefits they were already slated to receive.  It was left as-is despite the protests of a few GOP senators, mainly because Schumer & Co. were quick to use the bad optics of seemingly 'taking money away' from people purposefully forced out of work to their advantage.  Also, outdated and technologically inept state unemployment systems weren't equipped to handle individual situations, making a one-size-fits-all approach the only way to make sure people were made whole — and then some.  It's the "and then some," however, that's been the rub for at least the past month or more as America tries to get back on its feet.  Sure, if the government was going to unjustly take away people's livelihoods to fight a virus that mostly kills people in nursing homes (without protecting those nursing homes) and has a death rate only slightly higher than the flu, said government certainly has the responsibility to ensure those people don't go under.  But in giving many of them an actual raise, they created a whole other set of problems that are now playing out in factories, restaurants, and thousands of other employers that typically employ a lower-skilled segment of the U.S. population.

How Mass Protests End.  As several political scientists noted in The Washington Post, "The United States rarely has protests in this combination of size, intensity and frequency; it usually has big protests or sustained protests, but not both."  When will the protests end?  And what will it mean when they do?  Although all waves of mass protest are different, they tend to follow a similar course.  Demonstrators can't stay in the streets forever.  When they relent, though, that doesn't mean they have stopped caring — or that the movement is over.  After protests die down, their goals and ideas can survive as the ongoing work of organizing continues.

As the crisis deepens, Q says rise or die.  Americans celebrated Independence Day this year in the most perilous state since the Civil War, uncertain if our divided house can still stand.  But beneath the terrifying screams of violence, riots, and political hysteria, a still, small voice could be heard:  the unprecedented voice of Q.  Q's growing community of followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information.  Q, they believe, is a new weapon in the game of information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to communicate directly with the public.

Freedom and Independence are Inextricably Linked.  While asserting national independence 244 years ago, the signers of the Declaration understood the freedoms they sought belonged to individuals and that government secured — not granted — those rights.  The Founders understood that self-governance as a nation begins and ends with self-governance by the individual.  We could not have one without the other.  If we turn over responsibility for our lives, families, and communities to government our dependence expands and our liberty contracts.  It is as inescapable as the natural law of gravity.  The Founders' notion of freedom was inextricably linked to personal independence, described as the absence of interference into the daily life and destiny of individuals with the caveat that to preserve and protect freedom, individuals accept some inevitable interaction with government so long as it is minimized to the greatest extent practicable.  Consequently, the most crucial of those rights would be articulated in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.  First among these are the foundational freedoms of religious liberty and the right of conscience.

America's Sovereignty Is Teetering on a Precipice.  Two hundred and forty-four years after the 13 British colonies in North America declared their independence and became a sovereign nation, America is poised to collapse from within.  Her imminent demise will not come from foreign troops quartered on her soil.  It will come from Marxists and anarchists who use racial grievance and the cries of the oppressed to dismantle America's institutions and defenses.  Insurrection labeled as "peaceful protest" is the battering ram weakening our nation's foundations.  Using the voices of the oppressed and deceived masses, and their bodies and legitimate grievances as shields, is part of a deliberate plan to bring about a new order guaranteed to be worse than what exists now.

Happy July 4: Tyranny Of The Woke Mob Might Be Worse Than Suffering Under British Rule.  When we celebrate Independence Day, we rejoice over the freedom won from the English crown.  But there's a new master gaining power in America.  We need to shrug it off before it takes over.  Because we're marking the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, it would be instructive to see where we are today by comparing a few passages from our founding document with current events.

Cool Hand Trump.  As the president takes heat from Chicken Littles who whine about acting presidential, President Trump remains coolly presidential in handling two nation-paralyzing events simultaneously.  In both cases, the president gave Democrats plenty of rope and watched them hang themselves. [...] Democrats thought their lockdowns had wrecked his MAGA economy, which they believed would lead to a landslide for Doctor Demented and the end of capitalism.  Instead, President Trump is making America great again — again.  Voters notice.  Covid 19 so failed Democrats that they unleashed Antifa to turn cities aflame in the summertime.  How is that working for them?  Seattle's Karen mayor, Jenny Durkan, stuck her tongue out at the president and turned six blocks of her city over to these thugs.  Three weeks later, she had police shut it down after the thugs went to Her House.  How dare they?

5 Ways You Can Fight Back In The Cultural Civil War.  [#2] Shift your spending away from corporations that hate you, like Amazon.  If you're a conservative, understand that Amazon hates you (but loves communist China).  Also understand that you don't have to buy everything on Amazon.  That new can opener or garden hose you so desperately need?  You can order pretty much whatever you need from Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, and so on.  Many of these places will even deliver to your doorstep.  Will you pay a little more for it?  Maybe.  Will it come in three or four days instead of tomorrow?  Yes.  But if you can't bear that miniscule inconvenience for the sake of your principles, then you don't deserve America.

Why Biden's Lead Will Evaporate.  Based on recently released documents, the once-rumored 'Obamagate' conspiracy is now known.  This plot involved people at the highest levels of government.  Also known is that the goal was to destroy Donald Trump's presidency.  Attorney General William Barr and Congressman Devin Nunes have been dropping hints that the seemingly endless investigations are about to come to a head.  What is unknown is what the response will be.  These crimes, if they go unpunished will firmly place the deep state in control of our fate.  Both the Democrats and the anti-Trumpers are fine with that scenario.  Americans are not.  If AG Barr actually does what is right, justice will be served:  Advantage Trump.

They are trying to start a war.  When Corona fails again, they will try to start a war with Russia.  The other day, the New York Times was subtly and not so subtly promoting the claim that President Trump was standing callously by and coddling Russia's Vladimir Putin even as Putin was busily offering the Taliban bounties for the bodies of dead U.S. servicemen.  It was the old "Trump is a Russian agent" canard whipped out in a new form. [...] President Trump denied it.  His acting director of National Intelligence at the time, Richard Grenell, denied it vehemently. [...] And for what it's worth, even the Russians denied it.  But the Times pressed on with the claim and even did some additional reporting to claim that it had proof. [...] Fortunately, there was CBS's Catherine Herridge, who batted back at the press at its own game — and found some pretty exculpatory backing for the Trump administration's statements.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams:  Republicans will be hunted if Biden is elected.  Comic strip creator Scott Adams said there's a "good chance" Republicans will be killed if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected.  Adams, who created Dilbert in 1989, sent out tweets Wednesday claiming conservatives would be targeted with violence should the presumptive Democratic nominee win the 2020 election.  "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year," Adams warned in a tweet.  "Police will stand down.  Republicans will be hunted," he added.  Police will stand down.  [Tweets]  After some social media users questioned his claim, Adams said he spoke with a woman who told him she was fired from her job because her colleagues suspected she supported President Trump.  "Just interviewed a woman who was fired for suspicion of liking President Trump.  Suspicion.  Fired," Adams wrote.

Riots to Distract from Obamagate?  In the 1962 musical-comedy, The Music Man, grifter Harold Hill cons an entire Iowa town by whipping up a false crisis (the moral decline of its young men) and championing a false solution (a boy's marching band). He then bilks the town of money for instruments and uniforms while only pretending to follow through with his plan. [...] Today in America, a dark and dystopian version of this theme is unfolding before our eyes.  The Iowa town is all of America, Harold Hill is Obama and the Democrats, the false crisis is the anomalous death of George Floyd, the false solution is 'defunding the police' (an uber-provocative diversion they know is unwinnable), the Mayor is President Trump, and the Town Council/Barbershop Quartet is the conservative movement, including especially conservative media and pundits tasked with exposing Obamagate to the public.  [Video clip]

The Sneaky Covid War on Cash.  We have seen the death of much of the world's funny money in just the last 40 years.  For example, in Peru, one million Intis would buy a modest home in 1985; five years later it would not buy a tube of toothpaste.  Brazil had so many new banknotes they ran out of heroes to print on them.  In Vietnam in the 1980's, factories had to hire trucks to carry the bags of dongs to pay the Tet (New Year) workers' bonuses.  In 1997 in Zaire, it took a brick-sized bundle of 500,000 notes of the local currency to pay for a meal — no one bothered to count them.  On the Yugoslav border in 1989, tourists foolish enough to change "hard" currency for Yugoslav dinars got 14 cubic metres of dinars.  "Dinars can no longer be measured in millions or billions, but only in cubic metres".  It had become a cubic currency.  These grim records were eclipsed in November 2008, when Zimbabwe suffered inflation of 98% PER DAY.

Disarming Elmer Fudd Shows Folly of Hollywood.  The streaming service HBO Max is launching a reboot of the classic children's cartoon Looney Tunes.  In doing so they've caved to antigun cancel culture with two of the cartoon's lovable losers.  When the perpetually-failing hunter Elmer Fudd heads out to hunt Bugs Bunny, he'll no longer carry his trusty shotgun.  Instead, show writers decided he'll need to bump off Bugs with a Grim Reaper-style scythe.  Gunslinger Yosemite Sam's two revolvers were also axed.  Rather than using Fudd and Sam to weave in early firearm safety education for kids, the cartoon's gun ban logic itself is a caricature.

The Room Where It Happens, Indeed.  As the House readied its vote to make a new state out of the District of Columbia, the Speaker went before the press to dilate on injustice of what has obtained for the past 230 years.  Mrs. Pelosi called the District "an affront to our democracy."  She noted that its residents pay taxes, serve in the military, and contribute to the "economic vitality" of America but lack for representation.  "How could it be?  Whose idea was that?"  It turns out that we know exactly whose idea it was.  That's because it was hatched at the very dinner party that, among other things, is now being immortalized anew in the Broadway blockbuster "Hamilton."  The dinner took place in 1790 at New York.  It was no cabal of counter-revolutionary cads.  The three persons in the room where it happened were Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.

The Old America Is Dead.  Where Do We Go From Here?  Patriotic Americans understand Muley.  Our people, our culture, our history, everything we hold dear, is under relentless attack by the Main Stream Media, politicians, "activists," and kritarchs in the courts, aided and abetted by enemies within, often our own kith and kin, who have internalized the blood-libel Leftist narrative of an irredeemably "racist" America that must be razed to the ground.  "If you know your enemy," wrote Sun Tzu, "and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."  Our enemy, in this case is the globalist Blob and its militant would-be Che Guevaras and LARPing Leninists, the MSM, the bureaucracy, the courts, the big corporations, and the education establishment.  Yet, for the most part, until recently, the Blob has not confronted the Historic American Nation head-on.  The Blob has been patient, killing us by the death of a thousand cuts, taking ground steadily through subversion, using propaganda and misinformation, censorship via Tech Totalitarians, and the slow encroachment of what the late Sam Francis called "anarcho-tyranny," with mass immigration ("the Great Replacement") as its weapon of mass destruction.  The Blob is amorphous, a slippery, slimy thing that probes and gropes its way into whatever social-economic-political cracks it can exploit, eventually englfing its prey like quicksand.  It is also using "hybrid warfare" tactics that have been used before but have gelled with the expansion of mass communications and can quickly conjure up "flash mobs" and distribute "fake news."

Since we're canceling people for racism, can we talk about Charles Darwin?  [Scroll down]  I do think it's time for the left's own rules to be applied to one of their most cherished and beloved heroes.  Even by the most generous of measures, the intellectual and philosophical heritage of Charles Darwin is one of the most hideously racist legacies one can fathom.  And yet, his inherently racist dogma is not only presented in public schools across America, it is state and federal policy that every student in America demonstrate proficiency in understanding and applying his dangerous ideology.  Set aside the colonialist rage against the Spanish conquistadors just long enough to recognize that it was Charles Darwin himself who wrote in his diary after encountering the "savages" in Tierra del Fuego, "one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures."

Is This the Stupidest Time in America's History?  We have real problems in America right now.  We need to solve them with rational discourse, serious conversations, and genuine engagement with each other.  We need to work together.  Instead, it's as though decades of lousy education, a terrible media, and activists who favor retweets over real improvements have all colluded to create the perfect storm of stupidity.  It's a weird time.  We've all been locked up and cooped up.  We're worried about the long-term effects of a pandemic.  Many Americans are out of work and/or facing the end of their small businesses.  We're horrified by the fact that a cop killed a man who wasn't resisting arrest, while three other cops watched as the man said he couldn't breathe.  It's not surprising emotions are high.  But we cannot meet this moment with just our passions.  We have to be serious here.

Why Parler [is bad], and why Gab is superior.  I hate social media, but I've had accounts on Gab, Parler, and Twitter for about a year, so I've used them enough to get a feel for the usability and member engagement.  I've been in the software development world in various capacities for almost thirty years, so I have some opinions on how things work in this space and what's possible.  At this point, sadly, I think Parler is a bad joke.
  •   Parler's app is vulnerable to Apple and Google
  •   Parler is vulnerable to being delisted by their name registrar
  •   Parler's UI is horrible (especially for those used to Twitter)
  •   Parler has no API (that I've found)
  •   Parler is a closed system (your posts aren't visible to non-members)
  •   Parler has bait-and-switched users with their "free speech" spiel
  •   Parler is vulnerable to blacklisting by payment platforms
  •   Parler is vulnerable to being deplatformed by their hosting provider
  •   Parler requires personal info, which can be compromised or sold
  •   Gab has faced and solved all of these issues

Reality Is Going To The Polls.  Yes, blue cities are being wrecked, but in the end, Reality will get it's vote and it's the only vote that counts.  That vote will come in stages.  Stage 1 is where the cops leave black neighborhoods.  Stage 2 is where those neighborhoods turn into abbatoirs while the news media ignores them because rrrrrrrrrrracism!**  Stage 3 is where it gets so bad that no one can ignore it.  Stage 4 is where we realize that the problem wasn't racism after all, it was the destruction of the family.  Maybe we get to Stage 4, maybe we stop at Stage 3 and come to a different conclusion.  Either way, it's going to get harder and harder to sell the fake noose stories as we watch the black bodies pile up in black neighborhoods at the hands of black criminals.

A Black Lives Matter Reading List for Rich, White Liberals.  I lived under Soviet Communism in my parents' homelands of Poland and Czechoslovakia.  I stood in line for lard and I met people who had been tortured for thoughtcrimes.  I've worked in Nepal and the Central African Republic, two of the world's poorest nations.  I currently live in Paterson, a majority-minority city, where the median income is $34,000.  To me, America, with all its flaws, and my life, with all its limitations, are blessed.

Crush Your Enemies.  [Scroll down]  In the end, the upcoming election is not about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden.  The 2020 version of Biden is plainly afflicted by severe, paralyzing dementia, but even in his so-called "prime," he had no particular vision or core convictions.  This is an election either for Trump or against Trump.  Biden's presence is irrelevant.  The roughly 43% of the solid for-Trump vote and the approximately 45% of the always-anti-Trump vote are already baked into the election.  The election will turn on that casually-attentive, somewhat-persuadable 12%.  The Republicans will make their usual mistake of thinking that the merits of the issues — the facts on the ground, like how far back the economy/employment has come by November and whether or not the racial tension has smoothed out a bit — will carry the day.

Sowing the Sixties Winds, Reaping Today's Whirlwind.  [Scroll down]  History now becomes the systematic demonization of our ancestors for their flawed humanity and failure to create an impossible utopia.  The West now is notable only for its crimes against that idealism, while its unique transcendence of those crimes, its recognition that certain behaviors and institutions are crimes, is forgotten.  For example, slavery, the historical evil that so exercises the "woke" protestors and rioters, is an historically unexceptional, universal institution.  In the past it was no more problematic than the domestication of animals.  But the rejection of slavery happened only in the West, from the 4th century BC Greek rhetorician Alcidamas, who said "The god gave freedom to all men, and nature made no man a slave"; to the Christian American and British abolitionists of the early 19th century, who finally brought about the end of slavery in the West.  But because the left sees only the West's flaws, today we are watching the violent assault on public monuments to people from the past, even statues of Lincoln, who ended slavery in the U.S.  In the Sixties and Seventies left-wing terrorists bombed military recruiting offices and university labs that allegedly served the "military-industrial complex."

The Left Craps Out.  There are plenty of leftists swaggering these days.  Cities have blazed, municipal and state governments have been humiliated, police forces are cowering, mighty corporations are trampling each other to apologize for things they had absolutely nothing to do with.  At first glance, this appears to be the left's moment in the sun, something they've looked forward to for many years, if not generations.  Throughout the 20th century, the left's problem with the United States was the lack of a proletariat to lead against the oppressors.  The American working class was the farthest thing in the world from an "oppressed" — they lived better than all but the ruling classes in most societies.  What did they have to revolt against?

America's Faithful Are Better Prepared for the Coming Anti-Government Rage.  Future historians looking back on the COVID-19 epidemic will likely record two U.S. domestic crises, one physical and the other psychological.  The first we already know: the spread of a potentially lethal virus forcing a countrywide shutdown in order to slow the rate of infection.  The second, soon to be painfully obvious, will stem from the sharp rise in government debt needed to support struggling businesses and unemployed workers during the shutdown. $3.8 trillion in 2020 alone, and more than $2.1 trillion in 2021.  Had Washington politicians listened to the advice of knowledgeable commentators and used the economic recovery of the earlier decade to prudently build a financial cushion, this dramatic increase would not by itself create a financial emergency.  But from 2010 to 2020, the federal government averaged deficits of more than $1 trillion per year, more than doubling its liabilities to $22 trillion.  So when the new borrowing is added on, the resulting deficit will be equal to the entire national economy (GDP), the level where any country's creditworthiness is called into question.

Venezuelan woman begs Americans to wake up:  This is how it starts.  Cubans warned us, we didn't think it could happen to us.  With entitled members of pampered Gen-Z actively engaged in the cultural cleansing of the United States, looking back on history through today's hard left lens, leave it to someone who has experienced this before to put things into perspective.  A woman who said she is from Venezuela posted a video amid the insanity gripping American streets, where even statutes of Union generals who led the fight to free the slaves isn't safe.  "Why do I even worry about some silly little statue coming down?  Or some silly little street names changing?  Why do I even care?" she asked.  "It's because the last time I didn't care," the woman then said, answering her own question.  "The last time, I didn't care about this as a teenager — I have already lived through these things when I was living in Venezuela."  She then detailed the changes she witnessed as a teen.

The Elites Are Revolting.  What you see out there is our alleged betters struggling mightily to hold onto the power that we Normal people dared to wrest away from them in 2016.  One component of their campaign is the burning and looting information operation conducted by black-clad pawns.  The other component is the soft power corporate/media/cultural conspiracy to silence dissent and enforce fearful conformity to their narrative.  Usually, a revolution is conducted by the peasants to throw off a tyrannical ruling class.  Here, the ruling class is waging a political and cultural war to retake and then tighten its grip on the masses.  They are no longer even pretending to seek the consent of the governed.  And once they retake power, that's it — they will never give up power again.

Republicans Must Understand:  We Are at War.  The Republicans have the presidency, the Senate, and the independent media — which is certainly better than nothing.  The Democrats have the House of Representatives...and the mainstream media, academia, education, Hollywood, medicine, and a weird weaponized "science" (that really drives the rational and logical people insane).  In the past, institutions such as the military, mainstream churches, big business, and professional sports may have leaned toward the Republican side.  These, however, have been outright neutralized or are in the process of being assimilated into the opposing side.  In the case of big business, it is firmly entrenched in the opposing side at this point.

Keep the Children at Home.  [Scroll down]  I make a modest proposal:  that it should be against the law for children under the age of 15 (say) to attend political demonstrations or rallies, and that disobedience to this law should be classified as child abuse.

The City that Really Did Abolish the Police.  As a movement grows in American cities and suburbs to overhaul police departments and confront their long records of racially unjust, violent enforcement, Camden is one rare — and complicated — success story, a city that really did manage to overhaul its police force and change how it operated.  And it took a move as radical and controversial as what some activists are calling for today:  Camden really did abolish its police department.  And then the city set about rebuilding the police force with an entirely new one under county control, using the opportunity to increase the number of cops on the streets and push through a number of now-heralded progressive police reforms.  And with time, the changes started to stick in a department that just years earlier seemed unfixable.

There's a reason racial tension is rising in America - it's by design.  If you've been paying attention recently, and you probably have, you've likely sensed that something profound is happening to this country right now, something that could transform what America is.  You can feel it happening. [...] Forty years ago, this was a middle-class country and as a result, America had strongly egalitarian values.  Pretty much everyone used commercial airports and ate at McDonald's.  Do you remember that?  People talked without irony about their rights as citizens and taxpayers.  You couldn't pay extra to jump to the head of the line at Disney World.  The idea that someone like Jeffrey Epstein could beat a sex charge because he was rich would have shocked us then.  We would have demanded an investigation into just how Jeffrey Epstein died.  Why?  Because Americans hated corruption.  They saw corruption as an offense against equality.  That was 40 years ago.  Things were moving in the opposite direction ever since.  We now accept, uncritically, the claim that some people deserve better treatment based on how they were born, and some deserve worse.

When Your Private Dinner Conversation Becomes Your Waiter's Facebook Post.  When you're out having drinks with friends, are your personal conversations about politics private?  Should they be?  According to at least one New England restaurant, the answer is no.

Mass Police Resignations Ensure Societal Chaos.  [Scroll down]  Seven police officers have resigned from the Minneapolis police force due to lack of support from city leaders.  The Star Tribune characterizes this as an "unusually large exodus," but one suspects it is only the beginning.  Retired Minneapolis police officer and use-of-force expert Mylan Masson, explains why:  "They don't feel appreciated.  Everybody hates the police right now.  I mean everybody."  Not everybody.  Millions of decent Americans of every ethnicity and political persuasion are appalled by those who would destroy the nation while calling that destruction "social justice."  They are disgusted as they watch cities get burned and looted and hear such orchestrated mayhem referred to as "peaceful protests."  Moreover, they know those orchestrating the divisiveness are a contemptible combination of racial arsonists, disaffected and indoctrinated youths with bleak futures, useful idiots who assume the color of their skin automatically makes them "guilty" and "privileged," and a cadre of elitist accomplices, organizers and/or cheerleaders with genuine wealth, power, and privilege — including private security forces and gated neighborhoods — who think being "down with the cause" has bought them absolution.

You can't order police officers to die for your politics.  Now that the Senate GOP has begun the process of rolling out their own version of a "police reform" bill, predictable partisan fights are already breaking out.  One of the major bones of contention is the idea that the bill would "discourage" the use of chokeholds by the cops during confrontations with non-compliant, disruptive or violent suspects.  As with some other provisions, this doesn't go far enough for the liberals and Democrats who are aiming to either defund or abolish the police, but will settle for as much as they can get in the meantime.  They want the maneuver to be forbidden entirely with punishment meted out to any cops who violate the prohibition. [...] While this certainly shouldn't be mandated from the federal level, we're talking about things that must be handled with extreme care even at the state and local levels.  The idea that anyone can simply grab a pen and paper and legislate how things will play out during a tense encounter between the police and a criminal suspect is laughable.  Or at least it would be laughable if there were anything funny about such a serious subject.

TUCKER: Why is Senator Ted Cruz Fundraising for a Cheap Labor Senator?  Last week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz sent out a fundraising email calling on people to make contributions to Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan. [...] This is a strange development when considering that Cruz signed on to a letter along with Senators Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, calling for the suspension of work visas for a year until employment levels reached normal rates.  Indeed, Cruz's actions appear to be incoherent.  His signature on that letter is commendable, but there needs to be more consistency in his actions.  Namely, he needs to be propping up more candidates who actually believe in immigration restriction such as Kris Kobach or forming stronger alliances with the likes of Josh Hawley.  Trying to play nice with everyone will not make patriotic immigration reform a reality.

How to Fight the Woke...and Win.  [#4] Never apologize, and never quit.  The Woke view an apology as a confession, not as a chance at reconciliation.  As such, never apologize.  You will only be made to grovel further or surrender completely.  At the same time, never quit.  That is what your spineless employer will want you to do to save him the trouble of firing you.  Don't do it.  Make them fire you, then move to Point 5.  [#5] Use lawfare.  If you have the means, then use lawfare against the Woke at any and every opportunity (which is one reason why electing President Trump and getting good judges is important).  For instance, if your employer fires you to appease the Woke mob, then make him pay for it.  Don't go quietly.  Instead, hit him with the hardest legal counterpunch that you can.  It won't always work, but it will sometimes, and that matters. [...] [#7] Starve the Woke while feeding your allies.  Stop giving money or time to any Woke-supporting group.  Stop supporting Woke universities or businesses.  Stop watching Netflix and the NFL.  Just stop.  Starve them to the greatest extent possible.

What the wind blew away.  Really, do we have to go over this whole business with Gone with the Wind once again?  Since 1961, the United States has gone through the civil rights era and all that came afterward.  Does anyone really think we're going to rewatch or reread this classic tale of endurance and resilience, of a woman wasting years of her life pining over a man who was wrong for her when the right one was always right there beside her, and decide that the Old South, of which we see just a little before it gets blown up completely, really had something great going on in the plantation system?  Certainly, none of the four characters who speak for the author — Scarlett and Melanie, Ashley and Rhett — ever say anything other than that the war itself was a blunder of historic proportions. [...] In short, if you want a defense of war or the states that began it, Gone with the Wind is not it.  Slavery is in the book, as in slaves and then freed slaves.  But they, like everyone else, are secondary to the theme of the opus, which is that the fittest survive.

Greg Gutfeld compares similar deaths of George Floyd and Tony Timpa — one black, one white.  Fox News host Greg Gutfeld called out the media for fueling the divisive narrative behind the latest police controversies and suggested it's time to "take the foot off the race pedal."  The author and co-host of "The Five" contended that the liberal media needs to "stop pushing inflammatory uninformed opinions" during a monologue on the show Monday.

The 'Woke' Left's War on American History.  The Army now says it is open to renaming bases that have been named for Confederate generals, and it is time to draw the line.  The electorate should support President Trump's decision to veto this idea right out of the starting gate. [...] No civilized person defends, justifies, or glorifies slavery as practiced in the antebellum South along with the Union states of Delaware, West Virginia, and Maryland — unless we count Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who recently tried to show their solidarity with black Americans by wearing the kente cloth favored by Ashanti slave traders who sold other Africans to Europeans during the 19th century.

This is from a left-wing web site, presented here for what it's worth:
Removing a U.S. President Without an Election.  Five times in the last ninety years, elements of the U.S. power structure have tried to oust a sitting president without an election.  The efforts were aimed at Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.  Two attempts succeeded and three failed. [...] By the time President Kennedy took office in 1961, the military budget had grown twenty times larger in real dollars than in 1933.  The money was paying for a military-industrial complex, including the Pentagon, weapons manufacturers, State Department, CIA, FBI, NSA, Atomic Energy Commission, NASA, Members of Congress, think tanks, universities, and a battalion of friendly reporters.  The sprawling power system had become strong enough to perpetuate itself and to remove a president if necessary.

The Floyd Riots Mark a Century of Communist Agitation.  [Scroll down]  In George Floyd, our neo-communists found their own Sacco and Vanzetti, but much better.  As a black American, his death had much more frightening moral power.  It was caught on camera.  The offending officer was white.  In 2020, these were all essential variables.  Had any of three other officers at the scene — two Asians and a black American — been the one kneeling on Floyd's neck, the story would never have left the twin cities.

The dangers of bowing to the mob and defunding the police.  [Scroll down]  Regardless, our politicians are so worried about this fake army, that they are willing to say and do anything to appease the angry mobs even if it is at the ultimate detriment of the cities and country that we all share.  This is not a new phenomenon, but with the advent of social media and the amplification of Twitter activists, we've allowed cancel-culture to scare politicians, corporations, and individuals into bowing to the mob, even if it means there will be poorly thought-out political policies enacted as a result.  When a leader admits defeat out of appeasement, or gives the mob the apology they are chanting for out of fear, it will never be enough and they will eventually come for your head.  Which is why we need leaders with a strong moral compass, willing to stand up for rational thought with a true sense of patriotism for America.  Elected officials taking up seats for personal gain or those that are propped up by special interest groups don't have the driving force in their hearts to prevent them crumbling before the pressure.

Here's Why Lindsey Graham's Trump-Russia Corruption Investigation Is a Joke.  Sen. Lindsey Graham has always talked a big game.  When he's not praising Joe Biden or treating Robert Mueller like a national hero, he makes his way to Fox News from time to time to rattle the saber over FBI and DOJ corruption.  That's mostly lead to nowhere, as we now stand less than five months from a national election with nothing accomplished and not a single major witness facing a subpoena.  Now, though, he's finally pledging to do what he pledged to do over a year ago.  This past week, his committee passed a resolution allowing the subpoenaing of various Obama era officials involved in Trump-Russia investigation corruption.  Or is he going after FISA abuse?  Or the unsupported appointment of Robert Mueller?  Or the Michael Flynn abuse?  Who knows at this point.

Wokism's Cult Following.  Liberty is privilege.  It's a myth that everyone desires freedom; many aspire simply to be trusties.  But what of those who don't feel 'safe' in that safe space?  They could be a problem, but will soon be shown the error of their ways through reprogramming and soon be groveling on the ground, even washing the feet of demonstration organizers, grateful that they no longer trigger anyone.  Donating large sums of money to obtain forgiveness for social sins will be a standard form of obtaining absolution.  These features so strikingly resemble religious rituals that the Woke movement has been accused of being a cult.

Politics as Religion After George Floyd.  This Isn't an Orwellian Novel.  This Is Your Country.  What are you really seeing as Americans kneel, hands raised in secular prayer, repeating political creeds on the TV news?  And that secular foot-washing?  You're witness to neo-Marxist appropriation of Christian symbolism, in the aftermath of the horrifying Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.  And now, the priests of the secularist left separate the biblical sheep from the goats on the basis of skin color. [...] In the biblical parable of the sheep and the goats, the sheep went to heaven, the goats were sent to hell.  But in the current political universe, whites must atone for the sins of white racism even if they're not racists, even if their families arrived here only yesterday.  And even the mere suggestion this might be unfair, the slightest hint of resistance, can trigger accusations that could ruin careers, deny entrance to the professions, and drive nuance from the public square.  And it is all by design.

Free Citizens Do Not Kneel.  In the last couple of weeks we have witnessed people, most of them white, kneeling before black protestors and activists as a supposed gesture of repentance for their crimes of "white privilege" and tolerating "systemic racism."  The kneeling penitents include not just ordinary people, but police officers, National Guardsmen, and, in a shocking self-debasement of the world's greatest democratic republic, a gaggle of House Representatives adorned with "culturally appropriated" African kente cloth scarves.  White progressive racial masochism is nothing new; Tom Wolfe skewered it brilliantly nearly a half century ago in essays like "Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers."  But the current manifestation is more significant and dangerous.  It has taken place amidst violent widespread rioting and looting and assaults, and so these acts of kneeling are a form of tribute exacted by the sheer power of destruction wrought by the rioters and their "peaceful" abettors.  As such, they undermine the very foundation of citizen self-rule and political freedom[.]

Devolution to Revolution:  An Already Demoralized U.S. is Now Being Destabilized.  The two destabilizing events recently occurring back-to-back, the response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, and the George Floyd rioting, illustrate well how America is now institutionally incapable of making decisions in her own best interests.  That is, the overreaction to the disease and under-reaction to the rioting reflect a country long demoralized.  Moreover, if that's not troubling enough, know that this is a state of being that usually leads to tyranny.  We'd had pandemics before — ones causing more death, especially when adjusted for population — but we'd never before embraced lockdowns, a cure worse than the disease.  But at least the disease was a relative unknown; riots are not.  People the world over know how to deal with riots, and this isn't by letting them metastasize so thugs can run wild, hurt the innocent and destroy the nation.  Yet our "leaders" fiddled while the country burned, motivated by moral confusion and weakness, and some, most certainly, by ulterior motives.

The Editor says...
The so-called pandemic and the riots are connected:  Both are mechanisms to make Donald Trump look bad and diminish his prospects for re-election.  During the coronavirus panic, prisoners were released due to concerns about their safety — not ours, of course.  With lots of violent criminals on the streets, what happened next?  Rioting!  Who would participate in a riot?  Those who are most violently anti-Trump, and those who were already violent criminals and have nothing to lose by going back to prison!

What If Police Officers Go on Strike?  [Scroll down]  The lesson here is that police are starting to respond to these betrayals in more assertive ways.  The Ferguson Effect reflected the trend of police officers to be less proactive on the job, with the predictable spike in violent crime resulting from a lessened police presence.  City leaders apparently haven't gotten the message, so mass resignations like these are the next logical step.  But this mass resignation was only from the Emergency Response team.  Those 57 officers still work as Buffalo police — which raises the question as to what the next step might be if things still don't improve for them.  What if police officers go on strike?  Yes, there are strict rules in police unions forbidding this.  But...what if?  The City of Buffalo employs over 700 police officers.  If all of them went on strike tomorrow, does Mayor Brown have another contingency plan?  Theoretically, if he posted job openings for 700 new officers the following day, it would take months, even years, to vet, hire, train, and deploy them.  By that point in Buffalo's experiment in societal entropy, who would even want the job?

Disney Fans Say Splash Mountain Should Be Re-Themed Because of Ties to Racism.  Splash Mountain, one of Disney's most beloved rides at Walt Disney World in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland, and at Disneyland in California, is being criticized by social media users and Change.org supporters who say the ride's racial overtones need to be "re-themed."  The ride is based on the 1946 Disney film Song of the South, featuring characters such as Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, and Brer Fox, and has been widely criticized for its depiction of blacks and romanticized view of the post-Civil War South.

The Editor says...
Perhaps the Splash Mountain ride could be redesigned to include a central theme of perpetual victimhood, with an undercurrent of senseless Antifa violence, culminated by a lecture delivered by Hillary Clinton.  That sounds like so much fun!

Communism Is Reborn with a New Name in America.  Do some people really think that the impeachment, the corona-gulag, and the pogroms all occurred in America one after another in a completely random pattern of events?  Why did pre-planned and synchronized riots and looting suddenly arise?  Because the adventure with the coronavirus hysteria failed.  Why did the coronavirus hysteria suddenly lead to a corona-gulag being created?  Because the impeachment failed.  Why did impeachment suddenly arise?  Because "Russiagate" (or, rather, Obamagate) failed.  Why did "Russiagate" arise?  Because leftism was defeated in the 2016 elections.

Know Your Enemy:  China.  If you want to understand why China will attack us, the place to start is the old U.S. Department of War film, Know Your Enemy:  Japan, made the last time we were attacked by a major Asian power that was transitioning from its feudal past.  The Japanese in WWII were driven by their creation myth which says that they were founded by an emperor called Jimmu in 660 B.C. Jimmu had a philosophy called Hakko Ichiu which means that "let us extend the capitol and cover the eight corners of the world under one roof." [...] The Chinese version of Hakko Ichiu is called Tianxia under which China gets to rule the rest of the world.  It has nothing to do with communism.

Be Courageous And Stand Firm, America — We Do Not Kneel.  The kneeling phenomenon demanded by the radical left in the wake of George Floyd's death — and embraced by those guilted into submission — creates a two-tiered social stratification of "kneelers" and "those who refuse to bend the knee" that's wholly un-American.  Mobs resulting from years of citizens saturated in "critical race theory" and grievance studies have pressured far too many into believing they bear guilt for the past sins of others.  Now they kneel in fealty to that false reality or are exiled from society.  Unfortunately, it's also moved beyond just kneeling.

More Than Ever, It's Time to Unleash the Power of 'No'.  For way too long, too many conservatives and other normal people have failed to deploy our most potent weapon in the defense of free thought and expression — the utter refusal to go along with the demands of the carnivorous left.  As has been said before by me and others, we need to introduce these spoiled brats to the concept of "no."  This is a critical moment, and how we react now will determine if our future is citizenship or serfdom. [...] The rioting was really an information operation, and a failed one.  There were two big problems for the furious rioters.  One was that normal people saw no connection between protesting the treatment of George Floyd and looting big screens from the local Target, except that both disgusted them.  The second issue was the inability to identify a specific enemy.  Who exactly was the person supporting the killing of George Floyd?  What was the name of the person who said, "Yeah, that was a good thing"?

How Reliable Are Lottery Revenues?  Back in 2017, New Jersey decided to make the state lottery an "asset" for the pension plans.  As noted in yesterday's post, it looks like the NJ Lottery took a hit, just as New Jersey needs more money for the pensions.  So let me revisit my post on state lottery revenues from 2017.  I'm heavily editing from the original [skipping a data quality discussion], and then adding some new data to see if my conclusions are any different now.

Counterfeit Money Is The Motive Behind Gangland's George Floyd Arson And Looting Riots.  [Scroll down]  George Floyd was in bad health due to his drug addictions.  He knew his condition and all he was expected to do was agree to turn over a list of names involved in distribution of fake money.  Most grown men can handle being wrestled down to the pavement.  The four police officers had no reason to kill him but to the contrary needed to keep him alive as a witness in the counterfeit racket.  Reading him his rights and calling in a lawyer makes for good legal theory by the book, but in reality tough methods are the only way to bust large-scale criminal operations.  If Floyd has one iota of respect for his society, he would have confessed the names of his criminal associates preying on the poorer communities of Minnesota, and he'd be alive today under a witness protection program.  The police are not sadists who enjoy violence but must be tough to break the code of silence enforced by murderous gangsters.  It's a civil war and getting worse due to liberal judges and wide-open immigration for foreign thugs.

The Editor says...
Even if all that is true, George Floyd didn't deserve to be killed in the street, negligently or otherwise.

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Hold officers accountable who use excessive force, but there's no evidence of widespread racial bias.  Political commentator and attorney Heather Mac Donald posted an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week that argues police should be held accountable when they use excessive force, but evidence of "widespread racial bias" by police doesn't exist.  "However sickening the video of Floyd's arrest, it isn't representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians," Mac Donald wrote in her piece titled "The Myth of Systemic Police Racism."  Mac Donald continues, "A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing.  Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions."

Arizona Dem nominee Mark Kelly's questionable business dealing and China ties.  [Democrat Mark] Kelly is an ex-Navy combat pilot, astronaut and husband of former Democrat congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured during a 2011 Tucson shooting.  Giffords became somewhat of a celebrity and folk hero following the shooting.  Her status appears to have bestowed a halo effect of sorts around Kelly, which may account for his 49-40% lead in the most recent Real Clear Politics poll average, though recent history — and especially the 2016 Presidential election — has demonstrated that polling is not always an accurate predictor, and a lot can change with five months still remaining till the election.  President Trump's November performance in Arizona is also likely to weigh heavily on the battle for this Senate seat.  Notably, Mark Kelly also enjoys a substantial fundraising margin over incumbent McSally, having raised more than $31 million in direct campaign dollars to her $18 million through March 31, 2020.

Protests, Riots, Death By Cop:  Have We Learned Nothing?  man died tragically after being held in a savage knee-to-neck hold by a policeman.  What was the officer thinking?  Protests have turned to riots in several of our big cities.  Why does this happen?  History is a teacher but we ignore its lessons.  The "we" above, however, is more of a "they."  In a nation of about 330 million, those who refuse to learn number only a few thousand:  the few law enforcement officers who abuse rather than protect and serve; the elected officials who don't police the police nor police the riotous, and even tacitly encourage violence; and the rioters themselves who on some instances refuse to govern their own emotions and in others plan to sow societal disorder.

Everyone Is Sure Biden Is Toast.  I have yet to meet a conservative who thinks Trump is going to lose. [...] Of course, I want him to win, because I love America, but I get edgy when everyone agrees on something. [...] It's going to be close simply because neo-commies dominate most big states.  The pandemic panic has wrecked the economy and we could have a slow recovery — the Dems will do whatever they can to make that happen.  Then there's the fraud factor — despite all the smartest, brightest, best people telling us that there's no such thing as election fraud, there's such thing as election fraud and the Dems will totally make it happen if they can.

Fear: The Best Tool of the Ruling Class.  Social and political responses to the fears of the Corona-19 virus pandemic are news headlines, but do they deserve headlines? [...] Combining a stretch of environmental-saving enthusiasm and fuzzy thinking, activists have wasted no effort in trying to link the imagined effects of climate change to its imagined impact on the Corona virus pandemic.  Economic hardships and social deprivations imposed by the ruling class are said to be good for the globe, and that the necessary price to save it is a cultural and scientific retrenchment.

And the winner is...  There is one big... wait, make that yuuge winner in the sacking of major American cities that has been underway since mobs started with looting Target in Minneapolis and spread all the way to Macy's Herald Square flagship in Manhattan and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  Scott Adams took to Twitter to spell it out: ["]I did not appreciate how profitable fake news could be for Jeff Bezos.  If the Washington Post can support the protestors long enough, there will be no retail store competition for Amazon.  Almost there.  I'd give it a week.["]

By Forcing Control On Hong Kong, Beijing Killed The Golden Goose.  President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has directed his administration to "begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment."  His announcement came a day after China's People's Congress passed Beijing's controversial new national security law related to Hong Kong.  Trump's announcement will profoundly affect the future of Hong Kong and the U.S.-China relationship.  The president's decision was based on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's certification to Congress Wednesday that "Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China," a decision he said gave him no pleasure but that "sound policy-making requires a recognition of reality."

I'm Not Watching the Minnesota Movie.  I have not watched any of the videos out of Minneapolis or listened to any of the commentary.  I have not watched because I resent having to watch only one genre over and over again.  This is the genre in which a white antagonist, presumed guilty at the outset, kills or injures a black protagonist, presumed innocent.  More than 15,000 Americans were murdered in 2019, but no movies for national release were made about blacks killing blacks, the most common scenario.  Nor were any made about blacks killing whites, Hispanics, or Asians.  In fact, these movies are generally suppressed.  No, only one genre of movie is allowed.  In recent years, we have seen the Trayvon movie; the Ferguson movie; the Baltimore movie; and, for comic relief, the Jussie Smollett movie among others.  The most lethal of the movies was the one filmed in Ferguson.  The most dishonest one was the Trayvon movie, filmed on location in Florida.

The United States and the World Trade Organization.  The WTO, the successor to GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was founded in 1994 with stated objectives:  strengthen the world economy, lead to more trade, limit barriers such as quotas and subsidies, increase investment, employment, income growth, throughout the world, and to help governments resist protectionist pressures.  Its decisions are reached by consensus and are binding, and are theoretically non-discriminatory.  However, WTO has not lived up to expectations.  It has not been responsible for any major international accord since the trade facilitation agreement of 2013 that aimed at reducing border delays and costs, nor played any significant role in solving the trade dispute between the U.S. and China.  At a time when output in the world's developed economies has sharply declined, and uncertainty about the future is delaying investment and decisions, the WTO task has now become more difficult for a number of reasons.

Here's 23 Questions Joe Biden Needs To Answer About China.  Communist China poses a greater threat to America and our interests abroad than any other nation in the world.  If it wasn't clear prior to the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, resulting largely from the Chinese Communist Party's Chernobyl-like response, the subsequent threats should crystallize this point.  It has acted malevolently toward the U.S., our European and Anglosphere allies, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India, and across the South China Sea.  Countering the CCP is essential to preserving American life, limb, and liberty.  The public deserves to know what presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's approach to China would be.

No Bailouts for the Blue States Until They Open Up.  It feels as if it has been, oh, hours since I've complained about the blue states so I may as well get a quick rant off of my blogging chest for you, dear VIP subscribers.  I also better enjoy the fact that, as of right now, I'm still writing from a kinda/sorta red state.  Sadly, Arizona is looking more purple every day but we ain't blue yet.  [Paywall]

Reopening the economy only works if people return to work.  Business owners across the country are lamenting that people are not coming back to their jobs, even when offered.  For small businesses able to survive the quarantine, more will need to be done to get their workers off welfare and back in the workforce.  It's going to require thoughtful action from state and federal leaders, as well as strict enforcement of existing laws regarding unemployment benefits.  Thankfully, some of the nation's governors are making bold and commonsense moves to address the three-headed monster of a health crisis, budget woes, and businesses on the brink of extinction.

The Red Pill Goes to Court.  There is no formal policy in the Department of Justice that governs the filing of politically-sensitive criminal charges during an election year.  There does seem to be an unwritten but widespread agreement that it would be a bad idea to do so within 60 — some would say 90 — days of an election.  We can therefore reasonably expect that if United States Attorney John Durham is preparing to charge high-level figures from the Obama Administration with crimes related to: the use of government surveillance capabilities to conduct political opposition research against the opposing party's candidates and their campaigns; or the use of law enforcement powers to obstruct and sabotage the incoming Administration, Durham will most likely do so before August 1.  The weeks and months that follow will be an extremely interesting period in American history.

As Long As a Political Party Believes It Owns African-Americans, Blacks Will Not Be Free.  We are the most color-blind society on the planet.  When was the last time the United Kingdom elected a Black Prime Minister?  Or how about a Black president or prime minister in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Greece, Germany, Belgium, or anywhere else in the oh-so-politically correct dissolving European Union?  Has China ever had a non-Chinese ethnic head their godless country of bat-cat-rat-eaters?  How about the vaunted Russians?  Was Stalin Black?  Khrushchev?  Brezhnev?  Andropov?  Gorbachev?  Putin?  Any Blacks in the wings?

The Editor says...
Yes, but on the other hand, there were 142 million people in Russia in 2009.[*].  Only 50,000 of them were Afro-Russians.[*].  That's why they have no plans for a black president.

Misinformation, Disinformation, and Lies.  Misinformation may spread if no clear official information is present.  The underlying problem is that there is no simple way to prevent that spread, nor is there a single root cause behind it.  Different motives and goals contribute to that spread and to the discussion of the policies, competition, and legitimacy of public authorities.  The internet has brought important changes in how information is spread and how communication occurs.  What is more certain is that prominent public figures play a considerable role in that the spread has regrettably been shown in the context of discussing the responsibility and activity of officials to deal with the pandemic, COVID-19, such as the transmission and the accuracy of reported mortality rates in various countries.  A difficult problem is that much of the misinformation is not completely fabricated, but is the result of spin.  There is no simply way to prevent misinformation, and there is no single root cause for the appearance of misinformation, and there are different motives for it.

I Miss the Freedom of the 1970s.  I never thought I would live to see freedoms and liberties being stripped away from Americans to the extent they are being stripped away today.  It is shocking to see and infuriating to live through.  But I am reminded that although we are losing our basic freedoms en masse today, they have actually been gradually eroding for many decades, mainly as a result of the ever-expanding power of government.  This is happening throughout the Western world, but it is particularly disturbing in the United States — because the United States is supposed to be a special, exceptional nation.  Younger Americans today have no idea what life in a truly free country feels like.  I do.  I am 60 years old, and I can tell you that the last time the United States was truly free — for average Americans — was the 1970s.

The Editor says...
If you're over 30, you probably perceive that the last time this country was truly free was the decade in which you were a teenager.  The 1960's were better than the 1970's, and I suspect the 1950's were even better, from the standpoint of freedom.

The American Media Has Betrayed America.  Who is pulling the strings of mainstream media in the United States?  Why is the media circus focused on vaccines that may be available sometime next year, and probably will only be partially effective, without offering the slightest concern that vaccines may already be over-prescribed?  Everybody knows vaccines are an important tool for maintaining public health, but why has the media painted the issue black and white?  Maybe getting as many as 90 vaccines before the age of 18 is too many.  Maybe vaccines should be used more judiciously.  Maybe people don't want to be forced into getting a vaccine in order to have an "immunity passport."  The horrifying constitutional implications of where we're headed as a nation during this dress rehearsal for martial law are not of interest to the media.  Along with the nauseating, infantile, feel-good, "we're all in this together" corporate commercials that have rolled out in between the useless television newscasts, the only news coverage available paints people who object to the lockdown as, that's right, Trump supporters.  Or white nationalists.  Or "conspiracy theorists."

The ACLU's Absurd Title IX Lawsuit.  That the ACLU is suing the federal government in the hope of altering its due-process standards is not headline news.  That the ACLU is suing the federal government in the hope of weakening its due-process standards is headline news for the ages.  Once more, the line between parody and reality has been blurred.  The targets of the ACLU's suit are the Department of Education; its secretary, Betsy DeVos; and its assistant secretary for civil rights, Kenneth Marcus.  Their offense?  To have made it easier for the accused to defend themselves.

How to Arrange a Credibility Bookcase for Your Toddler's Zoom Background.  Step 1:  Choose a bookcase aesthetic.  Remember, this background is the only way to establish credibility for your two-year-old in our new world.  Are you raising a tiny influencer or a budding anthropologist?  Should you color-code the book spines into a rainbow or alphabetize rows of National Geographic Kids?  These questions must be answered before your toddler can dominate his Zoom music class or his FaceTime with Nana.  You need people to take him seriously when he says, "Me want 'tilla chips."  His bookcase must communicate:  I am no basic baby.

No, Democrats running lockdown states, jobs won't just magically come back.  Democrats who have never held a private-sector job can't fathom the implications of their policies.  They mingle with the private sector daily, but it remains as foreign to them as public schools.  They fail to understand that the public sector can't create wealth.  Wealth is created in the private sector.  All of it.  The private sector is the golden goose that provides the fuel for government, but clueless Democrats want to assassinate the goose anyway.  Government people forget that private-sector jobs produce something society wants.  It's a law of economics.  Otherwise, there's no income to pay workers.  When people no longer go to their jobs, stuff doesn't get made, stuff doesn't get done, and stuff spoils.  Supply chains break, so crops and livestock get discarded; crucial supplies run short; entertainment dries up; dining out becomes a wistful memory; and we all look scruffy without haircuts, manicures, and dry cleaning.

The American Aristocracy's Influence Is Waning.  [Scroll down]  We have become a nation flooded with so many meaningless and laughable Ph.D.s, it seems, not because their holders consider education a path toward greater enlightenment, but so that they can become new members of a noble peerage class entitled to demand newfound privilege and respect nowhere else due.  Expertise isn't conveyed by title; it's earned by consistently revealing a greater understanding of the world around us with exceptional competency and insight.  I know farmers who have thought about our existence more deeply than college professors.  I know mechanics who would be called "Doctor" in a reasonable world.  I have met brilliant men and women who hold multiple degrees and insist they be called by their first names.  I have never met a person of the left with a doctorate who did not insist on being addressed with the title, even when that title denotes supposed expertise in the type of nonsensical nothingness that would earn knowing smiles from normal folk.

China's Happy Harmony Hell.  On January 11, 2007, China launched the KT-1 rocket and obliterated a satellite in orbit, spreading tens of thousands of pieces of high-speed orbiting metal debris that will threaten both manned and unmanned spacecraft for decades to come. [...] The new space/economic/cyber/technology war was now painfully in sight.  Every technology imaginable, from navigation to your banking account, runs seamlessly through information relayed by these satellites.  The signal was clear:  your economic life is no longer safe.  PLA General Peng of the Chinese Military Academy stated without irony that this activity "creates happiness for mankind."  [Bill] Gertz collects 200 pages of evidence to refute this claim.  We all know about the Uighur Camps, Tiananmen Square, the enslavement of Tibet, and organ harvesting.  No one is happy in China.  But the logic of war runs much deeper.  Xi Jinping, the leader of all Chinese thought and policy, respects three people above all:  Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler.  The two he hates most are Deng Xiaoping (the Chinese reformer) and Ronald Reagan, who crushed Soviet Communism.  Did you know that the highest-ranking Chinese official to ever offer to defect to the United States was rejected by the Obama administration?

Unemployment Kills.  The issue of unemployment and its micro and macro effects on society is broadly and globally researched in many disciplines of knowledge — economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, political science, criminology.  The conclusions are unequivocal — unemployment is much more of a deadly phenomenon than any virus.  Unemployment destroys lives and the mental and physical health of individuals and leads to higher suicide and crime rates, as well as poverty-related diseases.  It may cause civil unrest and disorder, catalyzing destructive processes within societies.  Furthermore, mass and chronic unemployment results in or accompanies the development of undemocratic regimes that neglect and abuse individual rights and freedoms "for the greater good," which legitimizes their absolute power.  How do you count the victims of those?

Can America Bounce Back?  The shutdown of the American economy was in large part enabled by the belief that it would be short, that the federal government could borrow a large sum of money at a low interest rate to ease the suffering, and that the economy could come bouncing back in the blink of an eye, making up any losses.  The shutdowns have extended so far four times longer than originally intended, with the governors and mayors of several states and cities proclaiming indefinite shutdowns.  The moneys borrowed from our future were nowhere near enough to ease the pain, and who lent that money anyway?  It hasn't been borrowed yet, so it's anyone's guess.  Two of the three pillars supporting shutdowns have fallen, so can America's economy really come bouncing back, or was that wishful thinking, too?

No Justice, No Freedom.  Four years ago the Obama administration and rogue partisans in the FBI and DOJ abused their powers in order to keep Donald Trump from being elected, and then to hamstring and sabotage his administration.  Now we are nearing the end of the investigations into those crimes, and the truth long obvious to many will finally be confirmed.  But if the verification of these crimes is not followed by indictments and the malefactors put on trial, our political system will be seriously damaged, and we citizens will lose faith in the integrity of our justice system and its role in protecting our political freedom

The Chinese Challenge:  America has never faced such an adversary.  Over the past decade America has been in denial about China's emergence as a global power.  We couldn't believe a country that for generations was a byword for poverty could compete with us.  With Donald Trump's election in 2016 we've transitioned to anger.  As matters stand, we'll be bargaining before long.  For thousands of years China's internal weaknesses — natural disaster, famine, plague, civil unrest, and foreign invasion — kept its attention inward.  We are now at the greatest turning point in Chinese history since its unification in the 3rd century B.C.

The 'Let's Roll' Election.  At the risk of sounding too dismissive of the considerable obstacles before us, I think everyone is underestimating how seriously supporters of the president view this election.  Michael Anton's provocative "Flight 93 Election" essay captured the mood of a significant and largely voiceless group of American voters in 2016.  We went to the polls after an exhausting and abusive election season with one thing on our minds:  if we had any hope of saving America, it was now or never.  After achieving victory, however, the election never came to an end.  The Democrats and press immediately engaged in an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election results, remove President Trump from office, and dismantle any of his fledgling efforts at stabilizing an America in critical condition.  We were given not a single day to acknowledge that Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

The Hoaxes Cry Out for Punishment.  If we are able to get all the facts about what actually happened in 2016 and 2017, this could very well be the biggest political scandal in American history.  What if the previous president and senior officials in his administration decided to use the power of the state to spy on and "take out" the incoming president and his administration?  And they did this on the basis of what?  Policy differences?  There was no Russia collusion or any collusion of any type.  Smart people knew that years ago.  This likely comes down to Obama and his administration trying to preserve their policy agenda, very specifically their terrible Iran nuclear deal; don't forget Obama fired General Flynn over Flynn's strong disagreement regarding the Iran deal and, of course, Trump's campaign promise to undo that deal.  It means, simply put, that the outgoing administration, unhappy with the election results, was trying to undo them.

How "rent strikes" will wind up hurting renters.  We've already seen multiple cases of tenants, primarily in the larger American cities, proposing or launching "rent strikes" where they refuse to pay their rent until the pandemic crisis passes and people are allowed to go back to work.  This includes one Democratic congressional candidate in New York City named Pete Harrison, who doesn't want anyone to have to pay, even if they can afford it.  Harrison picks a rather easy target for his wrath because his apartment building is owned by a major investment banking firm.  But what Harrison and the rest of the rent strike proponents fail to realize is that not all rental properties are owned by giants of the financial industry.  Many are owned by small businesses or individuals who frequently are not prepared to take a major financial hit any more than the tenants are.  Bloomberg News interviewed a number of such landlords this week to see how they are faring and examined what the long term effects of a rent strike could have on them, their tenants and the economy in general.

Governor should reopen state employee contracts to cancel 3% pay raises due July 1.  An unofficial state revenue forecast is projecting a $7 billion deficit for the next 4 years.  It is possible this deficit number is even understated based on the amount of economic activity that has been shutdown by the Governor's stay home order the last few months.  As of today, however, state employees are scheduled to receive a 3% pay raise on July 1.  A 3% pay raise also took effect last July.  With the state facing a massive budget deficit, the Governor should immediately reopen the state employee contracts to cancel the new 3% pay raise before it takes effect.

Givers and Takers:  Democratic governors' arguments that their states are "donors" doesn't hold water.  [Governor] Cuomo claims that New York is a net donor to the federal government — sending more money to Washington in federal taxes than the state gets back in federal spending — and that all New York wants from Washington now is its fair share back. [...] This argument is not new; Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan made it in the 1970s, when he began studying the flow of funds between Washington and the states to show how New York was being shortchanged. [...] But a close look at the kinds of spending that these studies examine reveals that much of the funding deficit comes from big, non-discretionary spending programs that send cash to individuals and businesses around the country — not to state government itself — and that much of New York's shortfall is its own fault, not Washington's.

A Time to Hate.  [Scroll down]  There is something so evil in a society that tolerates a dual standard of justice, dual standards of everything.  On the one hand, we political conservatives harbor profoundly deep feelings, but we do not destroy people's lives based on abstract politics.  Yes, we oppose them and expose them, and we hope that contemporary society and history judge them for the evil they represent.  But we do not destroy them in their lives.  They get away with everything.  Hillary Clinton spoliated 33,000 emails amid a federal probe, a federal crime that always ends up with prison time — but not for her.  It is a federal crime to lie under oath to Congress.  Comey, Clapper, Brennan — how have they all avoided prison time?  Strzok, Page, the whole bunch of them?  Adam Schiff.  The outliers on the Mueller team.  Not one single slime among them in the swamp has been brought to justice.

The Two Popes Problem.  When Pope Francis grants an interview, he makes news by subverting Church teaching.  When Pope Benedict XVI gives one, he makes news by upholding it. [...] The supposed conflict, though, is mythical, as Pope Benedict XVI is far too nonconfrontational and passive to wage any sort of battle against his successor.  Benedict has gone out of his way to soften any differences between the two, even though Pope Francis represents the very relativistic and politicized Catholicism he feared.

The 'New Normal'? Ridiculous.  Crises, even if they are manufactured ones, are great producers of linguistic mutation. [...] It's not only civil war that produces such linguistic deformations.  Any crisis will do. [...] I remember one meeting in particular when it was explained to us that storms like Hurricane Sandy were "the new normal."  "The new normal."  Is there a more nauseating flake of smug linguistic presumption?  I think that the imperative "stay safe," born of our coronavirus panic, comes close.  But "the new normal" is worse because it pretends to knowledge not just solicitude.  That wretched town official who was telling us serfs what we could and could not do with our homes did so on the hollow authority of knowing, or pretending to know, what the future would bring.  So it is now.

Richard Grenell, a True Hero of Our Times.  You may have noticed, as a mere citizen of this country, there are many things you are not supposed to know.  You are not mature enough or intelligent enough to handle certain information.  You are in, in effect, a child in a supposedly democratic republic.  When Congress wishes to interview key players on a matter of significance, they first, and often only, do it in camera so you infants are not allowed to hear the truth as it emerges under oath. [...] America in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and a fateful presidential election that may determine whether our future is free market capitalism or socialism, has found its Diogenes just in the nick of time.  His name is Richard Grenell, formerly ambassador to Germany and before that spokesperson for various UN ambassadors and now acting director of national intelligence.  Mr. Grenell, that ingrate, decided that we weren't so stupid after all and were able to determine the truth for ourselves if given access to the facts.  So he marched testimony, heretofore hidden, due to the restrictions of one Adam Schiff, regarding the Trump-Russia probe over to another potential Diogenes (William Barr — two for the price of one) and the rest is emerging history.  What are we discovering so far?

I'm Not Scared Anymore.  I have to confess that a few weeks ago I was scared.  Very scared.  Not of the coronavirus, which most likely will prove to be just as lethal, or even much less lethal than the flu virus that, coming from Asia, hits us almost every year.  No.  What I was scared of was the people President Trump appointed to protect us from the virus, particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infection disease expert.  Why was I scared of him?  Because after just a perfunctory search on the Internet I found out that Dr. Fauci has been invited at least once to talk to the globalist crowd at the Harold Pratt House in Manhattan, headquarters of the nefarious Council on Foreign Relations.  But the CFR is not a simple organization like the National Association for the Protection of Stray Cats.  It is actually the visible head of the invisible government of the US, and the globalist conspirators do not invite people at the CFR to hear what they say, but to tactfully suggest to them what they must say if they want their careers to advance.

Bubble-Wrapped Americans:  How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety.  The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence:  "A kid might get hurt."  Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place.  But the operating word here is "reasonable."

Federal Red Tape Is Keeping Local Meat Processors From Helping Fix Our Supply Problem.  The increasing possibility of a breakdown in the meat supply chain in the United States due to COVID-19 is prompting Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to renew his push for a bill that would make it easier for small, independent slaughterhouses and meat processors to sell directly to consumers.  Large meatpacking plants across the country have shut down due to fears of COVID-19 outbreaks among workers, and less and less meat is making it to grocers and restaurants.  Wendy's has run out of beef for hundreds of its restaurants (leading to many Twitter jokes about its most famous commercial).  Reason's Brian Doherty has documented how the broad shutdown of commerce is harming the world's food supply, and it's likely going to get worse.

Gutfeld pounds on Schiff:  His ego-driven adventure in impeachment implicates him in biggest global disaster in history.  In response to House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff blaming the coronavirus pandemic on President Donald Trump, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld delivered a fiery rant Tuesday [5/5/2020] urging Schiff to ditch his "funhouse mirror" and take a close look into a REAL mirror.  "We have to remember those who had no skin in this game, who love to play politics and assign blame as a sport, because they were wasting our time when time was so important, which brings me to Adam Schiff," he said on FNC's "The Five."  Schiff had "to create in his mind a working scenario to believe because the alternative reality, which is true, is too devastating," Gutfeld continued.  "If he might consider for a moment that his ego-driven adventure in impeachment shoved the pandemic back into a closet, which led to the surprise attack, which led to thousands of dead."

A Chinese Pattern Emerges:  First Fentanyl, Now Coronavirus.  There are people in China and America, some with connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who are upset with reports that the coronavirus is linked to the lab.  They want to blame President Trump for a plague unleashed by China.  But it turns out there are many controversial labs in Wuhan.  Some "study" viruses.  Some produce fentanyl.  A fascinating article in the Los Angeles Times reveals that before Wuhan became known for a virus killing tens of thousands of people, it was the main source of fentanyl, described as the deadliest drug to ever hit U.S. streets, which is also killing tens of thousands of people.

We Have Work to Do.  We are precipitously coming to a point where the Federal Reserve and the federal government have exhausted their capabilities to properly aid states most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Federal Reserve has put our currency in a vulnerable situation by decreasing interest rates.  This has a direct effect on the market.  The stock market is sensitive to the expectation of stability and growth.  Trade negotiations with China are currently indeterminate.  The immediate need is to get tens of millions of people back to work.  Each state needs to take responsibility to make it easier for employers to hire.  The precondition for healthy progress is deregulation.

True Friends of Liberty Are Rare Indeed.  Since March this year, numerous freedoms — freedom of association, property rights, free exercise of religion, freedom of assembly — have been pulverized as the full power of the state has been unleashed by government agencies across the United States.  In genuine emergencies like war or plague, we let governments do things that we would never otherwise authorize them to do.  But the sheer ease with which this has occurred in recent weeks underscores how a strong in-principle commitment to liberty has weakened throughout America.

The Federal Government Cannot Bail Out the Blue States.  Battle lines are getting drawn up between the two parties on the next round of "stimulus" for the economy.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are demanding as much as $1 trillion more in federal money to bail out state budgets.  The blue states of California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York are lining up to be first at the trough.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said there should be "no blue state bailout," and he is right.  The whole idea of the federal government giving money to states is a foolish one.  It is based on the fiscal illusion that the politicians in Washington magically have some multitrillion-dollar stash of money that it can pass out to businesses, mayors and governors.  But this is an obvious fiction.

Stacey Abrams's embarrassing campaign for the vice presidency.  No one has ever wanted to be vice president as much as Stacey Abrams.  The Georgia Democrat, best known for her failed gubernatorial candidacy in 2018, has launched a full-fledged campaign for the vice presidency in recent weeks, telling every news channel that will book her why she thinks she's cut out for the job.  And in doing so, Abrams has proved why she's not.

A Modest Alternative to a Massive State Pension Bailout.  [Scroll down]  Yes, of course this would amount to a federal bailout of mismanaged and bloated state pensions.  And it raises an important moral question.  Why should a private worker in, say, Texas, be liable to pay for the horrible financial quagmire that New Jersey union bosses and politicians created in their own state?  What should a taxpayer in Texas have to do with any of that?  Shouldn't payouts to pensioners in New Jersey be adjusted, or perhaps the salaries for current public workers adjusted to reflect reduced revenue, or furloughs at least be considered to address the state's lack of liquidity, before demanding that taxpayers from other states pay for the problems that reckless unions and politicians in New Jersey created all by themselves?  What's on display here is a vivid example of the two Americas that are engaged in an ideological battle that's been softly raging for decades.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Had the Worst Response to the Crisis of Any Governor in America.  The press has been gushing about the performance of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for weeks.  The media often compares Cuomo's "decisive" response to the coronavirus pandemic to the president, and guess who always wins?  Whether it's good PR from the governor's office or just the media worshipping a liberal who says mean things about Donald Trump, it hardly matters.  What matters is results.  And in that department, Andrew Cuomo has been a miserable failure — using several metrics. [...] Maybe it would be a godsend for the Democrats to dump Joe Biden from the ticket and acclaim Andrew Cuomo their nominee for president.  The myth of Cuomo's superior crisis management would be exposed in short order, leading to an easy Trump victory.

How to stop the coming meat shortage.  Amid the coronavirus crisis, some are calling attention to the coming meat shortages the United States faces as the virus continues to ravage our economy.  Rep. Thomas Massie has been sounding the alarm for weeks, and the Kentucky Republican recently introduced the "PRIME Act" in an effort to address the coming crisis.  The congressman is right to be concerned. [...] There is no actual shortage in livestock. (Remember, farmers are about to kill their produce needlessly.) Rather, the breakdown is coming on the plant side of the equation where cramped quarters are hazardous.  Why can't farmers sell directly to consumers and circumvent this problem?  You guessed it — government regulations.

Is It Time for a Revolution?  It's time for America's business owners to fight back against a tyrannical government.  Some might call that a revolution.  But in this case, I'm talking about a war fought in the courts.  I'm talking about a legal battle.  It's time for lawsuits — lots of them.  It's time to defend our civil rights.  It's time to defend our property rights.  It's time to make tyrant governors understand this isn't a dictatorship and we're not their serfs.

Pelosi's Congress Should Shelter At Home For The Rest Of The Year.  Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer postponed lawmakers' return to Washington DC, citing concerns about coronavirus transmission.  Congress should stay out of Washington DC a lot longer.  Even until next year.  The primary reason isn't because they, like health-care workers or truckers or grocery store employees or pastors, might catch coronavirus doing their jobs.  The primary reason is that when they "do something," Congress usually hurts the country far worse than if they just took naps in the closet or played cards all day, like my husband's coworkers at a union-run former workplace.  The nation should have learned this from activist responses to the Great Depression, which we now know made the depression longer and harder.  It also created expectations, institutions, and ways of life that have upended our exceptional system of self-government.

The Roman Globalist Church:  Pope Francis accelerates Catholicism's descent into humanist utopianism.  On Easter Sunday, the Vatican released a letter Pope Francis wrote to Catholic organizations in South America.  Francis wrote that the coronavirus pandemic "might be a good time to consider a universal basic wage" that would enable the poor to enjoy "the benefits of globalism."  Such a measure, Francis wrote, "would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights."  Toward the end of his letter, Francis hoped the pandemic would generate "a humanist and ecological conversion that puts an end to the idolatry of money, and places human life and dignity at the center."  Nowhere in his letter did Francis mention Jesus Christ.  The letter conclusively proves that Francis is transforming the Catholic Church into another non-governmental organization.  In the process, he is destroying the church's identity and credibility.

COVID-1984.  A well meaning policy intervention that makes a situation worse is often referred to as the "cobra effect."  In the time of British rule of colonial India, the British government wanted to reduce the number of cobras in Delhi.  The government offered a bounty for every dead cobra.  Initially, the program seemed successful — until people started to breed cobras for income.  Soon Delhi had more cobras than when it started the intervention program.  The Chinese experienced a similar well intentioned policy disaster in 1958.  The Four Pests Campaign attempted to remove mosquitoes, rodents, flies, and sparrows responsible for the transmission of disease.  The policy of eliminating these pests led to infestations of other pests that had previously served as prey for those that were wiped out and resulted in a massive loss of crops, causing the Great Chinese Famine, which killed an estimated 15 [to] 45 million people — far more than the "Four Pests."

Holding the economy hostage.  Elie Mystal of the Nation does not want to go back to work without "somebody to come take my children.  A school bus.  A babysitter.  A freaking traveling circus.  It doesn't really matter.  My economy cannot reopen, life cannot return to normal for me, until fully functional child care comes back on line."  That is very telling.  He does not care who takes care of his children — a freaking traveling circus will do — just so long as it is not him.  Mystal also wrote, "I live in the future and have subscriptions to approximately 18,000 streaming services."  So those are his priorities.  He wants to stream entertainment and shove his kids off on a freaking traveling circus.  Perhaps cutting back on streaming subscriptions would free up money to take care of his children.

The revolving door between the DOJ the law firm Covington & Burling.  [Thread reader] Whenever you think you have someone you can count on you have already fallen for the trap.

The Consequences of a Federal Bailout for the States.  As lawmakers debate over a bailout for the states, Jonathan Williams, the chief economist and executive vice president of policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council, has a warning for states.  "Strings that come with these federal dollars oftentimes outlive the federal dollars, as we've found out with the last time we had a bailout of the states during the Obama era," Williams says.  "And I think it's just a dangerous precedent to set that the states would look to the federal government to be their solution for problems that they are well-equipped to handle themselves."  He joins The Daily Signal Podcast today to talk about why states should say no to a federal bailout, if federal bailouts affect states' rights and sovereignty, if federal bailouts potentially affect tax rates, and much more.

Our incurious media.  Our incurious, lying propagandists in the media appear to have little knowledge of or respect for the long history of science and medicine that has brought us to where we are today.  But of course, this group of pitiful hacks have no comment when mentally ill individuals dump dangerous levels of hormones into their systems and mutilate their genitals in order to claim they have become the opposite sex.  With rare exception, the media in America are a vile and dangerous group of folks who are doing serious harm to our country.

How We Pale to Previous Generations.  America went to the moon in 1969 with supposedly primitive computers and backward engineering.  Does anyone believe we could launch a similar moonshot today?  No American has set foot on the moon in the last 47 years, and it may not happen in the next 50 years.  Hollywood once gave us blockbuster epics, brilliant Westerns, great film noirs, and classic comedies.  Now it endlessly turns out comic-book superhero films or pathetic remakes of prior classics.  Our writers, directors, and actors have lost the skills of their ancestors.  But they are also cowardly, and in regimented fashion they simply parrot boring race, class, and gender bromides that are neither interesting nor funny. [...] We have been fighting in Afghanistan without result for 18 years.  Our forefathers helped to win World War II and defeat the Axis Powers in four years.  In terms of learning, does anyone believe that a college graduate in 2020 will know half the information of a 1950 graduate?

It's Time to Stop Paying Government Salaries.  The first days of hashtag-quarantine-life were terrifying.  The models were terrifying. [...] But then we started noticing something.  The numbers weren't adding up.  Oh sure, when we heard Dr. Birx telling us those percentages it was sobering, but when we started looking at what that meant in real-time the concern didn't seem to match the increase.  In Los Angeles the mayor fretted over a doubling of the mortality rate in just a few days but a look at the numbers showed that doubling meant they went from around 200 to 400... in a population of four million.  Considering the horrific homeless problem that still remained it seemed almost impossible that the number would be that low.  As of today the mortality count in the City of Angels stands at 848.  In Orange County and Ventura County (LA county's closest neighbors) the mortality counts currently stand at 36 and 16 respectively.  We're not even close to the level of horror we were told to expect even with social distancing measures.

America Needs Less Federal Bureaucracy, Not More.  The American bureaucracy needs to be reformed.  Congress should make structural and appropriations reforms to regulatory agencies.  First, heads of executive agencies must serve at the will of the president rather than with "for cause" removal protections.  Second, the combination of powers wielded by agencies must be eliminated.  Third, Congress should pass legislation rather than providing an overly broad mandates under which agencies then govern.  Fourth, all agency appropriations should be approved by Congress in accordance with the principle "no taxation without representation."  These reforms will help protect us from the soft despotism of the bureaucracy and help preserve limited government.  It is consistent with our history and our traditions.

When Communism Is OK in America, Patriots Must Resist Harder.  With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the Cold War virtually disappeared.  In the 1990s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO).  Under Deng Xiaoping (premier of China, 1978-1992), the PRC had begun to set up empowerment zones and allowed capitalist multinational corporations to operate within their borders.  McDonald's has some nice fast food outlets in China, and many of our medicines as well as our Barbie dolls are manufactured there.  Chinese restrictions on child-bearing won the hearts of Western liberals, who are convinced that over-population combined with climate change (formerly "global warming") is the cause of poverty on our planet.  "Sustainable" use of resources became a new mantra.  For many, sustainability means capitalism and communism working together side by side.

Governor Cuomo Is No Governor Compassionate.  I seem to be the rare person who is not impressed with New York governor Andrew Cuomo's philosopher-governor act.  The other day, I disagreed here with his "new normal" prescription that I believe calls for a less-vibrant America.  In his latest escapade, a reporter asked the governor about whether he understands the fear and pain of protestors who want to get back to work.  No, he does not.

The Multi-Talented Ms. Abrams.  Most politicians in the running to join a presidential ticket as the VP candidate are inclined to stay silent, change the subject, or simply express their humility at the thought of being considered.  Stacey Abrams isn't most politicians.

Concede the WH, take Congress?  Democrats aren't worried.  They are hoping for a repeat of 1972.  Oh sure, Dick Nixon murdered George McGovern's presidential ambitions.  Nixon was the first president to carry 49 states.  But Democrats held on to the House and the Senate, even gaining two Senate seats.  And that was what mattered to them.  It allowed them to work with the deep state to force Nixon out of office in less than 2 years.  Biden should do better than McGovern, But the real deal for Democrats are the House and Senate races.

COVID-19 Completes Liberal Takeover of Southern Baptist Convention.  Crisis and upheaval have brought out the best in some (think of Ulysses Grant) and the worst in others (think of Vidkun Quisling).  This holds true of Christian churches and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  In previous columns, my colleagues and I have raised red flags about the SBC, including corruption and leftward drift.  One sees this in executive leadership, in missions, in the management of seminaries, in the workings of the SBC's publishing company, in its political advocacy, in its gatherings, and in funding ties.  Some problems can be framed as left versus right (cultural Marxism creeping into the denomination's entities).  Some are not ideological, but rather symptoms of garden-variety Good Old Boy corruption.  We had a swampy SBC that was bad enough by March 1, 2020.  But then came COVID, and it got even worse.

Speaker Pelosi, end government-by-secret-caucus.  Our Constitution set up three branches of government.  And yet, in this crisis, only two branches are fully operational.  In particular, the House of Representatives is no longer functioning as a legislative body at all but as an executive committee run by just one representative: the Speaker of the House.  There are no open debates, no televised committee hearings, no minority rights.  "The People's House" is not open to the people.

You Won't Catch the Coronavirus at a Drive-In Movie.  [Scroll down]  You'd drive to your local outdoor theater, pay a reasonable per-person or per-car admission, find a nice place to park in front of this gigantic outdoor screen, wait for dusk, and then watch at least two movies, sometimes three.  On the 4th of July, there would be fireworks between shows. [...] How in the world did all this lose favor?  How did we go from thousands of drive-in theaters to just a few hundred?  Imagine if there were still thousands of drive-ins right now.  We could all go to the movies.  Hollywood would still be making money.  Progress isn't always progress, is it? [...] Everyone complains about how awful it is to sit in a movie theater today.  Everyone.  Sticky floors, the price of concessions, the talking and other obnoxious noises.  The drive-in solved all that.

Stop telling the government to make money out of thin air.  Reps.  Rashida Tlaib and Pramila Jayapal will save us all from crushing government debt — just make two coins worth $1 trillion each and parcel the money out!  L. Randall Wray, a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, disagrees.  He says the Federal Reserve, not the U.S. Mint, should make lots of money and give it to all.  The mistake here, as with all of Modern Monetary Theory (a.k.a. the Magic Money Tree), is to think that money is important.  It isn't. [...] Money is just the way we count, the way to keep score.  What matters is the things that are available, the goods and services that people can actually consume.  Creating more money doesn't change how many valuable goods and services there are, therefore, it doesn't change anything real.

Fawning US Media Is 1 Reason Beijing Thinks It Can Bully Hong Kong.  Pro-China authorities last week brazenly arrested Beijing's chief critics in Hong Kong, a city that is supposed to have a high degree of autonomy.  Unsurprisingly, that sparked further condemnation from the Trump administration at a time when the People's Republic of China was already under pressure in Washington because of its role as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Why would China be courting further foreign denunciation?  Perhaps it feels it has plenty of wiggle room.  China has silenced critics of its handling of the coronavirus crisis in the mainland itself, curbing potential downside at home, at least temporarily.  In fact, its communist leaders seem to be benefiting from a rise of xenophobia and jingoism.

This is Who They Are.  Contrary to the current "progressive" understanding, the First Amendment wasn't intended to protect obscenity.  The right to speak and to protest government is the heart of the First Amendment.  And, as the revolutionaries who gave us our Constitution intended, the Second Amendment wasn't written to protect the right to shoot squirrels.  It was written to protect the right to self-defense from tyrants who would deny the people's rights.

Beware The Guru.  South Korea now appears to have its COVID-19 situation under control.  Yet in February, a sudden rise in cases there centered on a group named the "Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony."  It was initially mistaken for a Protestant church, but later was revealed to be a kind of cult.  According to one account, its founder and guru, Lee Man-hee, considers himself to be "an immortal prophet sent to the earth to prepare for the end of the world." Actually, a number of other successful Korean churches probably qualify as cults.  Once touted as "the largest church in the world," the Yoido Full Gospel Church adhered to the teachings of its guru Yonggi Cho until he stepped down in 2008. Eventually he was convicted for embezzlement.  Rather than traditional Christianity, Cho's religion was really a type of Mind-Science — the idea that thoughts can magically alter reality.  Since his teachings promised health, wealth, and success, they unsurprisingly drew multitudes of adherents. [...] Jesus cautioned his disciples against such elevation of religious leaders when he insisted that "you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers" (Matt. 23:8).

You are what you eat during pandemic isolation period.  As others have expressed, my hope is that after COVID-19, there will be a new focus on public health.  Not just on preventive treatments and measures but also on wellness — on the healing power of being in and maintaining good health.  We have been reminded repeatedly that the simple act of adopting a healthy lifestyle can stave off chronic disease.  According to a Harvard University-led study published in January, when compared with those who didn't follow any healthy lifestyle habits, those who followed four or five healthy habits bought themselves an additional decade of disease-free living.  The study involved more than 30 years' worth of health data from 111,000 people who were free of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease at age 50.  The elements of their healthy lifestyle should not be surprising to anyone.  They didn't smoke, limited their alcohol intake, ate a healthy diet, maintained a healthy weight and exercised at least 30 minutes per day.

Elected Sheriffs, A Defense Against Tyranny.  Some time ago, I wrote a series of Pro Second Amendment articles in rebuke to Democrat initiatives attempting illegal gun confiscation.  My thought was that along with the court system, one major line of defense against tyrannical local and state governments, and possibly even an out-of-control Federal Government, could be local Sheriff's.  The vast majority of these constitutional officers are elected officials who are directly responsible to their constituents and more importantly, the Constitution of these United States. [...] Most State Oaths of Office are [similar], first addressing fealty to the U.S. Constitution and only after, to the State Constitution and Laws.  However, not all of these constitutional officers understand the gravity of the oath they are sworn to uphold.

Planning the Great Escape from House Arrest — and From Communist China.  To a substantial degree, China produces what America consumes.  Each country's holdings in the other are enormous.  They are bound by innumerable contracts, deals, projects and cross-posted personnel that are not easily severed.  This system of cross-dependency was consciously pursued to vaccinate the world against a repetition of the two world wars.  However, globalization also significantly eroded the independence and freedom of action of individual nations, though not each to the same degree.  It permitted asymmetries to arise between the more aggressive and secretive regimes at the expense of those which, perhaps naively, adhered more closely to the posted rules. [...] Undoing current arrangements is tantamount to rolling back decades of policy.  However, the system will start to reopen in the direction of subsidiarity, where the interests of the component take precedence over maximizing the system as a whole.

Powerful Americans Were Catastrophically Wrong about China.  For the last thirty years, the vast majority of powerful institutions in the United States placed a gargantuan bet on the idea that the government in Beijing could be a reliable partner in prosperity and would be a responsible actor on the world stage.  Many leading politicians in both parties chose to believe this, many foreign-policy wonks chose to believe this, many academics and university administrators chose to believe this, and obviously, corporate America loved the idea of both using Chinese labor for imported goods and receiving access to the Chinese market.  This includes Comcast, Disney, Viacom, AT&T, and Fox Corporation — the parent companies of NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News, among other large multinationals that own major U.S. news organizations.  The controversy over the NBA last year was a vivid demonstration that most of these entities were not going to let little things like the Chinese government forcing over one million ethnic minorities into concentration camps or a brutal crackdown in Hong Kong disrupt these extremely profitable relationships.

Communist China's War for Global Dominance and the Wuhan-Virus Pandemic.  [Scroll down]  The Beijing gangsters decided that on balance, rather than see their "hundred-year marathon" unravel, the risks involved in letting the Wuhan-virus pandemic go global, sending the American economy into a tailspin, were worth taking.  For them, Chinese casualties in the outbreak of the Wuhan-virus epidemic, irrespective of the final numbers, are merely collateral damage, as were Chinese deaths during the period of the Great Leap Forward under the leadership of Mao, who alone was responsible for more than seventy million deaths.

The Dual Reckoning to Come.  China is not a good global citizen.  China is a corruptor of world markets and global culture.  China operates on a mercantilist, win-lose paradigm that has been destructive to all of its trading partners.  You don't have to ask people in America's Rust Belt.  Ask Italy whether or not their relationship with China has been a net positive.  The virus has exposed all of this.  It can't be hidden from anymore.  Perhaps the reckoning is simply that we move our supply chain out of China and disperse it, or what of it isn't repatriated, to other countries less likely to emerge as hostile.  Hopefully, that will be sufficient to file down the teeth of the tiger.  But what can't be done is to ignore the obvious fact that our forebearance with Chinese communists has been a mistake, and that relationship must change.  We can no longer ignore China's atrocious human rights record, its hideous product quality control, its constant lies, its increasing militarism, and its assault on individual liberties not just within its own borders.

Pope Francis's approach to COVID-19 is a reminder that he is a leftist.  In a few small ways, Pope Francis is a traditionalist.  He opposes abortion, gay marriage (although he supports gay civil unions), and the notion of infinite genders.  In most other ways, though, the Pope constantly demonstrates that he emerged from a Marxist background.  Despite being the Catholic Church's preeminent man of God, he has a Gaia-centric view of nature.  He also brings a Marxist's understanding of economics (i.e., simplistic and wrong) to the papacy.  That's why, on Wednesday [4/8/2020], the Pope suggested that COVID-19 is the earth's revenge for climate change and then implied that politicians concerned about the economy are akin to Hitler in 1933. [...] What's significant is that this viewpoint is totally antithetical to Judeo-Christian doctrine.  The Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, long ago abandoned animism in favor of a single divine entity, that created the earth and all that is upon it.

Not-So-Great.  I'm trying to picture how far the media would turn up the outrage meter if President Trump governed like Lyndon Johnson, and I can't do it; my imagination isn't expansive enough.  In Great Society:  A New History, Amity Shlaes presents a deeply researched, briskly told account of an era of tumult that was promoted and in many cases even funded by the federal government.  If you want to be reassured that we of the Trump Era enjoy the privilege of relatively placid times, this is the book to read. [...] To reduce the amount of money leaving the country, Johnson called for a moratorium on all American tourism outside the Western Hemisphere for two years.  He used the FBI and CIA to track his political enemies.  Oh, and imagine if President Trump were forcing hundreds of thousands of men to go to war in an obscure corner of the world for poorly defined reasons, and that tens of thousands of these young men, disproportionately poor and members of minority groups, were getting killed or maimed.

The Revolution Is Under Way Already.  Fear sweeps the land.  Many businesses collapse.  Some huge fortunes are made.  Panicked consumers stockpile paper, food, and weapons.  The government's reaction is inconsistent and ineffectual.  Ordinary commerce grinds to a halt; investors can find no safe assets.  Political factionalism grows more intense.  Everything falls apart.  This was all as true of revolutionary France in 1789 and 1790 as it is of the United States today.  Are we at the beginning of a revolution that has yet to be named?  Do we want to be?

House of cards:
European leaders lament:  Coronavirus might just kill the EU too.  If the European Union now finds itself in "mortal danger," it's only because it's faced its first truly mortal threat.  The Washington Post reports that European leaders have begun to warn that unilateral actions by its members — most recently Hungary but also core members France and Germany — will undo their decades-long experiment in continental unity.  The raising of borders and the imposition of trade barriers in the coronavirus pandemic has all but sidelined Brussels in the crisis, and there's little indication that EU members are interested in anything but their own domestic political standing.

Small Businesses Are Almost Out Of Time, And It Matters To All Of Us.  With an average daily income of only $7 above daily expenses, the typical small business has a median cash buffer of 27 days of burn before it runs out of money.  Karen Mills, prior head of the Small Business Administration (SBA), said recently that "20%, even 30%, of small businesses could fail even in a good scenario."  Without immediate support to buffer the cash flows of stalled businesses waiting for the economy to reopen, it is a matter of days until millions begin to shut their doors, driving unemployment up significantly and sending the economy into a tailspin.  Small businesses make up over 99.9% of businesses, employ about 59 million people (about 47% of the U.S. private workforce in 2015), create over 41% of new jobs, and account for 45% of GDP.

A Marshall Plan for Main Street.  While our nation continues to fight against this pandemic, we have a responsibility in Congress to help small businesses survive this storm.  As one of America's main employers, Main Street is the engine of our economy.  According to the Small Business Administration, there are more than 30 million small businesses in America and nearly 60 million small-business employees.  That is over 47% of the entire workforce.  They deserve a government that responds to their needs, especially during moments of crisis.

Stop the panic.  Don't let the coronavirus win.  In response to the coronavirus pandemic, democratic governments across the world have implemented unprecedented peacetime lockdowns.  One California city is even using night vision equipped drones — made in China, ironically — to enforce it.  A city in Washington encourages citizens to snitch on those who violate the "stay home" order.  Let's pause a moment to consider the serious ramifications of what we are doing.  To combat a virus, some state and local governments have ordered everyone, including perfectly healthy people, to stay home for an undefined period of time.  Travel has been curtailed.  Americans abroad (like me) are stuck, not knowing when we can return home.  The consequences of such draconian measures are potentially devastating and irreversible.  With little to no public input, we eagerly have given up our basic rights, decided that economic health is entirely subservient to public health, and radically altered how our society functions.

Mike Lindell, Not the Media, Is the Hero.  MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, a self-made former crack addict, is going to transform 75% of his manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 cotton face masks per day by the end of the week, ramping up production to 50,000 a day in a month.  That sounds like a patriotic act to me, especially given that Lindell is undertaking the effort without being forced to do so by a federal agency.  I hope the guy becomes a billionaire after this is all over.  NBC?  Not so much.  The headline on its "analysis" of Lindell's remarks was "Trump fluffs MyPillow in Rose Garden."  This matched the basic tone taken by a large faction within the political press.

Apocalypse More Or Less Now.  The $22 trillion U.S. economy is the single greatest achievement in human history, but it's more than that — it is the primary engine of human progress that has dragged the population of Planet Earth out of misery and want. [...] As Steve Skinner so aptly described it last weekend within these pages, we are massively overreacting to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.  And there are real consequences to this.  In two weeks, 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. [...] It's worse than that.  We're losing businesses, significant businesses, and we're going to lose more.  Logan's Roadhouse, the restaurant chain, just closed 260 units and let all their employees go.  They're finished.  It's only a matter of weeks before every department store in the country is gone, which will take down every shopping mall in America.  The big-retail industry might have been on its last legs, but this will clearly finish it off.

The Coronavirus Outbreak Is Intentionally Being Used To Collapse The U.S. Economy.  The Cloward-Piven strategy is an 8-step plan designed in 1966 by hardcore anti-America Liberal Socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a new national system.  Here is their plan, look at it and tell me if you see anything it mentions that might be happening right now. [...]
The Cloward-Piven Strategy To Collapse America:
  [#1]   Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people.  HAPPENING NOW
  [#2]   Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.  HAPPENING NOW
  [#3]   Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level.  That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.  HAPPENING NOW
  [#4]   Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government.  That way you are able to create a police state.  HAPPENING NOW
  [#5]   Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives.  (Food, Housing, and Income)  HAPPENING NOW
  [#6]   Education — Take control of what people read and listen to us" take control of what children learn in school.  ALREADY DONE
  [#7]   Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.  ALREADY DONE
  [#8]   Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor.  This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.  HAPPENING NOW

It's time to make the state governments feel the pain and consequences of the disproportionate shutdown of America.  At present, governors and mayors face no political downside to suspending democracy and the economy with overly draconian measures.  They only face accolades and praise from the media commensurate to the degree of lockdown they promote, based on the faulty science that failed so miserably in Europe.  It's time to make them feel the pain of their decisions so that they are forced to pursue a more prudent and balanced approach to coronavirus.  So far, all the damage to our liberty and economy is being pushed by state and local governments, not the feds.  On the other hand, all the bailouts and responsibility for dealing with the fallout of their virtue-signaling decisions are being placed on the president.  Isn't it time for state legislatures and county councils to convene and take full responsibility?  If they are big enough to declare nuclear winter on liberty, jobs, and the economy, they are big enough to handle the blowback and pay for their decisions.

Government and Economics Made Dead Simple.  There are only two types of governments.  Two.  That's it.  There are those where the people control the government and those where the government controls the people.  Likewise, there are only two types of economic systems: economies where free markets control commerce and economies where bureaucrats control commerce.  It's that simple.

The coronavirus and character.  The old adage is that 'tough times build character.'  The old adage is wrong.  The reality is that tough times reveal character and a stunning number of people come up woefully lacking in this department:
  •   A businessman who retooled his operation to make a wholly unrelated product because that product is needed in dealing with this virus is dismissed as "the pillow guy" by a media whose malpractice is almost a punchline.
  •   Members of Congress think it [is] wonderful for people in certain delivery services to go on strike.  Because it's apparently better to have more people crowding into stores, not to mention the loss of income for the strikers.  But, hey; eggs and omelets.
  •   CBS used footage from Italy in a story about an NYC hospital and called that a 'mistake.'  Just like ABC some months back mistook a Kentucky firing range for a Turkish attack on Syrian Kurds.
It's a remarkably enlightening time in our history, not because of things being learned but because of people being exposed for who and what they really are.

Governors Practice Political Distancing In Shifting Blame To Federal Government.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called on the federal government to take control of the medical supply market.  Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker demanded that President Trump take charge and said "precious months" were wasted waiting for federal action.  Some critics are even more direct in demanding a federal takeover, including a national quarantine.  It is the legal version of panic shopping.  Many seem to long for federal takeovers, if not martial law.  Yet like all panic shopping, they are buying into far more than they need while not doing as much as they could with what they have.  For decades, governors tried to retain principal authority over public emergencies, but they did very little with those powers.  While many are doing impressive work now, some governors seem as eager to contain the blame as the coronavirus.  Call it political distancing.

The Chinese Communist Party vs America.  The Chinese Communist Party, led by Chairman Xi Jinping, has a membership of 90 million out of a country of 1.4 billion.  Not all may be doctrinaire Marxists or Maoists, but they form a ruling elite for a regime that has managed to bring wealth and prestige to a once-poor people.  They have overseen the building of a modern industrial base, and the creation of a first-world military complete with an advanced nuclear arsenal.  Their intelligence services are larger and more sophisticated than those of any other nation on earth.  At the heart of China's communist ideology is a deep-seated resentment against the world.  After the Century of Humiliation where China was exploited by the Western powers, Russia, and Japan, they are committed to never letting that happen again.  If one doubts the CCP's resolve, one need look no further than the fact that they have killed, through famine and other means, almost 100 million of their own countrymen in a series of communist social and economic reforms they believed necessary to modernize their country.  In other words, these are not a people to be taken lightly.  The presidency of Donald Trump presents the greatest strategic threat to their desire to establish themselves as the world's preeminent economic and military power.

On Coronavirus, Trump Takes Charge.  Even in such a worrisome and dangerous time as the current public-health and economic crisis, there are some entertaining election-year maneuvers.  The Trump-hating media have been reduced to desperate weaving back and forth in their search for a plausible alternative to the incumbent.  And President Trump's domination of prime-time television every day with a demonstrably competent executive performance, even if it has not been without its Trumpesque flourishes of hyperbole and shifts of position, is propelling the practicing, wildly-out-of-the-closet Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi to severe lapses of judgment.

US Chamber of Commerce wants to keep America dependent on China.  In this time, when the Wuhan virus is ravishing the U.S., it is beyond nauseating to read that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants America to stay dependent on China for pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and other manufacturing goods.  That might seem hard to believe, but it appears to be the case.  Tom Donohue, the 82-year-old, well coiffed, and highly compensated president of the CoC, is objecting to the Trump administration's "Buy American" mandates for medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.  This, the silver-tongued Donohue says, will "damage U.S. trading relationships for years to come."  It doesn't seem to disturb Mr. Donohue that the trade relationships and practices he wishes to protect and preserve with China are exactly the ones that have hollowed out the American middle class.  They have also left the U.S. dependent on that communist country for over 90 percent of our prescription drugs and much of our medical equipment and supplies, a truly surreal situation.

Fixing the Roof While It's Raining.  President Trump this afternoon signed a $2 trillion spending bill to respond to the health emergency, while the Federal Reserve spent the better part of a trillion dollars this week buying bonds of every description and lending money to foreign central banks.  That avoided a financial crisis and stabilized the stock market.  When I proposed a massive fiscal stimulus on February 27, I looked like a wild-eyed alarmist, and many readers on this site accused me of playing into a Democratic plot to panic the country and wrong-foot President Trump.  Market intervention is like buying a present for the birthday of your spouse; if you're late, you'll have to pay a great deal more.  A fraction of the $2 trillion tab would have maintained confidence in markets if it had been offered a month ago, but no matter:  What had to be done, had to be done.  That leaves us with a Federal deficit of perhaps $4 trillion — the $1 trillion deficit we ran before the crisis despite full employment, another $1 trillion in lost tax revenues, and $2 trillion in additional spending.  That's nearly a fifth of GDP, unprecedented in peacetime.

How Did We Ever Get to The Roaring Twenties?  [Scroll down]  I'm not trying to say our current situation is as bad as things were in the 1910s.  What happened during that time frame is unthinkable compared to our current predicament.  But it's encouraging to see what people have battled back from in the past.  The fact that people were willing to shrug off such a debilitating period and turn it into one of the most optimistic decades our country has ever seen speaks volumes of our ability to continue moving forward.

The Left is Loving This.  Consider, for a moment, what ideas Americans seem to have generally accepted in the last few weeks. [...] Thirdly, this crisis appears to have nullified any devotion to the concept of individual liberty among Americans.  A friend in Chicago tells me that he and his young daughters daren't risk even walking to the park that his tax dollars built, as he risks a $500 fine for doing so.  The stiffest resistance encountered by the government officials imposing these infringements upon law-abiding citizens is the quiet grumbling that exists beneath all these loud sermons about "social distancing" and "flattening the curve."  And finally, as Americans are left unable to care for themselves because the government is prohibiting their free association in the economic marketplace, the government is now facilitating a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers as cash payments to Americans below certain income thresholds.

China's Massive Belt and Road Initiative.  China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived.  Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives would stretch from East Asia to Europe, significantly expanding China's economic and political influence.  Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China's rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries.  Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion.

Coronavirus Is Not Even Close to America's Biggest Problem.  The immediate reaction of our government to the virus threat was to spend massive amounts of money.  The latest news is that politicians plan to "boost" the economy with nearly two trillion dollars in spending and loans.  "The package is coming in at about 10% of GDP.  It's very large," says Larry Kudlow.  For a plan of this size to sound like a good idea, you need to ignore some important economic facts.  Our country has unbelievable levels of debt, and our debt is rising rapidly.  The numbers are staggering. [...] Governments that have tried this approach have ended up with money that looks like this 50-trillion-dollar bill from Zimbabwe.  It's real paper money.  But this $50 trillion wouldn't buy much.  In Venezuela, the inflation rate is around 53 million percent.  That means everything costs more every day.

Conservative Leaders:  Public Health Measures Must Still Protect Constitutional Rights of Americans.  The public health crisis facing the country is unprecedented, and a whole of government approach is underway.  However, using this crisis as a justification to violate the basic civil liberties of Americans is unconscionable, and in no way justified.  This is also true at the state level, where unprecedented shelter-in-place orders threaten civil liberties as well.  We urge governors to make any movement limitations temporary and tailored.  A federal shelter-in-place order should be avoided at all costs.  Public health must be protected, but so, too, should the rights of Americans under the Constitution.  Americans have mobilized with extraordinary speed and cooperation.  The Trump administration has lifted regulations and expedited actions to begin vaccine testing, facilitate production of necessary medical equipment, and restricted foreign access to the country as appropriate.  These actions are justified.  A dramatic expansion of the police state is not, and we emphatically oppose it.

Wake Up America — China is the Pandemic.  The Democrats stalled the $2 trillion stimulus for three days, in an attempt at stuffing the initiative with all the leftist policies they knew they could never foist upon the electorate through legislation or the ballot box.  China infected the world to save its reputation and provide for itself enhanced income-producing opportunities — and is now not only lying about it but also using the death and chaos they caused as a weapon in its quest to rule the world.  The media is backing both plays.  Twisted millenarianism is one thing they all have in common.  Parties, countries, and media have priorities and if you die, you die.  You see, to the iniquitous Chinese, the Democrats, and the media, your life, or anyone's life, or millions of lives, is a mere quibble when ruling the world is the potential prize.

If money from the feds is free, why not give everyone $100,000?  Most politicians in both parties adamantly disagree with President Trump on the need to achieve proper balance between quarantine and our livelihoods.  They want an economic and liberty nuclear winter, and they want it indefinitely — without investigating any of the science and data behind it.  At the same time, they want to spend trillions upon trillions of dollars "stimulating" a dead body with nothing to stimulate and don't appear to see any downside to accruing all this debt and risking market distortions.  So if that's the case, why not just give every American a year's worth of income?  Like all Kabuki theater in Washington, where Republicans agree with Democrats on 99 percent of an issue but fight truculently over the last 1 percent, both parties shook hands (I mean elbow-bumped!) on a $2 trillion stimulus today plus $4 trillion in Federal Reserve shenanigans.  The bill indiscriminately throws too much money in a black hole without better defining and studying the scope of the problem to come up with a better solution.  It solves nothing, bankrupts our nation forever, and still brilliantly manages to leave many people behind at the same time!

China Is Lashing Out Because Wuhan Flu Has Unmasked It To The World.  The Chinese communists are afraid.  You might not guess it from the invertebrate and borderline anti-national corporate media parroting Chinese state propaganda, but they are.  Beijing is shaken.  Their dream of dominating the globe eventually, with the slow overstretch and collapse of the Pax Americana, was considered a matter of destiny.  Then suddenly, it all was shaken.  A combination of incompetence, criminal negligence, and totalitarian suppression of a new devastating virus originating from the raw meat and wet markets of interior China let it rage through the globe.  The world's first postmodern global pandemic, preventable but not prevented, has so far already caused the deaths of more than 13,000 people, torched all the major power centers, decimated the service sector, pushed the global economy to the brink of an unprecedented recession, devastated the stock market, closed the borders of all the great powers, ended global cooperation on vaccines, and rocked the boat of globalisation in ways unthinkable since the peak days of the autarkic 1930s.  If this is the hegemonic order of the future superpower, then civilization is doomed.

Abolish the World Health Organization.  Way back on January 10, the official Twitter account of the World Health Organization declared that 'WHO does not recommend any specific health measures for travelers to and from Wuhan, #China.'  The tweet went on to say that 'It is generally considered that entry screening offers little benefit, while requiring considerable resources.'  A follow-up tweet described how 'WHO advises against the application of any travel or trade restrictions on #China based on the information currently available.' [...] Two wrong tweets shouldn't call into the question the creditability of the World Health Organization, but the direction in which its director-general, Tedros Adhanom, has steered the WHO, and his unwillingness to diverge from Beijing's public pronouncements, should trouble the world.

This Too Will Pass.  Economists at Goldman Sachs are now predicting a decline of 24% in GDP for the second quarter, though with 12% and 10% rebounds in the third and fourth quarters.  Along with the illness and death itself, businesses and workers are suffering from lost income, and Congress is planning a $2-trillion relief package.  Individual investors have also been hit, and many who sell now may never return to the stock market — just as many bailed out after 2008 and did not participate in the 300% gain that followed the low of March 2009.  Altogether, the global economy is facing an enormous setback as a result of the coronavirus, and it may take several years or more to return to the highs of 2019.

Destroying America:  It's Not A Game.  The GOP Senate leaders could not pass a "shell" bill to enable a stimulus package aimed at mitigating the economic damage caused by the Chinavirus (COVID-19).  The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will be submitting a separate piece of legislation tomorrow.  "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" and, at this point, the Democrats have nothing left to lose.  At a press conference earlier in the day the president was optimistic about the way the deal was proceeding.  "They are very close to getting a deal done," Trump said.  "So I'd be surprised if they didn't and if they don't, I think frankly the American people will be very upset with the Democrats because the Republicans are ready to approve a deal.  The only reason a deal couldn't get done is pure politics."

Time To Step Back from Economic Suicide.  [T]he marketplace realities of a locked-down nonfunctioning economy are inexorable, absolutely deadly and unsustainable:  [#1] No matter how much money consumers have in their pockets, they cannot purchase what the economy does not produce; [#2] The economy cannot produce anything when people do not work; [#3] People either do not work or work less productively when the government has instructed them to stay home and paid them to do so, when they spend much of each day caring for their children because frightened politicians have closed the schools and when they must spend the rest of the day searching for ever-scarcer food and essentials as sellers' inventories are drawn down near to exhaustion.  What sense does it make to isolate people at home away from their jobs and to thereby create shortages that force them to stand in line at stores in close proximity to hundreds of untested strangers?

Let the Cruise Lines Sink.  It is quite possible that all of the major cruise operators will need to declare bankruptcy.  While Carnival's stock has dropped almost 80 percent since January, it still could go a lot lower.  All the way to zero, in fact.  And yet, at least one well-informed bank analyst now believes that Carnival is undervalued because it is too big to fail and will be thrown a giant buoy to stay afloat.  The moral hazard created by the bailouts of a decade ago are undeniable in the hubris of this note, which suggests that investors can ignore bankruptcy risk for virtually any stock in the economy, even one premised entirely on luxury, because the government won't let anything fail.

Crisis Socialism:  No Bailouts for Open Borders Globalists!  Why should working-class American citizens being laid off from restaurants, bars, grocery stores, ports, gyms, entry-level service jobs and gig economy contracts rescue one of the beltway swamp's most powerful corporate lobbies — backed by the planet's third-richest mogul, Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway multinational holding company owns massive stakes in American Airlines, Delta, Southwest and United?  Reminder:  Berkshire Hathaway walked away with $10 billion after the 2012 AIG publicly funded bailout.  How much more in private wealth will Bailout Buffett reap from a federal flight fright freakout?  This exploitative campaign to "stabilize" U.S. passenger carriers is about shoring up globalist profits, not patriotism.

Justin Trudeau's Canada Is Obama's Dream for America.  To adapt a phrase from Matt Margolis, Justin Trudeau is the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history.  Like his American counterpart Barack Obama, he is both a know-nothing and a do-nothing leader, and an unmitigated disaster to the well-being of his country.  For example, Trudeau's unconscionably late and incomplete response to the COVID-19 pandemic — the "19" tells us it has been known for quite some time — much like Obama's delayed response to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and his determination to keep an illegal border crossing open, are only the latest of his ill-gotten political escapades.  Indeed, like the Obama of 57 states and the Austrian language, Justin Trudeau is a full-blown ignoramus masking as an intellectual prodigy. [...] His major accomplishments prior to being elected to the highest office in the land were instructing snowboarding, practicing yoga, and substitute teaching high school drama classes.

Cheap TVs, Expensive Flu.  Thanks to "globalism" — i.e., cheap goods from China — we've gotten many wondrous things, for example:
  •   Toothpaste on American shelves made with a poison found in antifreeze.
  •   Toxic Chinese drywall installed in about 100,000 U.S. homes, emitting noxious fumes that destroyed electrical wiring and metal fixtures and sickened homeowners.  Replacement of the drywall, pipes and wiring cost Americans billions of dollars.
  •   Hundreds, possibly thousands, of American dogs killed by melamine-laced Chinese dog food in 2007.
  •   The loss of about 200,000 beautiful maple trees lining the streets of small New England towns, eaten by Asian long-horned beetles that arrived on Chinese cargo ships in 1996.

Don't Call Democrats' Pork 'Stimulus'.  With much of the U.S. economy shut down to deal with the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Congress is putting together a $1 trillion stimulus package to prevent an economic meltdown, the third major bill to address the coronavirus pandemic.  That's a huge amount of money, but a question looms:  How much of it will actually help the struggling economy, and how much of it will just be politically motivated pork? [...] Before passing the second bill Wednesday, Democrats tried to force through a number of costly additions that had little to do with coronavirus.  And they wanted to make them permanent.  That might sound nice, but forcing small- and medium-sized businesses to foot the bill for expensive paid family leave and increased paid sick leave would bankrupt thousands of small businesses, which often have just a few workers and operate on the slimmest of margins.  Fortunately, GOP negotiators got the "permanent" part removed.

Will the Coronavirus Revolutionize Education?  With some K-12 school districts and administrators across America panicking and attempting to get ahead of any 'outbreak' of the coronavirus, more districts are opting for students to stay home.  I'd be willing to bet that most students thoroughly enjoy this. [...] Throughout the years, American homeschooling and online K-12 education has become far more popular and realistic than 'brick and mortar' public schools want to admit.  School choice is disrupting and angering public school districts and officials, and school boards are voting against student vouchers so they can continue to enslave students to their school districts instead of allowing state-allocated money to travel with that student to a school of their choice.  This includes online education.  School districts also keep knowledge of online schools and online education far away from K-12 students and their parents, at all costs.  After all, bodies in the seats mean more money for 'brick and mortar' school districts.  However, now that the coronavirus is causing school administrators to panic, 'brick and mortar' schools are encouraging students to stay home and engage in "Hybrid/Online" classes, where they communicate with their teachers online and complete online assignments and tasks at home on the internet.

Afghanistan:  Our Second Vietnam.  [Scroll down]  The political situation in 2016 was vastly different.  The Afghanistan war was fifteen years old but most Americans remained unconcerned and uninformed about the war.  They remain so today.  There are no huge anti-war protests and those in the media who bother to report on Afghanistan only do so to criticize Trump.  In both wars, the enemy was undefeated, its ideology intact.  The North Vietnamese and their surrogate force the Viet Cong — supported by Russia and China — were far stronger than the South Vietnamese.  The Taliban — long-supported by Pakistan, and now supplied with weapons, funds, and intelligence by Russia and Iran — are vastly stronger than the Kabul government.

It's All in the Stars.  [Scroll down]  We might also ask ourselves:  Who or what is [Harvey] Weinstein?  He is Hollywood, a representative of one of the sleaziest communities on the face of the earth, comprising a bunch of grasping, invidious, self-infatuated and morally corrupt people, many in cahoots with the man they have now turned against.

The problem with attacking for-profit health care, especially for Bernie.  Profit-seeking companies have cured cancer, reversed heart disease, and created every other advance you can name for the past 100 years of medicine.  A tiny fraction of innovation comes out of the NIH or non-profit society grants — and those discoveries would invariably sit on the shelf without the work and investment of profit-seeking venture capitalists and companies guiding the idea through clinical trials, regulatory hurdles, and production.  The majority of the profits that provide the incentive for innovators worldwide come from the U.S., and other health care systems piggyback (and rip off) our system to take advantage of the innovation that we provide.  In short, the U.S. market and the for-profit health care industry that serves it is the world's golden goose for global medical innovations... so please, Bernie, put patients before socialism and stop attacking profits.

Get Out of Afghanistan.  With few exceptions, America's longest war is largely ignored by our political class while the costs and casualties mount.  Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) held a hearing last month on the Washington Post's explosive and infuriating series on the war in Afghanistan:  Only three of his colleagues bothered to attend.  The sole Democrat in attendance was the committee's ranking member, Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).  "Doing nothing is no longer an option for any senator or member of Congress with a conscience," Paul said, perhaps during a moment of wishful thinking.  The long-time proponent of ending the Afghanistan war ticked off the stats:  Nearly 2,400 dead U.S. servicemen and women with more than 20,000 wounded.  Soldiers who have faced numerous deployments since the war began in 2001.  And nearly $1 trillion in U.S. tax dollars — an average of $50 billion per year for almost 20 years, as Paul pointed out — spent in a backward nation that still ranks near the bottom of the list of the world's most economically and politically free countries.

Socialism's Inequalities.  Few statements are more revealing of ignorance than the standard conservative indictment of socialism for "equally spreading poverty."  According to this critique, poverty happens when socialism's insistence on equality of conditions deprives people of the incentive to work.  Such statements so offend reality as to lead one to ask whether those who make them have ever opened their eyes in a socialist country.  No.  Socialism makes for the most radical of inequalities among human beings, and enforces them through the state's absolute power. [...] [I]n full-blooded socialist systems — the Soviet Union was prototypical — like Cuba, China, and Venezuela access to government power is the paramount avenue to success.  So much so, that all assets pale in importance by comparison.  Talent and enterprise seldom hurt.  But if you see someone prosper, you can be sure that he is well connected with the powers that be.  Under real socialism, prosperity and power are two sides of the same coin.  Always.  Invariably.  Food is the most fundamental feature of prosperity or lack thereof.

Think Trump is 'outrageous?' He's nothing compared to these past presidents.  Unprecedented, unprecedented.  Everything is unprecedented.  Nothing like this has ever happened before.  Except it pretty much has.  Whenever you see the word "unprecedented" in the media, you should ask yourself:  Has this reporter ever read a history book?  Make the case against Trump if you want to, but if you pretend the sorts of things he does are without precedent, you simply make yourself look ignorant.  Virtually any presidency you examine is guilty of far worse acts than whatever you think is the worst thing Trump has ever done, from John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, a breathtaking offense against freedom that was meant to punish political resistance, to Millard Fillmore's Fugitive Slave Act, which made it so the evil tentacles of the South's slavery regime could reach up North and pluck back people who had successfully made it to freedom.

There are Trillions At Stake.  President Trump is disrupting decades of multinational financial interests who use the U.S. as a host for their ideological endeavors.  President Trump is confronting multinational corporations and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to the detriment of the host (USA) i.e., YOU.  There are trillions at stake; it is all about the economics; all else is chaff and countermeasures.  We are already familiar how China, Mexico and ASEAN nations export our raw materials (ore, coking coal, rare earth minerals etc.).  The raw materials are used to manufacture goods overseas, the cheap durable goods are then shipped back into the U.S. for purchase.  It is within this decades-long process where we lost the manufacturing base, and the multinational economic planners (World Trade Organization) put us on a path to being a "service driven" economy.

A Return to Beauty.  The guilty flee when no man pursueth, says Proverbs, but it does not follow from this that the guilty do not flee when they are indeed pursued.  The guilty also have a tendency to argue when they know that they are in the wrong, as for example architects who continue to deny that, for the past seventy years at least, they have been disenchanting the world by espousing a dysfunctional functionalism and constructing buildings so hideous that they make Frankenstein's monster look like Clark Gable.  I refuse to think so ill of architects as human beings as to believe them to be totally unaware of what they have done.  Rather, I pity them.  They are like those unfortunate government spokesmen who have to defend the indefensible in public, which is always a disagreeable and nerve-racking thing to have to do.  As government spokesmen invent a language full of polysyllabic euphemism to disguise the catastrophe their masters have wrought, so architects speak a language that is either incomprehensible or, where comprehensible, entirely beside the point.

Don't Revive the ERA.  The House of Representatives voted this month to begin the process of reviving the Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional effort dating to 1923 and first passed by Congress in 1973. [...] Though supported unanimously by House Democrats, the law remains procedurally suspect.  The Department of Justice has stated its intent to prevent the U.S. Archivist from including the ERA in the Constitution, should it secure enough votes, because of the expired ratification deadline.  Meantime, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — despite her support for the ERA, in principle — said that proponents need "a new beginning" beyond the 1982 deadline.  "There's too much controversy about latecomers," she added, urging proponents to start the process over.  Yet supporters keep contorting laws and flouting precedent to defend their cause, arguing, in effect, that America can never actually reject a constitutional amendment.  In late January, Virginia joined Nevada and Illinois to support the ERA, in theory securing the required number of states needed to adopt the proposed Twenty-Eighth Amendment.

Harvey Weinstein [is] Now Locked in a New York Prison — Just Like Jeffrey Epstein.  With Harvey Weinstein now headed off to prison on Rikers Island in New York City and holding so many deep, dark secrets about powerful Democrats and Hollywood figures in his creepy head, the countdown on how many days will pass before he suffers some form of highly-suspicious death has begun.  Who knows?  Maybe he will "Epstein" himself soon, or be the only person in a very crowded prison to somehow contract the Coronavirus.  That would be, like, totally believable.

The Russian/Chinese Plan to Bring America Down.  The leadership of Russia and China (both basically Communist countries), believe that the United States is a serious threat to them in at least six (6) major ways:
  1 - our cohesive unity of purpose,
  2 - our Judeo-Christian values,
  3 - our democratic ideology,
  4 - our technical prowess,
  5 - our economic power, and
  6 - our military might.
In response, their plan is to undermine each of these — and the more the better.  Their effort is not a simple six-step sequential series, but rather a multi-pronged campaign.  Some current issues (e.g. immigration) actually span several of the above items.  What's very disconcerting is that the Communists have strong allies within our country — e.g. socialists, etc. who are effectively unwitting pawns of Communist ideology.  [PDF]

ICE Should Deport George Soros as a Nazi Collaborator.  The deportation of a Nazi death camp guard from his residence in Queens, New York, in 2018 by ICE was described as the removal of the "last known Nazi collaborator from the United States."  That's not quite true.  There's another Nazi collaborator living on Fifth Avenue.  He's a billionaire and untouchable because his dubious fortune has been used to finance the Democrat Party, radical leftists, assorted anti-Semites, and opponents of ICE:  the agency that should step in to remove the aged Hungarian from the United States.  The legal basis for removing Soros is quite clear.

Stone Sentencing Ends Russia Collusion, Part I.  The Roger Stone sentencing farce is as fitting an end to the Russia Collusion saga as one could conjure up ... though it might be more fitting to call it the end of Russia Collusion, Part I.  No sooner did the first flick conclusively bomb than the media-Democrat complex was issuing the casting call for Russia Collusion, Part II.  In the sequel, you're asked to believe that Putin is manipulating the chesspieces to steal a second term for President Trump — somehow preferring an incumbent who beefs up the U.S. armed forces, pressures NATO allies to beef up theirs, imposes painful sanctions on Moscow, provides lethal aid to Ukraine, ramps up U.S. energy production, and seeks to thwart the Kremlin's coveted natural-gas partnership with Germany, over an unabashed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and whose policies would wreck the American economy, end the resurgence of American energy production, and hollow out the American armed forces.  It's a lunatic plot.

Battle of the Boroughs.  There are 329 million people in the United States of America.  They are spread across 3.8 million square miles.  The presidential race will be determined by the actions of three of them:  Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Michael Bloomberg.  Each is a New Yorker.  Each hails from a different borough.  Trump was born in Queens, Sanders in Brooklyn, and Bloomberg, a native of Massachusetts, has worked and lived in Manhattan since 1973.  For a long time New York City politics stopped at the Hudson River.  Now the nation faces the prospect of eight months of septuagenarian New Yorkers yelling at each other.  The geographic, regional, ethnic, and racial diversity of America is nowhere visible.  Religion is an exception:  The first Jewish presidential nominee of a major party will also be, in all likelihood, the most hostile nominee toward Israel ever.  How did this happen?

Political Trials Should Be Tried Outside of the Beltway.  [Scroll down]  Hillary Clinton won 90 percent of the D.C. vote in 2016 compared to Donald Trump's four percent.  In the metropolitan area as a whole, which includes adjacent counties in Virginia and Maryland, Clinton won 68 percent.  The federal government is the area's largest employer; nearly everyone else is somehow tied to government work as a lawyer, lobbyist, consultant, or journalist.  By a 20-to-1 margin, Justice Department employees contributed heavily to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.  Any trial automatically is rigged either in favor or against a political defendant based on the team for which the accused plays — and if it's Team Trump, the outcome is predetermined even before the opening statements.  After all, how could a swamp-dweller objectively judge a case tied to a president promising to drain the swamp?  The jury selection for the 2019 trial of Greg Craig illustrated the near-impossibility of seating an impartial panel in Washington.

DC Law.  Washington, D.C. has a relatively small population from which jurors must be found for the federal and local grand juries, petit juries, and civil juries. [...] Since almost 80% of the city are Democratic voters, often employed by the government or are connected to law enforcement or have family members who are, the ability to expeditiously find panels in criminal cases is limited.  Worse yet, the chance of an unbiased panel in a case involving Republican figures is minimal.  If you think this puts Republican figures at far greater risk than Democrats, you are certainly not wrong.  Recall if you will the prosecutor who publicly stated the Starr special counsel's office believed Hillary Clinton had lied to the grand jury, but because ethical prosecutors are not to bring cases they have no reasonable likelihood of winning and no D.C. jury would convict her, they were declining to prosecute her.

Forget Iowa — let's switch to a one-day national primary.  [Scroll down]  The second flaw in the nomination system is that the emphasis on the early states may also increase the tendency of candidates to take extreme positions that increase partisanship and gridlock.  While candidates should be truthful, they sometimes take positions to attract voters.  In the early states, they may make statements which might be popular there but not acceptable to voters in other states throughout the nation.  Ultimately, the parties may have candidates espousing extreme beliefs which they do not believe, and that may cause increased partisanship.  What's more, the current system only requires candidates to show they can win statewide elections serially, not a truly national contest like the one in November.

The Path to Ruin Being Blazed by Congress, the President, and the Fed.  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cited a record 11-year expansion, an economy "resilient to the global headwinds," "near half-century lows for more than a year" regarding unemployment, and how "GDP rose at a moderate rate over the second half of last year" in his appearances before Congress last week.  But his more oblique warnings about what should happen if a recession occurs came as the most interesting part of his words to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee.  He essentially told Congress that economic gimmickry in sunny financial times leaves policymakers with few tools to combat a recession once the clouds roll into town.

America's Growing Approval Of Socialism Is A Rejection Of Freedom.  In February 2009, just after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Newsweek declared on its cover "We Are All Socialists Now."  More than a decade later, socialism has taken over the Democratic Party, and has a strong hold on young Americans.  It's gone mainstream in a nation founded on principles opposite the tenets of socialism.  Seven in 10 millennials say they would vote for a socialist candidate, while 64% of Generation Z told pollsters last year it is "somewhat/extremely likely" they'd vote for a socialist, according to a YouGov-Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation poll taken last fall.

New Film Shows How the War on Poverty Failed and the Real Hope for America's 'Forgotten' Cities.  Filmmaker Christopher Rufo traveled to three crumbling American cities — Youngstown, Ohio; Memphis, Tenn.; and Stockton, Calif. — and documented the deep human struggles of communities left behind as the 1950s industrial boom yielded to a new kind of economy in the 21st century.  America Lost explains why top-down government solutions fail to address this urban decay and the film suggests a better path forward.

Limbaugh: A Genius at Radio.  [Scroll down]  He certainly did not capture new listeners by adjusting to the times.  While tastes changed and the issues often metamorphosed, he did not.  He remained conservative, commonsensical, and skeptical of Washington and those in it, as if he knew all the predictable thousand faces of the timeless progressive project, whose various manifestations reappear to mask a single ancient and predictable essence: the desire of a self-appointed group of elites to expand government in order to regiment the lives of ordinary people, allegedly to achieve greater mandated equality and social justice but more often to satisfy their own narcissistic will to power.  It was Limbaugh who most prominently warned that lax immigration enforcement would soon lead to open calls for open borders, that worry about "global warming" would transform into calls to ban the internal combustion engine, and that the logical end of federal takeover of health care would be Medicare for All.

The Steele Dossier's Biggest Fan Goes on a Really, Really Insane Rant.  [Scroll down]  A president wants people he can trust to enact his policies, which are subject to the oversight of the electorate via elections.  That's hardly new or unique to the latest inhabitant of the White House.  If you cross that trust, you can go back to the Pentagon or whatever agency you came from.  You'll still be getting your fat check and pension because no one is ever really fired from a government job.  Enough with the pretending that civil servants are actually servants.  They are typically overpaid, with huge benefits packages and get more time off in a single year than most private-sector employees enjoy over half a decade.  They are not martyrs, they are bureaucrats.  The fact that they can't just be outright fired with ease is bad enough, but painting them as everything that holds this country together is asinine and a false sense of grandeur that's incredibly idiotic.

Trump's Presidency Reveals 7 Undeniable Facts About The Swamp.  Although Trump may appear invincible at the time of this writing, ask yourselves who controls the helium to the biggest economic balloons.  The stock market is the pressure release valve.  But when the bond market blows, the USD is toast.  And, as supply chains snap and the bankers foreclose on the world, there will be ever-expanding pain for everyone to varying degrees, as the earth exhales.  Therefore, all current global trends,  including  especially Coronavirus®, are about establishing control prior to the advent of a new order.  Although the immediate future will be anarchy, out of that chaos will come order administered by technological switches and gates.  And the future will be cashless because slavery is rooted in economics.

The Once and Future Scandal.  Donald Trump, in concrete ways, has been far harder on Russia than was the "reset" Obama presidency, and far more helpful to Ukraine than Team Obama ever was.  Trump armed the Ukrainians.  He upped sanctions against Russia.  He ordered lethal retaliation against Russian mercenaries in Syria.  He vastly increased U.S. oil and gas production to Russia's detriment.  He jawboned Germany about its fuel dependence on Moscow.  He coerced NATO to spend more on defense.  He got out of an asymmetrical missile treaty with Russia.  He is rebuilding the U.S. military.  Unlike his predecessor, Trump did not dismantle U.S.-joint European missile defense in order to coax Putin into behaving during his reelection bid.  He did not push a big plastic red reset button in Geneva to mark outreach to Putin, in rejection of prior Bush sanctions on Russians.  He did not forbid the shipment of anti-tank missiles to an endangered Ukraine. [...] So the libel of Russian collusion was absurd from the get-go.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Calls Senate 'Anti-Democratic.' Then Mark Levin Schools Him.  [Scroll down]  Just to rub it in, O'Donnell went on to call the Senate "American democracy's most structural flaw."  Sadly for O'Donnell and his fellow radical leftists, however, America is not now and has never been a democracy.  It's a constitutional republic.  The Founding Fathers made that choice very deliberately because they understood that real, full democracy is actually extremely dangerous.  As Levin explained on his show, the Senate was actually meant to protect the interests of the individual states.  "The 17th amendment" was, Levin explained, a "disaster."  Back in the day, if an attorney general from a state took a specific position, the state's senator would follow suit in the Senate (which would've shot down ObamaCare).  Now, however, senators can do as they [...] please.  This "democratization" has severely weakened the American system.

Gretchen Whitmer was Democrats' poor choice to respond to Trump.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi is commonly referred to in Washington as a master tactician.  But like the partisan impeachment fiasco and the humiliating Iowa caucus disaster, her selection of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to deliver this year's response to President Trump's State of the Union address was a major strategic misstep. [...] But if you bothered to watch the speech, you might have noticed that instead of following up with an example of her work to fulfill this campaign promise, Whitmer instead pivoted to what other Democratic governors are doing in other states — for example, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.  Whitmer didn't highlight her own work in Michigan [...] and that's because she failed to gather any support, from either party, for her 45-cent gas tax proposal, which would have left Michigan with the highest gas tax in the nation.

Fall Election About Personal and National Sovereignty.  As the Democrats try to sort out the hash they made of the Iowa caucuses — like the impeachment of President Donald Trump, a political mess entirely of their own making — a larger question looms over the fall election:  Will the United States remain a republic or will it molt into a plebiscitary "democracy"?  In the teeth of a constant battering from the left that seeks to call nearly every aspect of the American system of governance into question, the real question to be decided this fall is not Trump versus the Democrats' Your Name Here.  Rather, it's about the Constitution versus an entirely different political structure that may still go under the name of the United States of America, but in fact will be an entirely different country, bearing no more resemblance to the America of the founders than modern Rome does to the Roman Republic.  None of these pressing political issues, including Trump's evanescent impeachment, the critical function of the Electoral College, the proper role of the Senate, and the chaotic but yet somehow always predictable way in which one of the major parties insists on choosing its standard bearer, is occurring in a vacuum.

Insurgent 70-somethings Trump, Sanders have upset Biden's conventional apple cart.  [Scroll down]  Have you heard Obama ardently campaign against the party's current direction?  Or in support of his vice presidential partner for eight years, as Bill Clinton did for Al Gore?  Well, no, actually, you haven't.  The modern American political reality is that the Republican and Democratic parties today are basically just brand names.  They've become hollow, fundraising fuselages of once vibrant organizations that get captured every four or eight years by someone new with a contemporary personality packaged for the times.

The Cult of Western Shaming.  [Scroll down]  By 2015, the EU was a mess, so China was preordained as the inevitable global superpower.  American intellectuals pointed to its high-speed rail transportation, solar industries and gleaming airports, in contrast to the hollowed-out and grubby American heartland.  Now the curtain has been pulled back on the interior rot of the Chinese Communist Party, its gulag-like re-education camps, its systematic mercantile cheating, its Orwellian surveillance apparatus, its serial public health crises and its primitive hinterland infrastructure.  After the calcification of the Soviet Union, Japan Inc., the EU and the Chinese superpower, no one quite knows which alternative will next supposedly bury America.

Obama Stole an Election, Not Trump.  [Scroll down]  It's long been noted that anytime Democrats accuse Trump or Republicans of something, it's the Democrats who are actually guilty of it.  A scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama's IRS helped him get reelected. [...] The effectiveness of the Tea Party, combined with Obama's relatively small margin of victory in key swing states, suggests that the IRS's suppression of the Tea Party movement likely tipped the scales in favor of Obama.  "Had the Tea Party repeated and built on their activism of 2009 and 2010 in 2011 and 2012, Obama would have lost the election.  What happened to the Tea Party boost?  It didn't grow from 2010.  It appeared to weaken," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform wrote in his book, End The IRS Before It Ends Us.  "The Tea Party didn't fall down the stairs.  It was pushed."

Ruling Class Held Hostage by Trump's Impeachment.  Since the Reagan era, the American Ruling Class has succeeded in electing George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, all of whom were members in good standing.  Thus, by 2016 the ruling elites were thoroughly entrenched and dominant throughout the halls of power.  They were prepared to govern this nation for many years to come as one of the flaws in the magnificent governing blueprint set up by the founding fathers was the reality that this government can only function with just two major political parties.  Both political party hierarchies had and fully intended to continue nominating candidates for the presidency and Congress who were either beholden to or members of the ruling class.  The rank and file voters were left with only superficial differences in the choice of candidates.  The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was an act of defiance and a rebellion by the deplorables and a devastating blow to the ruling elites.

Obama Prefers a Republican President.  During the 2008 election campaign, the party was divided into two major camps:  the left-centrist and more traditional wing supporting Clinton and the openly far-left, more energetic, and younger wing backing Obama. [...] Obama humiliated Clinton during the debate and his rallies.  The situation had reached a boiling point, as hatred between clans could cost the Democratic Party elections.  Formal reconciliation and the unification of groups around Obama took place in the house of the skilled apparatchik Dianne Feinstein.  It was decided that Obama would become the candidate for the Democrats, and Clinton would receive an important and prestigious post of secretary of state in the case of a victory.  Obama followed Sun Tzu's advice, keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.  Of course, formal reconciliation did not lessen Obama's and Clinton's deep hostility to each other, but they played the roles of good comrades in front of the public exceptionally.

Illinois pensions 101: Paltry contributions yield million-dollar payouts.  Illinois' pension crisis is the worst in U.S. history — which raises the question, "Why?"  First, because public employees pay very little toward their own retirement and assume none of the economic risk for investments.  Second, because workers retire relatively young so they are drawing from the systems longer.  And third, because they receive pension benefits often in excess of $2 million during the course of their long, generous retirements.  Ultimately, this poorly designed system is bad for the retirees.  They face a serious risk that the pension systems will go insolvent.

Paging Laura Ingraham:  An Alaska Senate Seat Is Yours for the Taking In 2022.  Everyone in Alaska already knows who Laura Ingraham is, and they all like her.  Name recognition isn't an issue.  They also know who Lisa Murkowski is — and they can't stand her.  The Republican Party machinery in Alaska is cowed by her, but an outsider need not care.  Someone like Laura Ingraham could walk in and just take the seat.

An Introduction to Q.  If you're unfamiliar with Q or only know it through the media's attacks, I'd like to provide a brief introduction to this extraordinary phenomenon.  I've followed Q since the first drop, and I've grown increasingly impressed by the accuracy, breadth and depth of Q's messages.  Q followers were prepared long in advance for the easing of hostilities with North Korea, the deflation of the mullahs of Iran, and the discovery of Ukraine as a hotbed of corruption for American politicians.  They knew a great deal about Jeffrey Epstein's activities before the public did and anticipate even more shocking revelations to come.  As Q likes to say, "Future proves past."  As Q's predictions come true, they lend retroactive credibility to the entire enterprise.  Q's followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information.

A Tale of Two Terrorists.  Osama bin Laden deserved to die.  Only the fringe of the fringe disagree with this statement (looking at you, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn), which is why no one seemed to mind when Seal Team 6 invaded Pakistan to upgrade his train ticket to Hell to first class. [...] The country was ecstatic, justice had finally come to the man with the blood of 3,000 Americans on his hands.  Almost immediately, the raid was politicized to benefit President Barack Obama.  After all, he was facing re-election.  Democrats in and out of the media had themselves a new catchphrase: "gutsy call." [...] Now compare that to the reaction from those very same people to the operation that killed another terrorist mastermind, one with the blood of at least 600 American soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians around the world, Qasem Soleimani. [...] Iran shooting down a Ukrainian airliner and watching Democrats blame America for it was just the cherry on top.

One missile.  One Iranian regime change.  The death of Qasem Soleimani may have done more than lop the head off Iran's terrorism forces.  The regime change foreshadowed by a trucker's strike last June may come to fruition.  The Jerusalem Post reported, "A group of Iranian protesters demanded Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei step down on Saturday after Tehran said that its military had mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian plane, killing all 176 people on board.  'Commander-in-chief [Khamenei] resign, resign,' videos posted on Twitter showed hundreds of people chanting in front of Tehran's Amir Kabir university.  This is the first protest since the assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.  Last November, hundreds were killed in protests in multiple cities across the Islamic Republic.

Nationalism Is Looking Pretty Normal Right Now.  The recent troubles with Iran highlight the problem with America First nationalism: it would mean placing the interests of regular people at home before transnational "interests" like foreign wars that have no bearing on middle-American life.  Put another way, real people living in a real country with real interests of their own have a real problem with really stupid government and the real Stupid Party, otherwise known as the Republicans, that enables bad government while pretending to stand against it.  Americans generally have no desire to see the blood of their children spilled on the altar of the foreign policy establishment.  Not so "democracy" can be spread around the globe, whatever that means, and certainly not so that sovereign states may be compelled into "acting like a normal country," as Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has said of Iran — not least of all when "normal" is defined by a government that provides millions in taxpayer funds for abortion and to inject children with puberty-suppressing, opposite-sex hormones, rendering them permanently infertile.

WW3 didn't happen but something else did.  The reaction to Soleimani's death has proved more destructive than the original strike itself.  It has already caused one mass casualty funeral stampede born of crowds eager to prove how beloved the late IRGC chief was; an Iranian missile volley that fortunately missed the town of Hit fired by the ayatollahs for face saving reasons and one accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian jetliner killing nearly 200 passengers in vigilance of an American strike that never came.  It also precipitated a nonbinding Congressional resolution "asserting that President Donald Trump must seek approval from Congress before engaging in further military action against Iran."

On Soleimani, President Trump Did the Right Thing.  James R. Hannibal flew the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the B-2 Spirit (stealth bomber), and the MQ-1 Predator UAV.  During that time, he worked numerous classified assignments and spent time as a mission planning cell chief, intelligence liaison, stealth materials liaison, and weapons and tactics officer.  He commented to American Thinker, "Americans need to understand that Qassem Soleimani was evil, a known terrorist, and proudly wore the blood of Americans on his hands.  Our intelligence surrounding this individual leaves no doubt about these facts.  This is intelligence that the politicians loudly mourning his death have access to, so they should know better.  That makes their betrayal all the worse.  They would sell out the memory of fallen Americans for their own political gain.  I have seen American blood spilt by Soleimani's proxy action with my own eyes.  I have wept over that blood on the worst day of my military career.  Any politicians pretending this man was anything but a bloodthirsty terrorist deserving of death have betrayed this nation and the people they claim to serve."

Iran's miscalculation.  It is hard to understand Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei's blunder in attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad.  He either believed Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as western liberal Media breathlessly and continuously reported, or he might have been misled by John Kerry's incompetent advice (apparently Kerry met again with Khamenei's emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably.  Iran desperately wanted a war — drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's heart of oil production, false-flag hits on oil tankers, unrest in Yemen — all aimed at this goal.  Trump restraint in responding to these provocations must have been disappointing.  But as Tehran resorted to attack the US Embassy in Baghdad, it must have realized it had overplayed its hand when the reaction was surgical, devastating, and unexpected:  the elimination of the mass murderer Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, Khamenei's right-hand man and chief executioner.

Maybe This Cycle Will Force a Change in Which States Vote First in the Primaries.  There's a good chance that two months from now, every delegate in the first four contests will have gone to one of four white candidates:  Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg.  This might just be enough to spur some serious talk of changing the order of primary states — if not for insufficient ethnic diversity in those first four states, then out of the general sense that 46 other states would like a turn going earlier.  But as far as it goes, those first four are lacking some features found in many other parts of the country.  As Castro observed, "I've gotten asked more about ethanol in Iowa than I ever have about mass transit or transportation."

The Editor says...
Wow.  This is the first time I've heard a writer complain about "insufficient ethnic diversity" in specific states.  Is there now a racial quota for each state?  As if every state must have the same percentages of ethnic groups or something's wrong with them.  Too many white people = bad.  Too many minorities = impossible!  It sounds like the writer (in the National Review) watches too much television:  TV commercials are filmed in a world where all the heroes are black, all the villains are white, and women live in spotless houses without a man to be seen — except for the prowler outside who is always a white male.

Tucker Carlson's Inane Claims About the Soleimani Raid.  To say this point of view is hopelessly naïve would be too charitable.  It's one thing to abjure nation building, but the isolationist belief that the United States can safely retreat from all "foreign entanglements" is pure fantasy.  Carlson clearly doesn't get this.  First, it would not make us safe!  It's hard to believe that this isn't obvious to anyone old enough to remember September 11, 2001.  Unless one is naïve enough to accept Osama bin Laden's propaganda — that it was the result of our presence in the Middle East — it should be clear that fighting our enemies abroad renders us safer at home.  Moreover, the 9/11 attacks were hardly our first exposure to this reality.  American isolationism in the 1930s led directly to Pearl Harbor.

Soleimani Schemed Against America As His World Crumbled.  Qassem Soleimani's demise came as his life project — spreading the Islamic Republic's zeal in the Mideast and beyond — was crumbling.  That doesn't mean the Iranian general couldn't, or wouldn't, have wreaked the kind of harm that the Trump administration felt it needed to preempt.  It may even explain why Soleimani has been on such a manic campaign.  In any event, shortly after the drone kill at Baghdad airport was confirmed, Secretary of State Pompeo re-tweeted a video of gleeful Iraqis who had awakened at at 4:30 a.m. in Baghdad and proceeded to march at the city's Tahrir Square.  There they celebrated the death of the arch-terrorist who sought to dominate their country.

Democrats still delusional about Trump even after Qassem Soleimani death.  The calendar turns and a decade begins, but there is nothing new under the sun in Washington.  Even the killing of an Iranian mass murderer is cause for more partisan strife.  In a sane country, which America used to be, there would be shared sober satisfaction over the elimination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani.  Yet Democrats apparently outsourced their reactions to robots, whose script called for conceding that the departed was a very bad man, but prohibited approval of President Trump's decision to take him out.  Instead, the quibblers' chorus raised questions of timing and expressed fear of escalation and retaliation.  In the context of Iran's military aggression and Soleimani's bloody hands, there is another word for that fear:  appeasement.

No, killing Soleimani doesn't mean war.  Everybody knows Donald Trump is going to start a war.  His critics have been saying so since his first year in office — remember the war with North Korea they predicted right after Trump tweeted about unleashing 'fire and fury' on the Little Rocket Man?  That war didn't happen.  Nor did an insurgency break out when President Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an act that the Trump haters were certain would incite waves of violence and unquenchable turmoil.  But maybe the third time's the charm — maybe the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, in a US airstrike in Iraq will finally give the president's detractors the war they've been anticipating.  Or maybe not — maybe the critics are just as wrong as they've been every other time: about wars that Trump didn't start, about collusion with Russia that didn't happen, about the crash of America's economy... the list goes on.  The president should be reassured to have enemies who are so reliably wrong.

The Episcopal Church's Fruits of Heresy.  Anglican author David Virtue, a longtime critical observer of worldwide Anglicanism, reviews the Episcopal Church's decades-long fall from grace in an exposé of Christian folly in accommodating a secularized, sexualized modernity.  Virtue tells the depressing, detailed "story of a once proud Christian denomination that stood as a landmark church in a nation that has seen presidents, senators and business leaders pass through its hallowed red doors."  "Spiritual and ecclesiastical death marks the present and future state of this denomination" today as Episcopal Church membership has cratered from a 1966 peak of 3,647,297, to 1,676,349 in 2018.  Particularly the 2003 consecration of noncelibate homosexual V. Gene Robinson as an Episcopal bishop unleashed an "ecclesiastical tsunami wave" and the "worst single outflow of Episcopalians in modern history," over 100,000.  In an Episcopal Church "intoxicated with the spirit of the age," 31 percent of Episcopalians according to the latest statistics are 65 or older while 79 percent do not have a child under 18.

A Prediction About the Coming Split in the Methodist Church.  If the reports are true, then "a tentative plan" has been put in place "to split the [Methodist] church over differences on same-sex marriage and the inclusion of gay clergy." [...] Assuming that this split actually takes place, what will happen to these two branches, one conservative and the other liberal?  The answer is easy, based on history and common spiritual sense.  History says that the conservative branch will grow and the liberal branch will diminish.

Why the USA Needs a Space Force.  An ICBM is a weapon that attacks from space.  During its flight, an ICBM follows an elliptical orbit around the Earth.  It is based on land for convenience and because of arms control (proper control, I might add).  We have learned to live with ICBMs as a deterrent to all out war.  In the meantime, the U.S. has developed major space frontier vulnerabilities of a completely different kind.  Space has become the purveyor of information that we need for our very survival.  There are three types of information that have become critical:  1) observation of activities on Earth and in space, 2) secure communications, and 3) Global Positioning System navigation and timing.

The Editor says...
If we're paying for a Space Force, we no longer need NASA.

The Pope's Mask Falls Again.  Jorge Bergoglio is not so much the pope of the common man as a friend to the globally powerful.  He disdains the most devout members of his faith, labeling them "rigid," while rolling out the red carpet for thugs and pagan celebrities.  Not a week passes without the pope meeting and greeting some enemy of the faith.  The media, for the most part, continues to serve as his PR agents.

Our Lady of Perpetual Impeachment vs.  America.  During this coming year our nation is likely to be shaken to its foundations either by the indictment and trials of powerful individuals, or by the lack thereof.  The left may stop threatening to kill the president and actually do it.  It is quite possible that our southern borders will be overrun.  It's even more likely that we will be traumatized again and again by Islamic incursions, both anti-Semitic and anti-American.  It's looking like some terrible showdown is brewing in Virginia over the right to bear arms, and who knows what will happen with Iran, North Korea, or China?  We must choose our leadership wisely. [...] Were there a viable, responsible, clear-thinking candidate to run against Trump in November, small things might make the difference.  But this year we choose between a man who has been doing the job splendidly and Corruption Central.

Morality and the Presidency.  [Scroll down]  President Trump has been accused of "womanizing," but such behavior was rampant with John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  What is more, even if the accusations against Trump are true, one would be hard-pressed to argue that they somehow threatened the security of the United States or compromised his presidency.  This was not the case with John Kennedy.  Kennedy was purportedly on the precipice of being compromised as a result of his cavorting with an East German communist spy (and others with connections to organized crime) while he was president.  Had this been publicly disclosed it would almost certainly have ended his presidency.  It could be argued that Kennedy fell in the only way that allowed Camelot to rise.  That image inspired a generation.  President Kennedy did not die in disgrace, but had he lived he may well have been forced to resign the presidency in disgrace (or suffer defeat in the 1964 election).

The Many Faces of Scientific Fraud.  Any scientific article must be considered a reconstruction, an account, a clear and precise narrative, a good story.  But the story is often too good, too logical, too coherent.  In a way, all researchers are cooks, given that they cannot write a scientific article without arranging their data to present it in the most convincing, appealing way.  The history of science is full of examples of researchers embellishing their experimental results to make them conform to simple, logical, coherent theory.

Watch Venezuela's Dramatic Economic Plunge Under Democratic Socialism.  Economist Mark Perry has been putting together a series of intriguing animated charts to show changes over time in everything from recorded music formats, Social Security spending, to top manufacturing nations.  Over the weekend, Perry posted his latest animated chart, this one showing per capita GDP among Latin American countries.  Pay close attention to the highlighted bar, which represents Venezuela.  [Video clip]

Christianity Today vs. the Myth of Monolithic Evangelicalism.  Thirty-five percent of Americans identify as Evangelical, Pew Research finds.  But only a fraction of them, or 6 percent of the U.S. population, are Evangelical according to Barna, a Christian research organization that applies nine theological criteria (e.g., firm belief that Satan exists).  It classifies a respondent as Evangelical only if he or she meets all of them.  Christianity Today is a magazine for that 6 percent, David [French] writes:  Its recent newsmaking editorial (in which Mark Galli, CT's editor in chief, argues that the president should be removed from office) "is aimed like an arrow at that audience," which represents the publication's "colleagues and peers."  That may be.  We shouldn't assume, though, that Evangelicals who disagree with the editorial are less committed to their faith.

Democrats actively rolling out scheme to remove VP Mike Pence so they can install Nancy Pelosi, then Hillary Clinton as President.  The criminal coup scenario I warned you about has finally arrived.  A scheme is now active to convict Trump and remove V.P. Mike Pence from power, then install Nancy Pelosi as president.  Once there, she will appoint Hillary Clinton as her V.P. with no resistance from the Senate, then she will resign, making Hillary Clinton the president.  I warned about this exact scenario in an earlier article entitled, "It's ON: The deep state plot to install Hillary Clinton as PRESIDENT this year, bypassing elections altogether."  As many Natural News have come to realize, I have excellent sources deep inside the bureaucracy, and they fill me in on what's going down.  That's the only way I was able to write the following words over two months ago, almost word-for-word what we just witnessed with the fake impeachment by the House: [...]

The Editor says...
Come on, now.  This scenario presupposes complete cooperation (at every step) from the spineless RINOs in the Senate.  That would never happen, right?

How Democrats Could Undo Trump's Lasting Legacy in the Courts.  Aside from the well-known power to impeach judges, Congress can also pack the Supreme Court.  Yet it apparently has still another power, one little known:  to abolish entire federal courts.  The only federal court mandated by the Constitution is the SCOTUS; as to "inferior courts," Article III states that Congress "may from time to time ordain and establish" them, which it has often done.  But implied is that what Congress can make, it can unmake; or, as the Legal Information Institute puts it, the Houses can both "expand and contract the units of the system" (emphasis added).

Barr is on the case.  Attorney General William Barr sat for an extended interview with NBC's Pete Williams to discuss the findings in the Department of Justice Inspector General report released yesterday afternoon.  NBC has cut the thing up in a couple of stories, but it has also posted the whole thing on YouTube.  Barr is familiar with the evidence gathered so far; he knows what he's talking about.  He understands that what we have staring us in the face is an unprecedented political scandal.  He tentatively anticipates the criminal investigation reaching "a watershed" by late spring or early summer.  I urge interested readers to watch the whole thing.  The interview is invaluable in its entirety.  I'm not sure whether Pete Williams is just playing the fool for purposes of the interview, whether he is a fool, or whether he is handicapped by the fact that he gets his news from NBC News.  Whatever the case, everything he elicits from Barr is of interest.

Tucker Carlson's Critique Of Paul Singer Is Part Of The Reckoning Underway In America.  Tucker Carlson is perhaps the only major media figure in America willing to attack across party lines to make his point.  On Tuesday night he went after Republican mega-donor Paul Singer in a withering 10-minute special segment on how Singer destroyed a small town in Nebraska in a hostile takeover of the sporting goods retailer Cabela's.  For those who don't know, Singer is a New York hedge fund manager who has made billions as a so-called "vulture capitalist," buying up the sovereign debt of financially distressed countries at a discount and then cashing in later, using lawsuits to pressure governments to pay up.  He's done something similar with U.S. firms — buying up debt, shipping jobs overseas, firing American workers and cashing out — in some cases at taxpayer expense.

New Zealand:  Not the Paradise Americans Think It Is.  I will tell you right now that Americans craving a move to New Zealand — who nonetheless love their Constitution and Bill of Rights, 'til death do us part — need to cancel all of those plans immediately, and don't ever look back.  In New Zealand, as well as in Australia, we do not have the comprehensive search and seizure protections Americans are granted by their Fourth Amendment.  What results is that the New Zealand police regularly deploy roadblocks — euphemistically called "checkpoints" — which infringe on you being able to go about your daily driving business unmolested by the state.  At all of these roadblocks, the intention of the police is to find ways to either drag you away in handcuffs (failed drug tests or carrying contraband) or shank your bank account (fines for expired warrants of fitness, expired registrations, etc.) in order to help the government compensate for their — by global police standards — very high salaries.

Robocalls on the rise:  Americans get 18 spam calls per month, report says.  The United States is again the eighth-most-spammed nation in the world and the annoying calls are on the rise, according to a new report.  Americans received 7% more spam calls in 2019 compared to the year before, said Truecaller, a Swedish company that tracks spam calls, but hung on to their ranking from the last annual report.  The report Tuesday comes after efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to crackdown on robocalls, which are the No. 1 complaint consumers make to the agency.

The Editor says...
The Editor gets four or five such calls every day.  Each call comes from a different number, so there is no way to block them based on the number alone.  Many of the calls come with obviously spoofed Caller-ID information, because the alleged calling number is invalid.  (For example, a call came in this morning from 800-174-2604.  How would one complain about it?  There is no such number.)  Sometimes the Caller-ID shows my name and number.  The Editor was one of the first to sign up for the National Do No Call Registry, which is a sham and a farce.  The calls have never slowed down.  In most cases, the telemarketing calls are placed by machines.  The machines sometimes pretend to be people and if you play along, they will carry on a conversation.  Sometimes the machines have apparently called a dozen numbers, and the person in the telemarketing "boiler room" talks to the first party who answers the phone, and hangs up on the rest.  Sometimes the telemarketer is obviously calling from a crowded and noisy room in India, claiming that his name is Steve or Larry or George, and he's calling from Microsoft.  The Editor sometimes engages these callers for a few minutes, just to waste their time, ruin their averages, and keep someone else from being annoyed.  The Editor is still paying the phone company 50 cents a month for "Anonymous Call Rejection," which does not work.  The Editor should write a book.

The Great American Eye-Exam Scam.  [Scroll down]  On the one hand, some number of Americans who visit an optometrist to get a new prescription will indeed discover that they have a serious condition that requires immediate care.  On the other hand, it is likely that a much greater number keep wearing glasses that are too weak — or won't wear glasses at all — because they want to avoid the cost, time, or stress of a visit to a doctor.  I have not been able to find any studies that credibly assess how this barrier affects Americans' quality of life.  But it's reasonable to assume that it has an adverse impact on many people, especially underprivileged Americans — those who don't have insurance, have little cash, or lack the social or financial capital to navigate our country's byzantine medical system.

A 'Farm Kid' Thwarts the Coup.  If a full and fair analysis of the Trump-Russian collusion hoax ever is conducted, it will reveal the collateral damage suffered by innocent people ensnared by the wicked, multi-faceted operation launched by Barack Obama's White House in the spring of 2016.  There are plenty of infuriating passages in The Plot Against the President, a must-read book by journalist Lee Smith.  But the description of how the hoax plotters targeted the family of Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) evokes particular outrage.

How Our Administrative State Aids Communist China.  [Scroll down]  Concerned with what the report discovered hiding in plain sight, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said:  "China wins twice.  First, the American taxpayer funds China's research and development.  Second, China uses that research to improve its economic and military status."  Equally disconcerted, his colleague on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) warned "there are serious consequences that come from giving a foreign government so much control over the vital research we rely on to drive our country's economic competitiveness and bolster our national defense."

JFK's Assassination Only Grows More Distant at Dallas's Sixth Floor Museum.  [Scroll down]  Finally, there is a lull in the traffic, and the men sprint into the street, moving as briskly as their stiff-looking boots will allow, with their hands reflexively holding onto the brims of their Stetsons.  One of them breaks off from the pack, readying his phone.  The other two plant themselves on the large X that has been crudely affixed to the middle lane with reflective tape.  There's some debate about its accuracy; the X moves a little whenever the road is repaved, replaced each time by still-mysterious sources.  But it supposedly marks the precise spot where President John F. Kennedy was hit by a fatal headshot on a sunny November day much like this one.  With the faded red-brick building of the former Texas School Book Depository stationed picturesquely behind them, the two men position their feet on either side of the X, and throw their arms around each other's shoulders.  As their friend snaps away, they smile.  It's a grim yet familiar scene, one that plays out many times per day here — like Dallas's own morbid version of Abbey Road.

The Editor says...
The scene of the JFK assassination is the most popular tourist attraction in Dallas, even though it is never advertised as such.  The tourists are welcome, I guess, but when they impede traffic they are annoying.  And since there are always cameras around, "Deadly Plaza" has become a popular location for political protests and news conferences.  The official explanation of the JFK assassination does not add up.  There are several credible alternative explanations which point to various kids of conspiracies, and numerous sub-plots and loose ends that most people have never heard of.

Adam Schiff's Terribly, Horribly, Painfully Transparent Back-Tracking.  If you have liberal family members around for this weeks Thanksgiving feast and celebration it would be wise to understand the scale of their disappointment, even if they have yet to recognize it.  Perhaps the best course will be just smiling.

Netanyahu's Indictment Is a Fraud.  The indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was announced today did not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.  Israeli politics have become less workable and less democratic over time.  What we are seeing here is an attempted coup by the Israeli version of the Deep State.

Another feminist movie bombs at the box office.  [Scroll down]  I have not seen and don't plan to see this movie.  I saw one trailer about the "superwoman" theme and decided that watching a Stars hockey game was better for me.  Why are young women staying away?  My guess is that a lot of young women are sick and tired of the message.  So I have a message for the people of who financed this movie:  First, stop making films with predictable dialogue.  We know that Hollywood hates Trump and believes in climate change.  How many times do you have to tell us directly or indirectly?  Second, I would change the title overseas to something like "Charlie's Angels Defends the World from Trump."

How to Launder Foreign Aid.  [Scroll down]  All the former government buildings in and around Monrovia were shells, as destitute Liberians had stripped bombed buildings for whatever they could use or sell to scrapyards.  The two-story airport terminal structure had been bombed and gutted down to the concrete floors and columns during the war.  The Liberian Customs office at the airport was a two-car garage-sized structure with a single 25-watt lightbulb barely illuminating the area.  There were three desks, two with signs that read:  No bribes taken at this desk.  There was a single customs official present but she wasn't sitting at a desk with a sign. [...] Customs agents don't take bribes at those desks with signs but it is apparently perfectly fine to take bribes at desks without signs.  And if an American Embassy dumps taxpayer funds into a foreign company's operational account, isn't that how you launder money?

Democratic Debate Winners and Losers.  MSNBC went full "woke" with their production of Wednesday night's [11/20/2019] primary debate.  They held the event at Tyler Perry's historic Atlanta film studios — a seeming nod to the Black community although they perplexingly left out nearly any mention of Black voter issues — and they had an all women panel of moderators, led by Rachael Maddow.  Again, there was a perplexing lack of questions surrounding the issues you'd think most Democrat-voting women would be curious about... outside of the sacred abortion questions.

Americans Should Remember the Ninth Amendment.  The animating principle of the Ninth Amendment is one that, as Justice Stevens wrote, "goes to the very core of the constitutional relationship between the individual and governmental authority." Although the Ninth Amendment has only rarely been explicitly invoked by the Supreme Court, you can see its fingerprints on many of the Court's decisions.  The Court's protection of unenumerated fundamental rights that are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" acknowledges that today, as at the time of the Founding, listing every one of a person's rights is impossible.

The Media Are Missing the Biggest Story Since the Fall of the Soviet Union.  Attorney General Bill Barr enunciated the anti-liberal manifesto at a speech before the Federalist Society.  Barr offers an ideological explanation for the rebellion against the establishment in a way Trump, being Trump, never could.  As such it is the first genuinely post-Trump political development in conservative ranks.  The Barr declaration means the attempt to isolate the causes of the 2016 rebellion to one man has decisively failed.  It is now a cause of its own, bigger than Trump.

The Department of Defense Joins the Coup Cabal.  Since the Vietnam fail, the Gulf War had to be fought twice.  Iraq is still a hot mess.  Syria has become another divided, surrogate killing field.  After thirty years of American campaigning, Afghanistan is arguably worse off today than it was under Soviet occupation.  Libya is still a smoldering Obama/Clinton era ruin.  Now, North Africa has another Specified Command bureaucracy and another spasm of pyric small wars.  And the global, so-called, "war on terror" might be the longest and most expensive bad joke in the history of military inertia.  Adding insult to insanity, we now have a new Cold War with Russia.  Much of this came to pass with [General James] Mattis and company at the helm in the Pentagon.

Bernie Sanders Goes Full AOC: 'Time for Us to Become the Party that Fights for Queer Liberation'.  In the campaign for the 2020 presidential elections, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has joined forces with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow members of the so-called "Squad." [...] She connects all those issues to FDR, a guy who literally did nothing to help "queer liberation," and who (rightfully!) dragged his fellow countrymen into a new world war.  You can certainly say that FDR helped establish peace and prosperity, but he only did so after declaring war on the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan).  Yes, yes, Harry Truman finished the job.  True.  But without FDR, America's involvement in the Second World War may have been much more limited than it was.  And that's not all — other Democrats were also quite warlike.  Woodrow Wilson (World War I).  FDR (World War II).  JFK (Bay of Pigs).  LBJ (Vietnam).  Bill Clinton (Yugoslavia).  Barack H. Obama (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan).

The Establishment Hates Russia.  [Scroll down]  It's true that Russia is neither England, France, or Mexico for that matter.  We are not at war with Russia, but our relations are less-than-friendly.  Western elites' chief problem with Russia is that it has not complied with the script Western advisors provided after the downfall of Communism.  Russia was supposed to embrace the ever-changing kaleidoscope of modern values, including capitalism, secularism, multiculturalism, and sexual liberation.  Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia did exactly that, but these reforms led to chaos during the 1990s.  A handful of oligarchs became rich by looting the country, while prosperity declined and gangsters ruled the streets.  Vladimir Putin restored law and order, as well as Russia's ability to project power abroad.  Now Russia is a moderately authoritarian county that is largely white, nationalist, conservative, and increasingly Christian.  As such, it is an obstacle to the Western elites' desire to make the whole world look like San Francisco.

Stanford professor who changed America with just one study was also a liar.  Susannah Cahalan is the author of "The Great Pretender" about famed psychology professor David Rosenhan, whom she discovered while on a book tour for her memoir, "Brain on Fire."  The book chronicled her experiences with doctors who believed her autoimmune disorder was a serious mental illness.

Time for Conservatives to Build Their Own Hollywood.  It's time for conservatives and what Kurt Schlicter calls the "Normals" to have an entertainment industry of their own.  Hollywood has effectively divorced conservatives (and the Normals).  And after a divorce, as they say, "living well is the best revenge."  The question is how.  It's not easy and one of the big reasons is the conservative world itself.  Conservative financiers abjure the arts — indeed they seem even to fear them — unless it's putting money in their local philharmonic to have their name on a plaque in the lobby.  Problem is, we all love Beethoven but he doesn't need our help at this point.  Conservative fat cats also put a ton of money in think tanks that aren't particularly effective.  I don't mean to unnecessarily diss those tanks.  Some of my best friends are, etc., etc.... but the truth is, one good movie or television series is worth more than a hundred, or even a thousand, position papers when it comes to moving society.

The Editor says...
A conservative version of Hollywood is a nice idea, but it's not likely to materialize.  First of all, The Studios at Las Colinas was supposed to be the Bible Belt Hollywood.  At least that's the impression I got 20 years ago.  Secondly, how would a company run a conservative film-making operation without employing homosexuals, fornicators, druggies, and self-important egomaniacs — just like the other Hollywood?

The Looming '1984' Election.  For a variety of reasons, the 2020 election is going to be a referendum beyond Donald Trump's record and his Democratic opposition.  The furor that Trump has incurred, and the radical antithesis to his agenda and first term, have redefined the looming election.  It is becoming a stark choice between a revolutionary future versus American traditionalism. [...] In 2020 we will witness the penultimate manifestation of what radical progressivism has in store for us all — and the furious, often desperate, and unfettered pushback against it.

I Am the Anonymous Whistleblower.  [W]e Orthodox Jews, the fastest growing community of Jews in America, are deeply conservative.  Pro-life.  We oppose assisted suicide.  We are people of deep faith.  We live by the principle of personal responsibility.  We recognize only two genders.  We despise Communism and the socialist Left.  We love President Trump.  In the Democrat-predominant New York Tri-State area, more than 90 percent of Orthodox Jews are happy with Trump.  Even in radical left Los Angeles — Home of the Homeless, Turf of the Typhus — more than 70 percent of Orthodox Jews vote Trump.  We despise what the Democrats have done, particularly these past three decades, to destroy the social unity and moral fiber of our country.

How Libertarianism Makes People Susceptible To Huge Government.  [Scroll down]  For example, libertarian advocacy for legalizing drugs and prostitution seems to arise less from the prudential belief that suppressing these vices causes more harm than good than from a philosophical commitment to maximizing individual autonomy.  But hard drugs and prostitution are degrading, and they lessen the human capacity for responsible self-government.  In these and many other ways, today's libertarianism allows and even encourages the destruction of the virtues and associations necessary for successful self-government.

The reasons the IG report has been delayed will delight Trump supporters.  The continuing delays in releasing the Department of Justice Inspector General's report on the FISA warrant have discouraged a lot of conservatives.  But according to Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, whose sources on the ongoing scandal have been excellent, the reasons behind the delay are entirely positive.  Yesterday [11/6/2019] they appeared on Lou Dobbs's show on Fox Business Network, and laid it out.  [Video clip]

DiGenova and Toensing on Upcoming IG Report: "it's going to be worse than you can imagine".  Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing appeared on Fox News to discuss issues surrounding the ongoing investigations of Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Durham.  Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing bring the tick-tock hammer to the audience.  According to Ms. Toensing the upcoming IG report is going to be "very bad for people in the Obama administration."  Toensing went on to say, according to her sources, "it's going to be worse than you can imagine."  Mr. diGenova went on to say:  "it's going to be devastating" ... "it's going to ruin careers" etc.  Mr diGenova has a great deal of confidence in AG Barr, Horowitz and Durham.

The Editor says...
This cliff-hanging build-up to the upcoming IG report has been going on for weeks.  I'm ready to see bad things happen to bad people.  Bring it on, already.

No, Kentucky Isn't Turning Blue, Here's Why.  If you were on social media last night, you probably saw a lot of folks on the left celebrating that Kentucky, a deep red state, "had turned blue" because of the razor-thin victory of Democrat Andy Beshear over incumbent Republican Matt Bevin.  Let me just get it out of the way right now and tell you that Kentucky isn't turning blue.  The state hasn't been "flipped" or whatever else they're saying.  We've seen this narrative before.  When Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in the special election for Jeff Sessions' vacant Senate seat in 2017, many on the left seemed to interpret that election as a sign of Trump's weakness, and Alabama's competitiveness in future statewide elections.

How the World to the Dark Tower Came.  "California," argues Victor Davis Hanson, is "becoming pre-modern" despite ballooning government solutions.  Like fictional pre-modern societies, it is becoming a two-tier society; a landscape of fantastical castles amid a sea of peasants.  It is as if the technologically sophisticated components of the Golden State were creating its shadow of poor, homeless, drug-addicted and unskilled populations. [...] Yet in some respects, not only California but the whole global world is morphing into a similar two-tier arrangement.  This may be driven by something called knowledge inequality.  The processes by which a society produced its goods and governed itself were once common knowledge to a large percentage of the population.  But they are not now.

Mexican blood is on liberal hands.  Drug abusing Americans have turned Mexico into a narco-state.  Last night, a drug cartel murdered nine Mormons in Mexico in an attack that should shame America's potheads, meth-heads, and coke users.  The blood of the LeBaron family is on their hands.

Fall Back, Spring Ahead.  Get ready to go through the routine of turning the clocks back an hour this weekend.  Daylight savings time is leaving us... yet again.  Daylight savings time has been with us in the United States since the days of World War I.  It has seen several changes since then but still exists essentially in its original form.

Fall back, daylight saving time — You need to cease and desist.  Proponents of daylight saving time — which ends at 2 a.m.  Sunday — argue that it gives more daylight hours after a workday and decreases energy consumption.  But the negatives far outweigh any positives.  It's time to get rid of daylight saving time once and for all.

How America Will Win the Next 100 Years.  Use any measuring stick and you will find the United States leads the way.  We are number one in opportunity, quality of life, access to healthcare, academics, and diversity in intellectual and political thought — we even lead the world in dog and cat ownership. [...] But American superiority is not a message we have heard from the Democrats running for president.  What's worse is that it seems to be a notion they outright reject.  If America, and our ideals of freedom, are going to outwit the communists in China and the antagonists in Russia, then we must elect leaders who understand how we became number one in the first place.

Chang:  China is 'the Third Reich in the 21st Century'.  Scholar Gordan Chang warns that the United States must ultimately "disengage from China" on all fronts if it is to maintain its status as a global superpower or risk China's massive potential to change the geopolitical structure of the world.  Chang, who just returned from Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, spoke on The Sara Carter Show where he described the current state of Beijing and the authoritarian government's influence across the globe.  "This is the Third Reich in the 21st century," said Chang.  China's policy "is incompatibility with our system.  We are unfortunately going to have to reverse course and disengage from China to protect ourselves — to reduce our vulnerability to an extremely dangerous actor."

The First Four-Star Flag Officer in US History Joins the Effort to Void the Election of the US President.  From time to time, I like to promote the Combat Veterans for Congress Political Action Committee, as their cause is righteous.  I agree whole-heartedly with almost all of their stances on issues.  Here is one of those opinion pieces that I'm certain will resonate with you, too.  In fact, the topic makes me furious!

Black leaders say 'racist' Hoover's name has no business on new FBI HQ.  Black lawmakers want to strip J. Edgar Hoover's name from the proposed new FBI headquarters because they think he was a racist, outraging longtime agents who say America's culture of political correctness and victimhood has gone too far.  The fight is bursting into public view again as the FBI inches toward building a new headquarters, a plan that has been simmering for nearly a decade.

The Editor says...
Why does every government building have to be named after a bureaucrat or a politician?  No matter which name is chosen, eventually that name will fall out of favor.  It would be better to name a building, in an anti-Orwellian manner, after someone whose name we are supposed to forget.  Like Richard Jewell or Vince Foster.

There Is No Basis for Barr to Recuse Himself Over Ukraine.  If Dianne Feinstein didn't recuse herself from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, why should anyone ever be recused from anything?  Senator Feinstein is in the news, making the characteristically hyperpartisan and frivolous claim (on Twitter) that Attorney General Bill Barr should ["]recuse himself from matters related to Ukraine because of concerns about his role in President Trump's efforts to damage a political opponent and undermine the Russia investigation.["]  Feinstein says she is speaking for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, all of whom have signed a letter to the AG.  There is no basis for Barr to recuse himself.  First, before we ever get to the law, the Democrats' claim is factually vacant.  The AG has no role in President Trump's dealings with Ukraine. [...]

China's president's daughter is at Harvard.  That's a big warning sign.  [Scroll down]  For a princeling, if you married Xi's daughter, you would become consort to the empress, but there would be a downside:  you would be killed in any palace coup.  If Xi Mingze is at Harvard, that suggests that the project to get her married off has had pushback and that President Xi isn't having things going all his way.  Another problem with Xi establishing a dynasty is that all the other families living in the gated community in Beijing for China's elite, Zhongnanhai, would become less than equal, something that would stick in their craw more than the president-for-life thing.  The communist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe lasted about 70 years before they burned out, and it has been wondered if the 70-year rule will also apply to China.  The communist party in China recently celebrated 70 years since its founding, and it looks as if burnout is happening on cue.

Trump's greatest tweet ever:  Meet the dog who chased down Baghdadi.  How much did I enjoy this tweet?  Put it this way:  I'm thinking of voting for him next year now.  The dog, I mean.

The Post-Christian Pope and the Pacha Idols.  In his latest outrage, Pope Francis has had the police fish out of the Tiber the Pacha idols an anonymous Catholic removed from a church near St.  Peter's Square and threw into the river.  The writers at the Onion must be scratching their heads over how to satirize this one.  Their fake headlines can't beat the real ones, such as:  "Pope Francis asks for forgiveness after Amazon statues stolen, thrown into river."  His apology was of the most craven PC sort:  "As a bishop of the diocese, I ask forgiveness from the persons who were offended by this."  The post-Christian pope is rapidly making Rome pagan again.

The Democrats Are Neoconservatives Now.  When the establishment boot comes stomping, it's clear that party affiliation matters less to the swamp than loyalty to its dictates.  Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is a doctrinaire liberal in nearly every respect but one.  Yet what unites her and Trump is significant enough to make both targets of a machine bent on destroying them.  Last week, Gabbard became the center of an intra-party dispute after Hillary Clinton, the exiled queen of neoliberals, accused her of being a "Russian asset."  It was not the first time Gabbard was so libeled, but the attack, coming from Clinton, exposed a rift between the dominant international Left of apparatchiks who think that "Putin bad" is foreign policy, and the vanishing, historic anti-war Left that Gabbard exemplifies.

Take Tulsi Gabbard's explanation for not seeking reelection with a grain of salt.  Gabbard's decision not to seek reelection may have something to do with her longshot 2020 Democratic primary candidacy, which has never broken above 3% in surveys of potential Democratic primary voters, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.  But the congresswoman's announcement this week also certainly has something to do with her troubles at home, including declining fundraising and polling numbers, neither of which are mentioned in her official reelection statement.

Stop Claiming 'No Quid Pro Quo'.  Quid pro quo ... it's the new "by the book."  You remember "by the book," right? [...] That was the memorable phrase Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice emphasized in her notorious CYA memo.  Remember?  The memo took the form of an email.  She wrote it while clearing out of her White House office while Donald Trump was being inaugurated.  It purported to summarize a meeting more than two weeks earlier, when President Obama held an Oval Office pow-wow on next steps in the Trump-Russia investigation.  Fully aware that what they were orchestrating was highly irregular (the continuation of a probe targeting the new president even as he entered office), Rice took pains to note that Obama had insisted that everything be done "by the book."  It was a flashing neon sign that "the book" was being burned.  There is no "book" — no set of legit procedures and norms — that endorses the exploitation of executive investigative powers in the service of partisan politics.

GOP Has A Choice:  Fight Anti-Trump Coup Effort Or Surrender Government To Democrats.  What we are facing now is not partisan warfare, it's not a mystery novel, it's not politics-as-usual.  We are facing an attempt to tear down the foundations of our republic by corrupt, unelected bureaucrats who have decided the will of voters is subordinate to their will to power.  It represents a fatal threat to our system of government, and if this coup succeeds — whether through impeachment proceedings, or through an election that (if the last three years are any indication) the other side is clearly willing to steal by hook or by crook — the nation will cease to be a constitutional, democratic republic.  This isn't about Trump, or Republicans, or conservatives.  It is about Washington needing to learn that political differences have to be settled at the ballot box lest they instead be settled with an undermining of our constitutional norms and institutions.

The Truth About China That LeBron and the NBA Don't Understand.  [Scroll down]  Genocide is more than an "excessive measure," and Mao was unquestionably a bloodthirsty, genocidal maniac.  Over the years, I have heard similar statements regarding the Holocaust, minimizing it subtly, as if it wasn't so bad after all.  I couldn't let this go.  "'Excessive?'" I said, so that the full room of students and business executives could hear me.  "Let's be clear, Mao killed between 40 and 70 million of his own people."  Silence.  Total silence.  I felt like Ann Coulter at Berkeley or like Daryl Morey after his controversial tweet.  One Chinese student sitting next to me, a fellow who had been quite friendly while giving me a tour around the campus, literally backed away from me.  The economist paused, looked around the room and at the doors, and then continued nervously.  No one argued the point.  It was as if I had said nothing.  They were afraid.  This is what societies with a history of violence and repression look like even after they're somewhat liberalized.

Pompeo: The Term 'Human Right' is Being Used 'For Something That is a Mere Preference'.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says his department's new "Commission on Unalienable Rights," which held its first public meeting Wednesday, aims to develop a document by mid-2020 that will make clear what precisely are "fundamental human rights and why they matter so much to America."  The initiative comes at a time when repressive regimes around the world are subverting the concept of human rights — a point highlighted by Pompeo in a speech Tuesday [10/22/2019] at the Heritage Foundation, where he cited as an example the Maduro regime in Venezuela's recent election onto the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC).  He returned to the subject Wednesday during an interview on Tony Perkins' national radio show Washington Watch, citing the HRC election as an example of how humankind has "deviated" from what human rights actually are.

What Is Conservative American Nationalism?  As I suggest in a new book, Age of Iron, conservative American nationalism is the country's oldest foreign-policy tradition.  Designed to preserve American self-government, it always has been based on a recognition that the United States is an independent nation-state.  This means that the material integrity, security, prosperity, and health of the U.S. as a nation ought to be of real concern.  It also means that in formulating U.S. public policy, the interests of American citizens come first.  One might think this is obvious.  And for previous generations, across party lines, it was.  But in our own time, a great many public intellectuals — along with the now-dominant progressive wing of the Democratic party — have together decided otherwise.

Democrats Seek to Drown Trump in Drama.  Democrats are running their own version of a hostage scenario, only they've taken a sizable portion of the American public hostage to their eardrum-splitting insanity.  Their hope is to create a crushing wave of noise and disruption through the use of bogus impeachment screeds, relentless media attacks, Antifa violence, never-ending investigations, daily Deep State leaks, Intelligence Community hits, strategically placed partisan polls, and the rest of the tactics they are deploying.  That noise becomes overwhelming, which is the point.  The never-ending churn is intended to wear out America to where enough voters so desire a return to "normalcy" that they will submit and vote for the Democrat.  They are trying to force voters to wave the white flag.  Their hope is that drama-exhausted voters will blame President Trump for their misdeeds and pull the lever for the Democrat.

Imagine if the Federal Government Were Ever Broken Apart into 'Flyover Country'?  [Scroll down]  Given the popularity in some circles of a push to deploy anti-trust suits against Big Tech, [James] Piereson went one step further.  Why not go anti-trust on the biggest monopoly of them all?  And what would that be?  Why, the U.S. federal government, of course.  He did not advocate burning down the house — but relocating it.  That could be done, he suggested in so many words, by moving the Interior Department to Boise, Idaho; Transportation to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Treasury to Laramie, Wyoming; and the like.  This would severely restrict the ability of the Establishment (aka the Deep State) to plot in cabals to do injury to their preferred targets, such as President Donald Trump.  These days they walk a couple of blocks — and plan their skullduggery over a pricey lunch.

McRaven and Mattis:  The M&M's of Perpetual War.  Give writers their pens, soldiers their swords.  Do not, however, salute old warriors who write in defense of war without end.  Do not let retired admirals and generals end the peace with their pieces about the honors of war.  Not the horrors of war, of the dead and disfigured, of the living dead who have nothing but their discharge papers and paper prescriptions, of minds deadened by killing and bodies dying from painkillers.  Do not let Admiral William H. McRaven and General James Mattis blind us with their medals and stars.

These 3 Countries Tried Socialism.  Socialists are fond of saying that socialism has never failed because it has never been tried.  But in truth, socialism has failed in every country in which it has been tried, from the Soviet Union beginning a century ago to three modern countries that tried but ultimately rejected socialism — Israel, India, and the United Kingdom.

Is America Becoming Sinicized?  Westerners, who apologize when Islamists kill cartoonists and journalists for supposedly insulting Islam, do not say a word when China puts a million Muslims into re-education camps, bulldozes Islamic cemeteries and shuts down mosques.  Loud human rights lions in Europe turn into kittens when it is a question of Chinese organ harvesting, forced abortions and sterilizations, and the jailing and execution of dissidents.  American environmentalists demand a radical shutdown of the current fossil-fuel-based U.S. economy.  They say little about greenhouse gas emissions from China, the biggest polluter in the world by far.  Outspoken NBA athletes and hip Hollywood celebrities damn the Second Amendment, curse their president and boycott states they find politically incorrect.  But they become abject cowards when it comes to China.

Obama Broke NATO.  Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been fraying.  Without the common Soviet threat, NATO has struggled to justify its existence.  Frankly, it has outlived its usefulness.  Yet, despite what many of his detractors claim, President Donald J. Trump has not broken NATO.  That honor falls to Trump's vainglorious predecessor, Barack Obama, the man who presidential historian Michael Beschloss believed to have been the "smartest guy ever to become president."

Trump in a landslide?  This historically accurate model predicts exactly that.  President Donald Trump has a love/hate relationship with polls, surveys and predictions.  He loves the ones that paint him in a positive light, and, of course, he hates all those "fake" ones that don't.  He's going to absolutely adore this one.  According to Moody's Analytics, Trump is headed toward another four years in the White House.  And, if the numbers are right, it won't even be close.

The FBI Eagerly Accepted Foreign Interference — To Give A Third Term To FDR.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of the canonized saints of the Democratic Party, despite his long-known anti-Semitism, plus philandering that ranks him right up there with Democratic successors John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. [...] But the man Democrats consider the greatest president of the 20th century, the commander in chief who led the Allies to victory in the Second World War, and who established the country's most popular government entitlement, Social Security, did something that looks uncannily similar to what House Democrats are poised to impeach Trump for.

Is China Orchestrating the Democrats' Faux Impeachment Scheme?  China has not only compromised Biden, it is extremely likely that they are actively colluding with Democrats and the media to take down Trump.  Consider Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose financial ties to the Red Chinese are well-known through her husband, who somehow (like Hunter Biden) landed tens of millions of dollars in "investments" as she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Worse yet, China was able to implant a spy into her staff for about 20 years.  But, of course, she knew nothing.  We all know that President Trump is costing China a lot of money.  The media's unprecedented and insane attacks against Trump raise my Spidey-sense.

The Syrian Kurds Are Not America's Problem.  There has been much conflation of both the American mission in Syria and the disposition of America's erstwhile Kurdish friends.  The fact is, despite being the world's largest stateless ethnic population, sharing a contiguous landmass that cuts across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — roughly a 500,000-square-kilometer area — the Kurds are by no means a monolithic entity.  What's more, the United States government has never officially endorsed the concept of a Kurdish state in the Middle East.  Don't let those facts stop the experts from trotting out many falsehoods and half-truths about the messy situation that is Syria, though.

We're in a permanent coup.  On Thursday [10/10/2019], news broke that two businessmen said to have "peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden" were arrested at Dulles airport on "campaign finance violations."  The two figures are alleged to be bagmen bearing "dirt" on Democrats, solicited by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.  Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman will be asked to give depositions to impeachment investigators.  They're reportedly going to refuse.  Their lawyer John Dowd also says they will "refuse to appear before House Committees investigating President Donald Trump."  Fruman and Parnas meanwhile claim they had real derogatory information about Biden and other politicians, but "the U.S. government had shown little interest in receiving it through official channels." [...] The men who are the proxies for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in this story are asserting that "official channels" have been corrupted.  The forces backing impeachment, meanwhile, are telling us those same defendants are obstructing a lawful impeachment inquiry.

Think Twice before Buying Chinese Stocks.  The Trump administration recently floated the idea of delisting Chinese stocks in the U.S.  This was met with ridicule and hand-wringing not only from the usual political opponents, but also from mainstream business analysts.  Though delisting Chinese companies already listed on U.S. exchanges is problematic, there are good reasons besides being a bargaining chip in the trade dispute why the U.S. should be more stringent about any Chinese company listing on U.S. exchanges.

Google, Apple, ESPN, Hollywood & NBA Committing Treason With China.  America's major entertainment and tech corps have decided that they're not going to be patriotic.  They have no particular loyalty to America.  It's just where a lot of their markets and talent happen to live.  But it's not as if they're incapable of loyalty.  The statements by the NBA and EA touting Chinese nationalism, Apple and Google's decision to pull protest apps, Hollywood's eagerness to let Chinese Communist apparatchiks censor their scripts, make it clear that they are capable of loyalty.  Just not to America.

The people are still sovereign:  Only Trump gets that.  There are a lot of differences between the global threat Roosevelt defeated in Germany and the global threat Mr. Trump faces now in the Syrian civil war.  But one thing remains the same:  American voters are still in charge.  Therein lies the great political sickness of our time.  American voters of every stripe are nearly unified against U.S. involvement in these endless wars in places like Syria at the very same moment when American politicians in Washington of every stripe are nearly unified in favor of same said wars.  The disconnect between voters back home and politicians in Washington is cavernous.  Mr. Trump is one of the only politicians to hear the voice of the people and obey it.

Liberals' Tears For Kurds Ring Hollow After Vietnam.  As a veteran of the Vietnam War and the so-called secret war in Laos, I don't get upset thinking about how we lost the war.  That's because we didn't lose it.  We won it.  It was lost — thrown away — by liberal politicians besotted with hubris over from their success in forcing Nixon from office.  It was they who threw away our victory.

Can we keep our Republic?  [Scroll down]  First was James Comey's phony investigation of Hillary's felonious abuse of rules for handling sensitive government information.  Even worse was the press conference in which he laid out the obvious predicates of an indictment, then found a nonexistent "intention" proviso in the penumbras and emanations of the relevant statute, and then usurped the Attorney General's authority as to whether or not to indict by making the decision himself during the press conference.  The second violation has not been as commented on as it should be — the handling of the "hacked" DNC servers scandal.  We know the narrative, since it is regularly repeated even by conservative commentators:  Several of our intelligence agencies discovered that a Russian operative named Guccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC servers, and then via Wikileaks publicized the contents to embarrass Hillary and weaken the Democrats, the goal being to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election.  This has become a foundational dogma of the whole Russia collusion, foreign interference, Trump corruption tale that provides the flimsy rationale for the Trump-haters' invective and calls for impeachment.  But as George Parry summarizes in an important analysis, this claim is unsubstantiated by any forensic evidence.

Hey, Congress:  Take Back Your War Powers, Or Shut Up About Syria.  If you want to stop Donald Trump from making unilateral decisions regarding war and peace, then stop letting all presidents make unilateral decisions about war and peace.  It's really quite simple.  Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long ago, has no leverage to stop him.  When Congress passed the War Powers Resolution as the Vietnam War was winding down, it gave presidents the power to send troops abroad for 60 days in response to any "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."  If the president failed to gain congressional support for the deployment, he would have another 30 days to pull back troops.  Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, to debate where we send troops, and decide which conflicts are funded.

Five 'Gutsy Women' Who Didn't Make it into Hillary Clinton's Book.  [#4] Ayn Rand was born in Russia and was an eyewitness to the horrors inflicted by the Bolshevik Revolution.  By the time she emigrated to America in 1925, her core beliefs were established. [...] Her 1957 follow-up, Atlas Shrugged, portrayed a United States on the edge of collapse as a result of socialist and collectivist policies.  The novel proved to be enormously influential and stunningly prescient.  The election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the creeping socialist policies that followed caused the sales of Atlas Shrugged to spike.  To anyone who had read the dystopian novel, it all seemed depressingly familiar.

His doctors ordered an emergency flight by air ambulance.  His insurer wouldn't pay.  Yes, Americans pay more for healthcare than anyone else in the world.  Yes, for all those trillions of dollars spent annually, we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates than other developed countries — two key metrics for judging the effectiveness of a nation's healthcare.  But the thing that never ceases to astonish me is how needlessly cruel our system is.  I'm not just talking about the life-saving prescription drugs that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.  I'm talking about the small acts of greed and pettiness that make a bad situation for the sick even worse.

A Tale of Two Coups.  There appears to be a curious symmetry connecting both the blocking of Brexit, and the continued attempts to bring down a free and fair American election.  The same or different types of "deep state" involved on either side of the Atlantic is debatable, but the repeated attempts at a coup d'état against both the American President and the British Prime Minister have a lot in common, not least the desire to thwart the openly expressed wishes of the US and British electorates.

For the Soul of America, 'Shifty' Schiff Must Go.  Fake news media and Democrats have launched another lie-filled, treasonous silent coup to remove Trump from office.  On TV, Adam Schiff lied to the world, claiming that during a phone call Trump threatened the president of Ukraine.  Schiff said that Trump told the Ukraine president that if he did not dig up dirt on Joe Biden, he would hold back funds from Ukraine.  To the horror of Schiff, Democrats and fake news media, Trump made the unprecedented decision to publicly release the transcript of the phone call between himself and the Ukraine president.  The transcript proved that everything Schiff reported Trump said was a lie.  In an America in which truth and justice rule, Schiff would be politically tarred and feathered and run out of Washington D.C. on a rail.

Muslims hurl firebombs, burn tires as Jews pray at Joseph's Tomb.  This is the hatred, bigotry and barbarity in which Rep. Rashida Tlaib was raised.  Palestinian terrorism and Palestinian incitement against the Jews must be debated in the United States Congress.

The Pope's Pitiful Reign of Error.  A visit to the Vatican was once an awe-inspiring religious experience.  It now feels more like a trip to Disneyland.  It exists primarily for tourists, not pilgrims.  It is a bazaar of camera-snapping Asians, cackling Germans, thieving vendors, gum-chewing priests, and trysting middle-age couples.  The overwhelming impression it leaves is that Catholicism is a religion of the past, not the present or future.  Whatever the future of Islam, at least Muslims have enough regard for God to keep Mecca and Medina from turning into Touristville.

Am I the Only One Who Does Not [Care About] the Ukraine Garbage?  [Scroll down]  But here's what does matter to me:  People who work hard and have worked hard all their lives to earn an honorable though modest income, only to find themselves challenged in later life as technology changes make their skills obsolete, even as people alongside them who are healthy and capable of working choose instead to game the system to live off government handouts ranging from food stamps to welfare.

How China 'Woke' America.  American trade and political appeasement were never interpreted by Beijing as magnanimity to be reciprocated, but always as weakness to be exploited.  It was always ludicrous to think that the more concessions on trade and human rights the United States gave, the more China would Westernize and begin to resemble America or an EU nation.  Even sillier was the old shibboleth that China's embrace of capitalist reforms — as if by some unwritten, determinist economic law — would lead to constitutional government.  But the ability to buy a new cellphone never ensures the right to vote for a candidate of one's choice.

Why Libertarians Are Unwitting Enablers of Socialism.  When the anti-socialist vote is split, the socialist wins.  In the real world, we have nations so that people with a common culture and heritage can govern themselves.  This necessitates the existence of governments, laws, regulations, taxes, public spending, and a host of other things libertarians may consider nasty.  To oppose overreaching laws, bad regulations, high taxes, excess spending, wasteful spending, or inappropriate spending, is the duty of any fiscal conservative.  But the role of government is to protect a national culture, not to just get out of the way so corporate multinationals can commoditize the world.

America's domestic enemies are the Democratic Party and its allies.  The leading foreign enemies of the 20th Century were clear.  The Empire of Japan.  The Third Reich.  Then the USSR, the Peoples' Republic of China and the Korean War. Followed by an episode of the Cold War turned hot in Vietnam.  The domestic enemies — those inside our borders — were Soviet spies, many known to exist but identified only by their code names, particularly in the era of nuclear arms development.  Later came spies from the Peoples' Republic of China entering America as foreign students in U.S. universities, not just searching for state secrets but for industrial secrets enabling the theft of intellectual property.  Today, the leading domestic enemies of the U.S. Constitution are not dispatched to America from foreign shores.  They were born in the USA.  English is their first language.

Hey Democrats, Impeach This!  Remember 10 years ago when we conservatives trusted and respected the FBI and our intelligence community?  Good times.  Well, that's over.  It will be decades before a woke Republican is stupid enough to trust them again.  But on the other hand, we now have an opportunity to exploit their strategic blunder in order to rip them apart next November.  We have a chance to teach the Democrats, to the extent they are trainable, that their socialist-curious, corporatist nanny state dreams are electoral strychnine.  Letting these creeps steal our country from us is worse than the resulting carnage from the fight they've picked.  We could roll over, but instead we'll take the hit to keep our liberty.  In the end, after many figurative casualties, impeachment is going to boomerang on these clowns.

30 of The Biggest Lies & Hoaxes Perpetrated on The American People.  [#4] The Vaccine Industry:  Those overseeing the vaccine industry have weaponized it.  From the false swine flu epidemic, to the measles scare to change legislation, HPV causing deaths, thousands of reports of them causing autism, and over $4.1 billion in injury and death claims — it has been weaponized.

The Coup Has Begun — The Empire Strikes Back Everywhere.  You know I think there are no coincidences in politics.  Everything happens on a particular schedule.  So when I see a day as crazy as today I have to ask the question, "Why this, why now?" [...] When you lose control of the narrative, when you spin a story out of whole cloth all you can do is double down.  This is what the Democrats are doing in the case of Ukraine.

Angela Merkel's Toll on Germany.  At Leipzig University she devoted a year to studying Marxist-Leninist thought.  She attended a university in Leningrad for a year in 1977, away from Stasi and available to the KGB without the Stasi being aware.  Coincidentally, Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer in Leningrad in 1977.  Being such a devout communist and so sympathetic to the Russians, it is inconceivable that she was not approached by the KGB during this period.  Which explains a lot about the way she has governed Germany for the last 14 years.  And why nothing about her was found in the Stasi archives after reunification — she wasn't one of theirs. [...] De-industrialising Germany today reduces Russia's military threat on its western flank.  This has been an ongoing project of Merkel's in her years as Chancellor.  The Fukushima disaster was an excuse for Merkel to close Germany's nuclear reactors.  The influx of Syrians a couple of years ago was designed to reduce social cohesion.  De-industrialisation of Germany using the global warming hoax as the excuse is ongoing.

Why is teen climate activist off limits, but innocent Covington kids fair game?  While conservatives have some points of contention with Swedish teen Greta Thunberg's rabid climate change activism, leftists are accusing them of outright attacking the child activist. [...] But several right-leaning pundits have noticed that there is a glaring discrepancy between how Thunberg is being treated by conservatives, and how Nick Sandmann was treated after the media picked up on edited footage of the Covington Catholic School students just standing there.

Why are we calling Ukraine story leaker a whistleblower?  The question begs to be asked:  Why is the person who came forward with a story about President Trump and a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky still being referred to as a whistleblower?  Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, is a Trump appointee.  Allegedly he found a reason to go forward with a complaint lodged against President Trump stemming from a conversation with Zelensky in July.  The anonymous "whistleblower," as it turns out, is not, in fact, a whistleblower.  The complainant is essentially a gossipmonger.  The person admits no direct knowledge of the conversation.  Doesn't that seem to be an important fact in this whole story?

What Are The Differences Between e-Cigarettes Vaping & Vaccines:  Both CAN & DO Kill!  Before readers and astroturfers, in particular, decide to 'attack' this article, let me cite U.S. CDC/HRSA statistics!  E-cigs are vaped into adolescent kids' growing lungs, whereas vaccines are injected into babies' tiny, day-old bodies, i.e., the Hepatitis B vaccine!  How many day-olds will be injecting meth and other street drugs, or participating in unprotected sex — the diseases that specific vaccine is geared to 'protect' against?

The Democratic Nomination Process:  The Electoral College on Steroids.  The two processes start out quite similarly.  Candidates must win 270 of 538 electoral votes to gain the presidency, and 2,382 of 4,763 delegates to gain the nomination (in 2016).  For all intents and purposes, electoral votes and delegates are the same concept.  Electoral votes are allocated to the states via constitutional law and the Census Bureau.  The nomination process, created and controlled by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), literally uses the Electoral College in its formula of allocating delegates to states.  But the DNC's formula is far more complex, even awarding bonus delegates to bordering states that hold simultaneous primaries later in the voting season.  Defying the laws of science, the DNC considers Maine as bordering Vermont, Hawaii as bordering Oregon, and Puerto Rico as bordering Guam.

The US Export-Import Bank is China's cash cow.  If you are wearing a tie, there's a good chance it was made in China.  The factory where that tie was made was probably subsidized by the Chinese government.  But here's what you probably never guessed:  That subsidized Chinese factory may have been subsidized by you, the U.S. taxpayer.  And for that, thank the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal agency whose single biggest recipient is the communist-run government of China.  Congress this fall has a chance to end U.S. subsidies to China's crony capitalists, but some Democrats don't like that idea.

The Fool in the Vatican.  I never thought I would refer to a Pope as a fool, but it has come to that. [...] But after reading Francis X. Rocca's article in the September 11 edition of the Wall Street Journal, which has the pontiff saying that it would be "an honor that [conservative Catholic] Americans attack me," for not standing up for traditional Catholic teachings on marriage, sexuality and bioethics, while instead opining on climate change and migration, I can't hold my tongue.

Battle over the Bahamas:  Whatever happens in the world, the answer is always mass migration to the US.  Do the resources of the United States government exist for the benefit of Americans or for the benefit of the world?  This is a simple question that needs to be answered now, because it seems that any time any event — be it weather, poverty, or war — breaks out in any part of the world, the answer is always immigration, and it's always to be brought to just one country — the United States. [...] Are we vetting these people?  What about the public charge?  Who is paying for their stay, and where would they stay?  Will they receive work permits?  How can we ensure that they will not remain here indefinitely like hundreds of thousands have done since the 1990s when we began granting amnesty to people from all over the world who experienced natural disasters in their home countries?  Will we grant them birthright citizenship for their babies too?  Why aren't other countries pitching in?

Lack of Common Sense, Comfort Animals and Anarchy:  Where Does It End?  The truth is the truth.  It always has been, and it always will be.  And truth's oldest child is common sense.  Unfortunately, that child has all but been banished by segments of the American population in the last several decades.

The Turn Toward a Pre-9/11 Mindset.  Intelligence-based security can be effective only if the government can collect and analyze it in secret.  Otherwise, we will get scant cooperation from key sources of threat information, from foreign intelligence services to people who've been admonished to say something if they see something.  Yet we remain error-prone humans acting on imperfect information.  A suspicion that a person could be a threat, however reasonable, will necessarily be wrong in some cases.  Some innocent people inevitably will be harassed.  On the other hand, if suspected people are given notice of, and a meaningful opportunity to challenge, their placement on the list, the list will no longer be secret.  And if it is not secret, it will no longer be effective.  It is Congress that is supposed to wrestle with these tough line-drawing exercises.

Bubbles: Seen One, Seen them All.  One of the greatest blunders in the history of financial bubbles is not a policy error that inadvertently forces a collapse.  Instead the real blunder is celebrating the old theory that some agency can prevent financial setbacks and recessions.  In various forms it dates back to the early 1600s. [...] There is an old saying in physics that "If you keep your database short enough it will fit your theory."  A full review of market history from the 1600s concludes that great financial bubbles have had similar setups, climaxes, and contractions.  All five from 1720 to 1929 suffered severe liquidity problems in the fall of the year.  All cleared their problems in November, except for the 1825 Bubble when pressures ran into Christmas.

Case closed in Russia collusion.  I believe the real reason we're getting all these exaggerated, dramatized news headlines and impeachment threats against the president is that the Trump "collusion delusion" is slowly falling apart.  Starting with the setup of 28-year-old George Papadopoulos in a London wine bar with Australian liberal party hack Alexander Downer.  This is a man who in testimony forgot to mention his role in helping the Clinton Foundation get $25 million in aid from his government in 2006.  In attendance were liberal Israeli diplomat Christian Cantor and his mysterious attractive girlfriend whose job at the Australian embassy remains a mystery.  We have recently learned Mr. Downer never contacted either American or Australian intelligence about his conversation with Mr. Papadopoulos, which is against established protocol.  Instead, he directly contacted the U.S. embassy in London.  His connection there was Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as principal deputy assistant secretary in Hillary Clinton's State Department.  Strange coincidence that I find very hard to believe.

Put Your Hope In Radical Decentralization.  The EU is the first step on the way toward the creation of a European Super-State, and ultimately of a one-world government, dominated by the USA and its central bank, the FED.  From its very beginnings, and despite all high-sounding political proclamations to the contrary, the EU was never about free trade and free competition.  For that, you don't need tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations!  Rather, the central purpose of the EU, supported all-along by the USA, was always the weakening in particular of Germany as Europe's economic powerhouse. [...] In fact, Europe has essentially become a dependency, a satellite or vassal of the US. This is indicated on the one hand by the fact that US troops are stationed all across Europe, by now all the way right up to the Russian border.

The Real "Helicopter Money": Since 2009, China Has Created $21 Trillion Of New Money, More Than Double The US.  Back in the days of the Fed's QE, much of thinking analyst world (the non-thinking segment would merely accept everything that the Fed did without question, after all their livelihood depended on it), was focused on how massive, and shocking, the Fed's direct intervention in capital markets had become.  And while that was certainly true, what we showed back in November 2013 [...] is that whereas the Fed had injected some $2.5 trillion in liquidity in the US banking system, China had blown the US central bank out of the water, with no less than $15 trillion in increases to Chinese bank assets, all at the behest of a juggernaut of new credit creation — be it new yuan loans, shadow debt, corporate bonds, or any other form of debt that makes up China's broad Total Social Financing aggregate.  Now, almost six years later, others are starting to figure out what we meant, and in an Op-Ed in the FT, Arthur Budaghyan, chief EM strategist at BCA Research writes about this all important topic of China's "helicopter" money which — far more than the Fed, ECB and BOJ — has kept the world from sliding into a depression, and yet is blowing the world's biggest asset bubble.

New World Order In Meltdown.  By now it has dawned on people that the central bankers acting as central planners in a command economy and printing money (aka quantitative easing) to fuel asset bubbles are about to wipe off the last vestiges of what used to be a market economy. [...] Perhaps the weirdest news to crown it all, came from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the Western central bankers were holed up for their annual retreat.  The president of Bank of England Mark Carney shocked everybody (at least those not present) by announcing that the US dollar was past its best-before and should be replaced with something the central bankers have up their sleeves.

Dan Crenshaw:  The 'Principled Conservative' Who Wasn't.  U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) has enjoyed a relatively glowing reception from right-wing media since his election to Congress.  But that honeymoon period may come to a very swift end, in what could be the single biggest political casualty of the "red flag" law movement.  The freshman congressman and former Navy SEAL is no stranger to endorsing positions that invite criticism from his right, including his support for keeping U.S. troops in Syria indefinitely and his winks and nods to believers in the Russian collusion hoax.  But following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month, Crenshaw offered support for what may be his most controversial position yet, "red flag" legislation.

Trump — or what, exactly?  No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget.  And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of "stimulus" or "pump-priming" left.  Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.  Not a word comes from Trump's critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats' promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

Why No Congressional Investigation into Epstein's Intelligence Connections?  With convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein now dead, the Justice Department has launched an investigation into prison procedures that allowed him to commit suicide.  Meanwhile, women who were sexually abused or raped by Epstein when they were minors are continuing civil actions against Epstein's estate.  But why no congressional investigation into Epstein's relationship, if any, to intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Mossad, or any others?  Have we gotten to the point where everyone is so scared to be labeled a "conspiracy theorist" that Congress is precluded from conducting a legitimate investigation into the CIA or other intelligence agencies?  Such an investigation would not come out of the blue.  It would revolve around the undeniably sweetheart deal that the U.S. Attorney in Florida, Alexander Acosta, gave to Epstein and the reasons that he gave that sweetheart deal to him.

Red China Aligns with Dems to Swing the 2020 Election.  Red China is our frenemy, mostly enemy, and they steal our intellectual property or they get it gratis when a company opens up for business in their country.  The companies have to give them their secrets and follow their Communist rules.  That is ethically questionable and the U.S. has made these violent, dangerous people a Super Power.  President Trump is responding appropriately battling them and if a President had taken this on before now, it wouldn't be so difficult.

The Myth of Jewish Influence in the Democrat Party.  [Scroll down]  When the Democrats know they have you in their pockets, they move on.  For example, they figure they have Blacks in their pockets, so they now focus on importing Hispanic voters to leapfrog Blacks socially and economically — which is exactly what is happening.  And the Democrats likewise know they have non-Orthodox Jews, Fake Jews, and anti-Semitic Jews in their pockets.

Criticizing Israel is fine, but anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.  [Scroll down]  Of all the world's 200-plus countries, the only country anti-Zionists declare illegitimate is also the only Jewish one.  That's pretty much all you need to know about their motives.  Why, for example, don't they make this claim about Pakistan?  In 1947, nine months before the establishment of Israel, India was partitioned into a Muslim state, Pakistan, and a Hindu state, India.  Unlike Israel, Pakistan had never existed before.  Unlike Israel's founding, which created about 700,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands and 700,000 Arab refugees from what became Israel, the founding of Pakistan created about 7 million Muslim refugees from India and about 7 million Hindu refugees from Pakistan.

Hong Kong is a huuuuuuuge embarrassment for Democrats.  Hong Kongers are waving the stars and stripes, singing the national anthem, and issuing a global cry for freedom.  For a Democratic party that loudly supports bend-a-knee leftists who hate the U.S. flag, such as Colin Kaepernick, that's a problem.  And for a party that is trying to sell socialism to the U.S. public, well, thug-state China's got socialism in spades.  President Trump has taken flak for his response to the crisis, arguably so, but the real clown show is in what's coming from the Democrats.

We Are In A Battle Against The Full-Scale Implementation Of Communism In America!  While for decades, Watchmen such as Steve Quayle and others have warned America of a sinister plan to destroy the national sovereignty of the United States by tearing down our nation's borders and allowing in to our nation those who will not conform to our way of life, eliminating our God-given Rights to defend ourselves which are merely protected by the US Constitution and 'endless wars for the global empire', for all of those decades, those warnings have been labeled 'conspiracy theory' by the mainstream media.  Well, as we learned in [an] extremely important story over at Breitbart [...] on Wednesday [8/14/2019], the attempts being made to take down the United States are very real despite being labeled 'conspiracy theory' with this new Project Veritas expose proving that tech giant 'google' was planning on tampering with the 2020 elections to "essentially overthrow the United States".

Terror without trust.  The crisis of confidence in Western institutions can be described as a crisis of morality.  The public has discovered that many public figures are shams.  The #MeToo sex scandals, the accusations of collaborating with foreign powers, and most recently the Epstein case have undermined the reputation of our social betters.  They are perceived are no better than the common clay and probably a good deal worse.  This has undermined the trust that formerly allowed them to exercise authority over the public. [...] Perhaps no one exemplified this more than Mao Tse Tung, a sex maniac and pedophile who was worshiped by millions of people.

The Election Is Legitimate Only If the Democrats Win.  "Horrifying!"  As we've seen, candidates can get chirpy at final presidential debates less than three weeks from Election Day, and Hillary Clinton was no exception.  What "horror" had her inveighing so?  The very thought that her Republican rival would question the legitimacy of the presidential election.  Donald Trump being Donald Trump, he wouldn't budge.  He would not pledge to accept the election results a priori.  Okay, no, Trump didn't use the phase a priori.  But he did speculate that the electoral process could be rigged.  Until he saw how it played out, the Republican nominee said, he could not concede that the outcome would be on the up-and-up.

The Strange Case of 'White Supremacy'.  America's founding documents were unique in their singular calls for innate and universal human freedom and equality under the law that would eventually and logically demand reification of such ideals.  In other words, in America there was a real chance to overcome not American sins per se, but the ancient sins of mankind in general.  The result is that more than 243 years after its independence, the current longest-lived democracy arguably is also the world's most racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse nation and unmatched in its efforts to promote equality.

We need criminal and crazy control, not gun control.  Mass murder is not a gun control problem.  In 2003, Kim Dae-han, a middle-aged taxi driver, killed 192 people and left 151 others wounded, by setting a South Korean subway train on fire using paint cans filled with gasoline.  In 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Muslim terrorist, killed 86 people and wounded 458 others by ramming a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in France.  In 2001, Muslim terrorists killed 2,977 people and injured 6,000 more, by using box cutters to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings.  Guns are a tool.  There are a whole lot of other devastating ways to kill lots of people.  American mass killers often use guns because they're convenient and available.  There are plenty of alternatives like trucks, boxcutters, pressure cooker bombs and paint cans full of gasoline.

Epstein's death raises questions about his prosecution and imprisonment.  Epstein should not have died in federal custody — the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons will have to explain how someone under their care, and recently on suicide watch, was able to commit suicide.  But the other lingering question is:  Should he have been in federal custody in the first place?

Wanda, Wilton, Bambi, and Randy Andy.  The Church had once led the West in moral standards.  Now she slavishly followed the West's lowest ones, becoming in the process as sick and dysfunctional as its shabbiest pagan institutions.  All the scandals that defined a crumbling secular society hit the Church, culminating in a pederasty scandal of epic proportions.  That scandal is not unique to the Church — indeed, it is seen across the culture, from public schools to Ivy League universities to the Boy Scouts and college sports programs — but it is reflective of the modern Church's uniquely stupid embrace of Western decadence.

An ahistorical Voice of America Is dangerous for the nation.  By pure chance I stumbled recently on a news report posted on the U.S. taxpayer-funded Voice of America website.  It was a news feature story about the personality cult of Argentine Communist Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  He is described as a "Marxist revolutionary" in a complimentary narrative that would make any antifa sympathizer proud.  Americans who know something about the history of communist atrocities of the last century might find it shocking and wonder how their tax money is being spent.  What VOA failed to mention is that Che was a ruthless communist, directly and indirectly responsible for brutal murders of tens of thousands of innocent human beings in Cuba and elsewhere.

Repealing Michigan's Rat Bounty:  A Cautionary Tale.  This current advance of the pestilential rodents reinforces the wisdom of legislators who recognize that the more things change, the more they may stay the same — or can become worse, due to short-sighted, unsound laws.  As the instance in St. Clair Shores evinces, the reasons for the Senate Law Revision Task Force's call to repeal the rat bounty remain sound, specifically that there are better, more efficacious means to curb the city's rodent problem than incentivizing a vigilante army of rat hunters who could prove a bigger problem than their quarry.

Democrats exploiting mass shootings for political gain have forgotten the lessons of the Wellstone funeral.  When Senator Paul Wellstone and seven others, including his wife and one son, were killed in an airplane crash in northern Minnesota on October 25, 2002, just 11 days before he faced re-election, a massive memorial service was planned for Williams Arena in Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota basketball and hockey venue capable of seating close to 20,000.  Vice President Cheney, the presiding officer of the Senate, announced his plan to attend, only to be told by Wellstone's surviving sons that he was not welcome, much as President Trump has been told by some politicians and activists to stay away from El Paso.  Cheney, respecting the wishes of the family, did not attend, possibly avoiding some ugliness.  The memorial service degenerated into a political rally, so blatant that the Wellstone staff issued a public apology.

Shoehorning Multiple-Causation Shootings into Single-Cause Narratives.  We keep hearing the same kinds of anecdotes after a mass shooting.  The details change, but the gist is the same.  Often but not always, there's no father in the home.  Often but not always, the shooter has few or no friends and nothing resembling a real support network.  Often but not always, the shooter is unemployed or barely employed.  Often but not always, the shooter has some mental-health issue, sometimes formally diagnosed, sometimes not.  Often but not always, the shooter played violent video games.  Often but not always, the shooter was active on extremist or Columbine-focused chat boards or had a noticeable interest in or obsession with previous mass shootings.  Often but not always, the shooter has gotten in trouble in school or has been kicked out of school.

I'm Certain This Will Be Taken As An Insult.  When you see a run-down, dirty neighborhood full of trash and vermin you can assume the people living there don't really mind all that much.  Not so much that they do anything to prevent it themselves.  They wait until conditions deteriorate to the point Government steps in and makes it all like new again.

Social Media's Transition from Novelty to Malignancy.  What made sense as a communications vehicle for a diverse but circumscribed group of people sharing many life experiences on campus and later as a helpful tool for the larger world, has transformed benign to malignant as fast as rapidly improving technology could take it there.  Students moved off the campus into the "real world," taking Facebook with them. [...] Unlike on campus, where myriad shared activities were constant, for many the world of work just wasn't as engrossing or dynamic and offered far less commonality of interests among friends than the world of college.  Therefore, the communications rapidly turned to social life and the truly banal, like what a person was cooking for dinner, or the family dog's Halloween costume.

When You Understand Israel's May 1948 Borders, You Understand There is No "Occupation".  There are really only two ways to consider the borders of Israel when it declared independence in May 1948:  the entirety of the Palestine Mandate OR the proposed border put forward by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947.  As discussed below, only one of these is legally valid, while both options demonstrate that Israel does not occupy any "Palestinian Land."

Time to Kick the Islamizing Turkey Out of NATO.  Foreign and military policy needs to change along with circumstances.  During the Cold War, it made sense for Washington to forge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and make Turkey a member.  Today, an American-dominated NATO makes little sense, and Ankara's membership even less so.  Bringing in Turkey, which no one ever mistook for a liberal Western-style democracy, was always a bit of a stretch.  That nation has proven over the years to be politically unstable, with occasional military interference in governing affairs.

Democrats woke and broke.  The Democrats have no money but they do have 20-plus candidates for president.  Adam Parkhomenko, a former DNC national field director, told Vice, "When Hillary became the nominee in 2016 she was handed nothing.  The DNC was nothing and there was nothing to build on.  You'd think we would have spent the last few years making sure this would never happen again, and it has."  How you run your party is how you would run the country.

George Will finds his presidential candidate.  I'm so old that I remember when George Will's opinion mattered to Republicans.  Apparently, the Bezos Bulletin scribe realizes he's lost his influence on the Grand Old Party and now offers advice to the Democrats on their nominee, in hopes that someone out there still cares about his opinions.  His disgust at President Trump — who has the support of roughly 90% of Republicans — is such that he has now taken to telling (fellow?) Democrats whom they should nominate in 2020, in order to defeat the man who has restored the American economy to growth rates exceeding population growth (a task his predecessor assured us required a "magic wand"), nominated conservatives to the federal bench in numbers that matter, and exposed a nefarious plot among the federal intelligence and law enforcement apparatus to reverse a presidential election.

The [New York] Post says: de Blasio must be removed as mayor.  The lights went out on Broadway Saturday night, and Bill de Blasio was a thousand miles away in Iowa.  It was the moment that perfectly captured his distracted, ego-driven failure of a mayoralty.  Bill de Blasio does not care about New York City.  He does not care about its people.  He does not care about how it's run.  He does not care about you or your taxes, creating jobs or improving lives.  All Bill de Blasio cares about is Bill de Blasio.  And so, for the good of the city, Gov. Andrew Cuomo needs to remove the mayor from office.

Something is Rotten in the Pentagon.  The strains of almost eighteen years of continuous war, Obama's massive budget cuts, and a tide of damaging politics have eroded critical parts of our military.  What has held together, until last week, was the most critical element:  the trust that must exist between the civilian leadership and the military of all ranks.  A huge blow to that trust has just occurred on Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer's watch.  Another failure of leadership, both similar and different, is taking place about the nomination of Gen. John Hyten, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, to be the next vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Devin Nunes Has a Warning for AG Bill Barr:  Without Prosecutions None "will trust the FBI or DOJ for generations".  HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes has a deliberate warning to U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, and the Department of Justice should take it very seriously.  In a 30 minute podcast interview last week, Representative Nunes rightly warns of massive political consequences if Justice Department officials don't face jail time for their conduct during the Russia investigation.  I strongly urge everyone to listen to the podcast.  [Link]

Nineteen Eighty-Four: What Orwell Got Right.  Starting in academia, politically correct speech has now infected the media, the arts, tech companies, and corporations.  The protagonist in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, works for the ironically named "Ministry of Truth," which is engaged in the practice of constantly editing history to conform to the current party line.  People and places are changed, erased, or added as needed.  "Who controls the past controls the future," Orwell explained, "who controls the present controls the past."  The erasing of America's past, the renaming of holidays, and the defacing and elimination of statues — the cultural vandalism that proceeds on a daily basis — is all part of an effort to conform America's history to the Progressive party line.

Don't Blame Wikipedia for Clinton and Epstein Edits.  Here's how Wikipedia works:  Anyone who cares to can go there and write an article. [...] For a lot of topics, Wikipedia is very useful, especially technical topics.  Articles on Math and Computer Science are generally at least pretty good, although sometimes written for a technical audience instead of a general one.  But the point is that there's no such entity as the Wikipedia Editors.  On current events, it's more like blog comments.

Hiding socialism behind skirts.  Former Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted on Sunday [7/7/2019] what I have said for months:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the soul of the soulless Democrat Party.  His tweet responded to Pelosi dismissing as ineffective backbenchers AOC and three other rookie congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.  Pelosi told Maureen Dowd, "All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn't have any following.  They're four people and that's how many votes they got."  True.  In the House, they have four votes.  But the Fearsome Foursome have the media and the party's billionaires such as Jeffrey Epstein.

The Absurd Attack on Alexander Acosta.  The leftist media machine has launched an effort to link Donald Trump with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  This tiresome methodology of character attack is a threat to the core of free speech, as victimhood — whether of border children, women, blacks, gays, transgenders, or inquiring people — is transformed into a self-righteous weapon unhindered by policy prescriptions, employed by one political group against another on purely ideological grounds. [...] Consider that the ideology that wishes to erase criminal records attacked Brett Kavanaugh for an alleged juvenile offense, for which he was never charged; personally attacked Norm Pattis, attorney for Alex Jones, by association; forced the resignation of Harvard professor Ron Sullivan solely because he represented Harvey Weinstein (who has not yet been tried); and now calls for Alexander Acosta's resignation because he was a prosecutor in a case that (years later) the media have in hindsight "judged" was too lenient in sentencing.

A tired old man.  I'm tired of people telling me that symbols of freedom of this great country are supposedly symbols of oppression.  I'm tired of people telling me that symbols of Christianity offend them yet I am supposed to turn the other cheek when two persons of the same sex make out in public.  I'm tired of naturalized citizen politicians who denigrate the same people who kept them safe when we opened our arms to them to enjoy the fruits of America.  I'm tired of politicians who know the truth about the past Administration's illegal spying on political opponents yet continue to deny facts to brainwash the public with their lies.  I'm tired of the LSM who praise the yet to be found merits of the last Administration but will not recognize the herculean achievements of POTUS Trump.

When Dems Lose Elections, They Lose Pride In America.  [Scroll down]  They go on afterwards, I'm not going to play the whole thing, but they talk about all the ways they think America is not great and some of the stuff they say is fair, but a lot of it is questionable.  So, they use our high poverty rates without mentioning the fact that poverty in America is wealth anywhere else because of wealth transfers.  The problem we have here is not that people don't have enough money because they can get enough wealth transfer so that people living in poverty today are living at a fairly high level compared to other countries if you've ever been to another country with the exception of Democrat cities where people are homeless.  That's the kind of poverty that is widespread in a lot of other countries.  We'll talk about the high mortality rate among infants without mentioning the fact that we try to save a lot more infants who have been born so early that they would die in any other country.

John Adams Wanted Independence Day Celebrated With 'Devotion to God... Pomp and Parade... Guns, Bells, Bonfires'.  Americans declared their independence from Britain on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams called "the most memorable epocha in the history of America."  Congress approved the Declaration two days later, on July 4, which we now celebrate as Independence Day.  Writing to his wife on July 3, 1776 from Philadelphia, John Adams said he believed the occasion would be "celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival."

Why Liberals Need To Shut Their Faces About Tanks Appearing During Trump's Independence Day Event.  Right now, we have a near Chernobyl-level style blow up over tanks and armored vehicles being part of the Fourth of July festivities this week.  President Trump ordered it.  It was a great decision.  And the fact that the Left is triggered by this means that he should have ordered more tanks for the event.  Tanks have been present for victory parades before.  The optics is fine.  No one cares about that.  Americans are patriotic and they like seeing tanks.  The only people who have problems with all of this are the Democratic Party and their allies in the media because Trump has taken over the event.  He can do that.  He should do that.  And the Left just needs to shut their face over this.

America's Detour from Sanity.  It is time for waking Americans to shout down every action witnessed or contemplated that devalues human life, denigrates fatherhood and motherhood, makes speaking the truth "hate speech," and replaces common sense and morality with political correctness.  This is a hard but necessary stand in order to make loud and clear to everyone throughout the land that Americans will no longer tolerate the deliberate and systematic dismantling of this nation.

Ideoloons.  In fact, idolatry is a major contributor to the current plague of ideologues.  We have made idols out of celebrity, of wealth, of movements (Antifa, Pro-choice, even the Earth itself) and if we can't achieve whatever we think demonstrates the approbation of these gods we become desperate and frozen, unable to crawl out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. [...] The most dangerous idolatry of all is the leftists' tendency to idolize themselves.  They shut their eyes to the clearly present God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and place their own puny selves on the altar and then run around trying desperately to prove that they're deserving of that position.  Virtue signaling has become a plague on our society.

Laws must be applied equally or they don't matter.  Yes, I know, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy is not an American, but he is in the country legally (pending the ICE detainer of course).  The problem is, with all the illegal immigrant criminals who are here getting a pass, day in and day out, on everything from identity theft to fentanyl dealing, why shouldn't Volodymyr, too, have expected all the passes he got — on drunk driving, on cocaine, on heroin, on larceny, in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, in Texas?  And so he enjoyed his multiple passes, right up until last Friday afternoon [6/21/2019], when he's accused of killing seven Americans by driving a pickup truck into a group of motorcycle riders in northern New Hampshire.

California Unplugged.  The very idea makes the mind reel:  San Francisco, San Jose, Silicon Valley — all gone dark.  The electric-car charging stations, the $500-a-plate sushi restaurants, the rows of workstations at Google, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, and Salesforce — all suddenly unplugged.  This summer, blackouts could plunge large swaths of California into darkness — an act of deliberate policy, not equipment failure or operator errors.  Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern California's largest power supplier, recently announced that it will begin shutting down parts of the grid, possibly for days at a time, to help reduce the risk of wildfires.

Will you survive the coming blackout?  The largest red flag on this issue in years just waved in South America.  Last weekend, tens of millions of people in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay found themselves in a complete blackout.  In one moment, they had electricity.  The next moment, they had none, and they were catapulted back to the 1800s.  Only much worse.  People in the 1800s were not dependent upon electricity for their jobs, money, communication, Internet, transportation, education, security, medical services, prescriptions, water, and very lives.  The national power grid of the United States is truly a mess held together with, as the joke goes, by not much more than "baling wire and chewing gum."

Jerry Nadler Is A Sexist Pig Who Should Be Censured By Congress.  On June 19, Hope Hicks, the former White House director of strategic communications then director of White House communications, was interviewed by the House Judiciary Committee.  The interview was not public and was behind closed doors.  Yesterday, a transcript of the interview was released.  It was revealed that during the interview Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) referred to Hicks as "Ms. Lewandowski" three separate times before she corrected him.  If I hadn't seen the transcript for myself, I simply would not have believed it.

Jerry Nadler Waddles Into Hearing, Calls Hope Hicks "Ms. Lewandowski" Three Times.  Jerry Nadler is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and he's currently leading what can only be described as a clown show of an investigation involving the President and his associates.  After saying the Mueller report would be the final word, he and other Democrats have decided they want a do-over, which means dragging everyone who's already been interviewed multiple times back in front of Congress for no real reason whatsoever.  This had Nadler waddling into yet another "hearing," this time with former Trump associate Hope Hicks being grilled.

A Madisonian Remedy to the Social Media Revolution.  So effective is Madisonian political science that it provides remedies for such up-to-date threats to freedom as social media and the giant companies that monopolize the provision of information about us and about others.  According to Madison, one way of "curing the mischief" of factions — citizens' propensity to act on passions and interests hostile to the rights of individuals and to the public interest as a whole — was to eliminate the causes.  This would require either changing human nature or destroying liberty.  Since the former was impossible and the latter would defeat a leading purpose of political life, it was necessary instead to control factions' destabilizing effects.

How Secret Algorithms Are Crushing Conservative Media.  "Where do I go to get my reputation back, even though nobody knows I lost it?"  That seems paradoxical, since your reputation is what people generally think of you — but in digital publishing what really counts is what computers think of you.  Earlier this week, secret algorithms besmirched my digital reputation, in ways that could negatively impact my paycheck, and my employer's profits.  And it all happened behind the scenes, without any of my readers knowing.

Red Ed.  The malcontents and revolutionaries were a tiny sliver of the population.  But it was this fraction of 1% that was more and more shaping the country.  How is that possible?  By the muscular device of infiltrating the command structure of any organization you encounter.  Universities.  Businesses.  Churches.  Foundations.  Political organizations.  Publishers.  Media.  Showbiz organizations.  If you see any possible political or propaganda benefit, try to take over.  Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov has explained to American audiences how cunning the Russians were at psychological warfare, subversion, and manipulating Western society.  The KGB thought they needed only about 20 years to undermine and destroy most countries.  Sometimes it seems that Russians love deception more than victory itself.  They love what spies call "the game."  If they could fool Americans into surrendering their country, Russia would win the biggest duel in history without firing a shot.

Why I dislike casual dress religious services.  We attend a funeral in a dark suit and somber tie out of respect for the deceased and his survivors.  But Progressive clergy these days are hard at work on destroying respect for The Deity. [...] If the answer to why we attend services is to engage in a social organization that provides a venue for weddings, funerals, and coming-of-age ceremonies, all focused on furthering "Social Action," on electing the right people, it makes perfect sense.  Who cares, after all, how one dresses at a political rally?

The Editor says...
Believe it or not, I've been to church a few times this year myself, and yes, the football jerseys and ratty-looking jeans are annoying.  Other annoyances include music that's 20 dB louder than necessary (God's not deaf), people reading from three or four very different versions of the Bible, people of all ages checking their email and social media feeds the whole time they're in church, those who can't sit for an hour without something from Starbucks in one hand, and people who leave trash on the floor afterward.

Manifesto Destiny.  This Land Is Our Land:  An Immigrant's Manifesto by Calcutta-born NYU journalism professor Suketu Mehta takes pro-immigration polemics to their logical conclusion:  "Immigration as reparations." Historically white countries must open their borders because whites have sinned and deserve punishment. [...] It's absurd, of course, for Hindus, the world's most racist, reactionary, and inegalitarian culture, to be paid to lecture white Americans on our crimes against wokeness.  It's relevant to note that most of the new generation of South Asian pundits on the make, such as Mehta and Saini, aren't egalitarian progressives in any abstract sense.  They are regressives, loyal to their families, clans, and races.  They wish their people to drive before them their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women.

Swamp expert to Levin: 'There's absolutely no authority for the administrative realm in the Constitution'.  The administrative state, the federal leviathan, the Swamp:  The monstrous, centralized, bureaucratic, entrenched decision-making apparatus within the federal government that seems to answer only to itself.  On Sunday night's [6/16/2019] episode of Life, Liberty & Levin, LevinTV host Mark Levin and Claremont Institute senior fellow and University of Nevada, Reno, Professor John Marini talked about how that Swamp got to be so deep and how things are actually worse now than most people realize.  [Video clip]

The Sky-High Stakes in Hong Kong.  In Hong Kong's huge protest over a proposed law that would allow extradition from the territory to mainland China, there is far more at stake than "confidence" in the integrity of Hong Kong's legal system, or the health of Hong Kong's economy — important though those both are.  The real showdown going on in Hong Kong has long been between despotism and democracy, between tyranny and the Free World.  And whether we, the free people of America, and our allies, choose to think of it this way or not, the reality is that the showdown now taking place in Hong Kong will shape our future as well.

Breaking Up Big Tech Companies Is A Big Government, Not Free Market, Response.  Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others have just become too powerful, says the narrative.  And it's not just the political right, which is justified in being upset at Big Tech's efforts to marginalize and silence it, that wants to use the nearly limitless power of the federal government to tame private businesses.  Some Democrats are in the game, too, most prominently Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who "has made breaking up the tech giants a cornerstone of her campaign."  The fact that a high-profile Democrat who has no appreciation for property rights and the blessings of markets, nor their power, is lighting torches and handing out pitchforks should be a warning.

The Occult Roots of The Wizard of Oz.  Although the Wizard of Oz is widely perceived as an innocent children's fairy tale, it is almost impossible not to attribute a symbolic meaning to Dorothy's quest.  As in all great stories, the characters and the symbols of the Wizard of Oz can be given a second layer of interpretation, which may vary depending on the reader's perception.  Many analyses appeared throughout the years describing the story as an "atheist manifesto" while others saw it as a promotion of populism.  It is through an understanding of the author's philosophical background and beliefs, however, that the story's true meaning can be grasped.

The Goal of Hollywood and the Entire Entertainment Industry is to Normalize Satanism.  In 1988, I left my parent's home in New Jersey and headed west to California.  In A very short period of time I found work as an actor, became a stand-in and double for then-stars like Richard Gere and Matt Dillon, acting in dozens of commercials and enjoyed small roles on many of the popular shows of the day.  I was a card-carrying member of SAG and AFTRA for 18 years.  From what I personally saw during the 6 years I was actively involved, before the Lord called me out of it in 1994, it was not an overly wholesome place.  Many crazy things were done behind closed doors.  But in 2019, not only are those things now done openly, you can also see that Hollywood, the music industry, and even formerly family friendly companies like Disney are working to normalize the occult in general and satanism in particular.

Capitalism Makes Miracles; Socialism Makes Dust.  A common example I often use in conversation with young people is a pizza that you might order for ten dollars on a weekend.  The owner of the pizza store, who might be making a good living assembling and delivering his product, did not plant or thresh the wheat needed to mill the grains into the flour used to make the dough, nor did he raise the cows that are milked to produce the cheese or the pigs needed to produce the pepperoni, nor did he cultivate the tomatoes used in the sauce.  No, the owner of the pizza store purchased all of these things from others, all of whom have their own ambitions and profit motives and employ thousands of individuals who likewise feed their families by applying their trades in order to provide us that $10 pizza that can feed any family of four or hungry college kids, indiscriminately, for that agreed upon price.

Venezuela: There's No Disaster Quite Like The Collapse Of Socialism.  Even while surrounded by military dictatorships and poverty, Venezuela at one time prospered with a strong economy and stable society.  Today, three Latin American nations produce more oil than Venezuela, though it has the world's largest proven reserves of crude, and just getting sick is nearly the same as death for some children.  It has rightly been called the "biggest economic disaster in modern history."  "Hospital shortages," says the headline of an Agence France-Presse story posted on Yahoo News in late May, are "a death sentence for Venezuelan children."  Half of the children who aren't dying can't get enough to eat.

Democrats stuck with Russiagate.  The only collusion in the 2016 election was between Donald John Trump and voters in 30 states.  But Democrats manufactured the Russian Collusion excuse after he beat them, their crone candidate, their billionaire donors, and their sycophants in the media.  For two years, Democrats promised the Mueller Report would bring him down.  But it didn't.  Mueller could not find a smidgen of collusion.  This presents a problem for next year because Democrats promised their base they would impeach the Orange Man.  They didn't.  In the eyes of their base, they are failures and cowards.  To the rest of us, Democrats are fools who fell [for] a hoax.

Must parental leave be dictated by government?  Can't we say something isn't government's job?  Both Republican and Democratic politicians want government to "do more" to give parents paid time off.  "This is not a women's issue.  It's a family issue," says Ivanka Trump.  "Every worker in America should be guaranteed at least 12 weeks," says Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.  "That's a very arbitrary number!  Why not 14 weeks?  Why not 26 weeks?" asks Independent Women's Forum analyst Patrice Onwuka.  She opposes Sanders' plan, saying government one-size-fits-all policies don't meet most parents' needs.

The Editor says...
The same idea is at the root of many leftist ideas:  Workers getting money without working.

It's Time for a Thoroughgoing Revamping of the Intelligence Community.  Today we've got too many spooks collecting too much money, with predictably bad results.  Among other bad consequences, intelligence is typically churned out by committees, guaranteeing that we don't identify our best analysts.  We need to drastically reduce the numbers of both budgets and bureaucrats, in order to figure out who's good.  Then we need to promote them, within a much smaller system.  It's hard to imagine this happening under normal circumstances, but today's circumstances aren't normal.

Levin: Only Way to Make Dems Stop Using Soviet Tactics Against Republicans Is if Soviet Tactics Are Used Against Them.  Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity," conservative talker Mark Levin, author of "Unfreedom of the Press," made the argument for a criminal grand jury to be impaneled and a special counsel to be appointed to "get to the bottom of" the events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe based on allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.  Levin argued that if Democrats were going to use "Soviet tactics" against Republicans, it was up to Republicans to reciprocate.

Impeach or get off the pot, Democrats.  History didn't begin in 2016.  Every modern president has asserted executive privilege.  Attorneys general have been cited for contempt on much firmer grounds.  Former Attorney General Janet Reno was found in contempt in 1998 for refusing to turn over memos about Bill Clinton's campaign finances.  In 2012, Eric Holder became the first US attorney general in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt after refusing to hand over memos detailing his knowledge about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' disastrous and bloody gunrunning scheme.  Nadler knows this, because he joined a Democratic Party walkout protesting the Holder vote.  Yet no Obama administration official was arrested.  There were no impeachments.  TV anchors didn't unsheathe melodramatic monologues about the corrosion of law and the end of democracy.

The Calming Feeling as Jew-Hate Now Takes Deeper Root in the Democrat Party.  When Ilhan Omar tweeted that Jews control because "It is about the Benjamins, baby," she revealed herself not a convenience-store-quality bigot but a ready-for-primetime Nazi.  Not every Nazi in the 1940s acted violently.  Most Nazis simply stood along the avenues and highways of Germany and cheered as Hitler's limo drove by.  Some made speeches.  Muslims led by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, were among Hitler's best Nazis.  When Omar tweeted about "the Benjamins," she revealed her Nazi moorings.  The irony, hardly surprising, is that it is she who rakes in the cash.  Ilhan Omar has leveraged her anti-Semitism to raise more than a million dollars in record time.  [It certainly] was about the Benjamins — hers.

Colluders, Obstructionists, Leakers, and Other Projectionists.  Real coups against democracies rarely are pulled off by jack-booted thugs in sunglasses or fanatical mobs storming the presidential palace.  More often, they are the insidious work of supercilious bureaucrats, bought intellectuals, toady journalists, and political activists who falsely project that their target might at some future date do precisely what they are currently planning and doing — and that they are noble patriots, risking their lives, careers, and reputations for all of us, and thus must strike first.

A problem for every solution.  As Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James has written, "The federal budget is at the core of our political system.  Everything the federal government does, from taxing, to regulating, to providing services, to protecting our very freedoms, it does through the federal budget."  Liberals might dismiss the foundation's "Blueprint for Balance:  A Federal Budget for Fiscal 2020," but they shouldn't.  The document is based on verifiable facts.  If implemented, Heritage claims, it would save trillions of dollars compared to projections by the Congressional Budget Office and produce a budget surplus by 2025.  Everyone knows "entitlements" are the main drivers of debt and that politicians don't want to reform them because they fear attacks by the media and by their political opponents.

Liberals Are At War With Science In The Transgender Athlete Controversy.  Democrats have long claimed to be the party of science, but on an increasing number of issues, party activists are pushing ideological agendas that are at odds with scientific evidence — sometimes to the detriment of the people they intend to help.  California Sen. and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is proposing that businesses prove they compensate men and women the same or pay a fine, although evidence shows the pay gap is not due to discrimination, but to women making different choices about work.  We know obesity is a dangerous medical condition, yet left-wing activists now demand obesity be celebrated and encouraged, actively working against the once-universally accepted idea that a good physique, diet and exercise is [...] good.

Let's Make Sure 'Obstruction of Justice' Is Properly Defined.  A line must be drawn.  No longer can the phrase "obstruction of justice" be allowed to mean something obscenely different from what any fair-minded, free person knows it was intended to mean.  In the minds of most, the phrase refers to blocking the discovery of truth, truth being the only legitimate basis on which appropriate redress can be made for some wrong that has been suffered.  Any codified law that uses the phrase "obstruction of justice" to mean something other than precisely this is in jeopardy of obstructing true justice.  If a law is needed to insure that an official investigation is not obstructed, then the language of the law must refer to obstruction of an investigation or obstruction of police work or obstruction of intelligence activities.

'Blazing Saddles' and other classic films don't deserve wrath of social justice warriors.  Classic films now face the wrath of perpetually enraged social justice warriors.  Last weekend's "Watters World" on Fox News Channel analyzed the impact of this politically correct phenomenon.  Exhibit A was Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles," the single funniest motion picture ever committed to celluloid.  Jesse Watters' guest, Cathy Areu, publisher of Catalina Magazine, responded to a clip of the comedy-Western in which Brooks himself portrays a Yiddish speaking American Indian chief.

"Something Strange Going On" At Fox News, And Not For the Good of America.  [Scroll down]  Nor is it just the millions of viewers that Fox News is gifting the likes of Sanders and Buttigieg with their 'town halls' that makes Fox "something very strange", it's the every day talking heads to whom the network is now giving voice:  With the 2020 election campaign underway, Fox brought in former DNC chairman Donna Brazile as a featured political pundit.  In other words, Brazile, who admitted she leaked questions for the last 2016 presidential debate to Hillary Clinton, is now an ongoing contributing Fox News political pundit.

Rent-A-Standing-Ovation-Crowd at Fox News' 'Town Halls'.  Since when did town halls become Fox News pep rallies? [...] Try to remember, folks that through no choice of our own, we all live in an era where "people are what they see on TV".  High time to tune out of Fox News and tune in to your own common sense.

Do We Need NATO?  NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains a problem for the U.S. [...] NATO has always differed from other military organizations in that it claims that it is not only a military pact, but also an alliance of countries with shared values, individual liberty, democracy, human rights, and rule of law, and it has a mechanism for collective defense and military command.  From the start, there have been ironies in the composition of this "North Atlantic" alliance and in these claims.  Geographers have been obliged to accept Balkan countries, and Hungary and Bulgaria as well as Turkey, as countries within the designated region of North Atlantic.  In addition, the portrait of Turkey is less democratic than autocratic, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is the holder of all executive power and who in 1996 defined democracy as "not a goal, but an instrument."

China's Crackdown On Free-Market Economists Recalls Obama Tactics.  The Unirule Institute of Economics in Beijing, called "China's most prominent free-market think tank" by Bloomberg News, is a target of harassment from the Chinese government.  Its economists are considered dissidents by President Xi Jinping's regime.  The story reminds us of the treatment the Obama WhiteHouse gave to Tea Party groups that dared challenge the administration.

Democrats Look at South Africa, and They Like What They See.  Even in the wake of its latest free election, held on May 8, South Africa is not, on the face of it, a model of vibrant democracy.  The country suffers from persistent racial divisions, a stagnant economy, poor service delivery, rampant crime, and the world's worst income inequality.  Surely this would not be the kind of society that any American would want to transplant to our shores.  And yet the America that Democrats envision and are striving to create looks very similar to dysfunctional South Africa.  We should therefore view that country's steady unraveling as a cautionary tale.

Are Impeachment Democrats Geniuses or Idiots?  What would you have done as president the first time you heard about the Hillary e-mail system?  I'd say any president with half a brain would demand that either the e-mail system or Hillary is outta here by sundown.  But Obama is weak, feeble.  And what about the non-concession of the 2016 election?  I'd say that on election night, Hillary was drunk, and in no fit state to make a concession speech.  And then on the following day, she was hungover.  People don't make very good decisions when they are drunk and/or hungover.  And then the Mueller investigation.  I thought that Rule One for a lawyer is:  you never ask a question in court unless you already know the answer.  So, you gin up a two-year witch-hunt without knowing whether the witches did it?

Rebellion is Bursting out All Over.  As Spygate proceeds to its certain conclusion — the trials of those who engaged in this scandalous coup attempt — we receive the details of the scheme only in dribs and drabs.  Too many were involved and have too much to lose at this point by not revealing to the investigators their role in exchange for more lenient treatment, which is why I believe all will soon be revealed.  So for the moment let's turn to the broader picture that explains in large part why so many officials were so determined to keep Donald Trump from the White House and to oust him once he won the election.  To me, it has seemed they are clinging to the privileges and benefits of an order which is dying because its underpinnings — the post-World War II order — no longer suit the citizens of the countries involved, or the changing world.

Allow Venezuela To Fail.  Are we stepping on the same rakes again — in Venezuela?  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently tweeted "My message to the Venezuelan people is clear:  the United States stands firmly with you in your quest for freedom and democracy."  He also confirmed that the military option is on the table.  In other words, the U.S. is ready to liberate the Venezuelan people from themselves.  For those who suffer historical amnesia, it is worth pointing out, that the Venezuelans had democratic elections and they have chosen socialism.  Hugo Chavez was a socialist, and he ran on a socialist platform and got elected with wide popular support.  So was his successor Nicolás Maduro.  Whether the Venezuelans voted for socialist serfdom knowingly or they have been duped is irrelevant.  If people are ignorant or complacent, they deserve the government they elect.

The Next Battlefront:  Social Media.  Imagine a day when newspapers only publish articles regarding the benefits of late-term abortions, socialism, and open borders.  Where history books vilify Republican conservatives for fighting to defend slavery, inciting segregation, and founding the KKK.  Cable news shows would only report crimes committed by conservatives or capitalists and social media only allowed leftist ideas to be communicated over their platforms.  Well, if the left continues its scorched-earth policy against free speech, in no time at all the United States will have no resemblance to what the Founding Fathers envisioned.  So many examples exist that fully detail the poverty, violence, and atrocities that quickly emerge when free speech is taken away that it raises the question as to why so many younger Americans are indifferent about the loss of such an important right.

Hey, How About Sending U.S. Troops Into Venezuela?  Venezuela's dictator Nicolas Maduro is a former bus driver who rose through incompetence and luck to become a pompous, ruthless twit who's turned a wealthy oil-rich land into a stagnant, starving socialist state.  Bernie Sanders expressed admiration for socialism there years ago.  But Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him have created widespread starvation, hyperinflation and a refugee nightmare for millions of Venezuelans and Colombia and Brazil.  Maduro would be one of those laughable Peter Sellers movie characters if his military wasn't running over protesters in the streets of Venezuela, a large, resource-rich country of 32 million about the size of Texas and Arizona combined.

Russian 'democratic fraud' vs American hybrid war.  Venezuela is Trump's first new foreign "war," the only major conflict he did not inherit from the Obama administration.  "War" is in quotes because no military forces are likely to be involved.  This is the peculiar characteristic of what appears to be an American version of "hybrid war" using only sanctions, diplomacy, information operations, and proxies.  Why it has evolved is easy to explain.  A new Cold Hybrid War has been raging for some time, though its existence has been played down for years to preserve the fiction of a Global World Order.  Some of its most intense chapters are now coming to light.

Hey, Mazie Hirono!  Who Do You Work For?  Who is pulling your strings?  Surely, it's not the people of Hawaii or the rest of the country.  Your father left the family when you were very young, and your mom managed to bring you and your two siblings to Hawaii.  She supported the family by working long hours to put a roof over your head and food on the table.  In spite, of your meager surroundings, you managed to get yourself a fine education at the University of Hawaii and prestigious Georgetown Law School.  One would expect gratitude for the opportunity this country offered you, but instead you shamefully and ungratefully had the gall to state to your staff that "people are getting screwed in this country every single second, minute, hour of the day."

Ilhan Omar blames US for Venezuela crisis.  Rep. Ilhan Omar blamed the US for the political turmoil in Venezuela, saying we "helped lead the devastation" through the use of sanctions.  "A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela and we have sort of set the stage for where we are arriving today," the Minnesota congresswoman said during an interview Wednesday [5/1/2019] with Democracy Now!.  "This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States."  The freshman Democrat added that there are "finally" members of Congress who agree with what she said.

The Editor says...
The situation in Venezuela is entirely the fault of socialism and a ruthless socialist dictator, which, in my opinion, is exactly what Ilhan Omar would become, if given the chance.

Joe Biden is the canary in the coal mine for today's feuding Democrats.  In recent times Republican and Democratic parties have stumbled in apparent dysfunction.  The tea party rebellion bubbled up to split GOP adherents because Republican leadership in Washington lost its conservative focus and seemed more interested in going along to get along.  Also, ideological purity became important.  In 2016, that resulted in a lifelong, pro-choice Democrat named Donald Trump cleverly capturing GOP leadership and the White House with long-term party ramifications yet to be determined.  Nowadays, Democrats are experiencing their own divisive, left-handed rebellion over deep dissatisfaction with the progress of progressive ideas in the hands of House leadership, all of whom are in their late seventies.

Here's How to Tell if Scientists are Exaggerating.  Let's call it:  "The Principle of Comparative Difficulty" (PCD): if an easier task is too difficult to accomplish, then a harder one certainly is too. [...] The PCD exposes Darwinian braggadocio to a very much deeper level.  I'm a biochemist.  Biochemistry is the study of the molecular and cellular foundation of life.  Back in Darwin's day the cell was thought to be a simple jelly called protoplasm.  Yet modern biochemists have discovered to their surprise that the cell is chock-full of sophisticated machines — actual machines, made of molecules.  Like the machines of our everyday world (say, a lawn mower), cellular machines consist of many parts that have to cooperate with each other to do their tasks.  Yet, as physicist David Snoke and I have shown, Darwin's mechanism of random mutation and natural selection strains to explain even the very simplest molecular example of cooperation (called a "disulfide bond").  Here's an analogy.  Suppose a lawn mower were stored in a shed that was kept closed by a hook and eye latch.  Darwin's theory struggles mightily to explain even the latch, with just two simple cooperative pieces.  So we're supposed to think it explains the lawn mower?  The PCD lets us easily realize that's ludicrous.

Get Ready for a Paradigm Shift on Russia, Climate Change, Everything You Think You Know.  It may now sound ridiculous, but Nikita Khrushchev once told America "we will bury you" and Washington believed him.  For years the intelligence community thought the U.S.S.R. was on the verge of overtaking the U.S. as the world's largest economy before the Soviets unexpectedly collapsed.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan's book, Secrecy: the American Experience, tries to explain how such a tremendous intelligence misjudgment could take place.

A Democrat disaster looms with their nominating convention.  The Democrats are setting themselves up for a possible, even probable, disaster at their nominating convention in Milwaukee, July 13-16, 2020.  The party that created the concept of "superdelegates" to rein in their crazies may have outsmarted themselves by allowing them to vote only in the second or later ballots.  As the field evolves and Joe Biden's still undeclared candidacy appears to be chaotic, the party elders (the ones with big money fundraising capabilities) are very worried that socialist Bernie Sanders will walk away with the nomination and lose to Donald Trump in a landslide.

Russia Collusion Peddlers Will Turn on Each Other.  Now that the Mueller Report has been published, what further investigations is Attorney General William Barr likely to pursue?  [Video clip]

Trump Guilty of Obstructing a Coup d'état.  The scurrilous anti-Trump innuendoes and outright lies spread by a weaponized FBI, CIA, State Dept. and various other federal agencies amounts to an attempted coup against America's duly elected president.  Such blatant treason cannot be allowed to go unpunished.  Nor can the two-tiered "justice" system We the People currently suffer under be allowed to stand.  If we no longer have rule of law in the United States then we are no longer a free republic.

What Really Caused the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire?  Following the horrifying fire that badly damaged one of the world's great treasures, the mainstream media is pushing the storyline that the fire that ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was caused by an "electrical short circuit."  But the story in the Daily Mail lacks any evidence to back up that claim. [...] "Investigators" brought in to determine the cause of the tragic blaze have not yet been given access to the burned-out cathedral.  Nevertheless they are already announcing the results of their investigation.  Even as the embers were still glowing on the day of the fire, French prosecutors were ruling out arson.

What 'Free Money' Means to Me.  Officials in Stockton, Calif., a hard-pressed agricultural and industrial city 75 miles northeast of San Jose, are enjoying the glow of media attention from their ongoing, first-in-America program to provide residents with a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. [...] This is about more than helping a few residents in a mid-size city pay medical bills, buy groceries, repair the car, or spend the weekend in the Sierra foothills gambling at the Jackson Rancheria Indian casino (there are no limits on how the money is spent, after all).  It's about setting the stage for a national political "discussion" that might eventually involve large, direct taxpayer payments to lower-income residents.  The research and storytelling will be used to soften us up for the hard sell, which will come in various state or federal proposals, and will sometimes be linked to plans for reparations.

Four Members of Congress Have Lifetime ACU Conservative Rating of 100%.  According to the 48th edition of the American Conservative Union's (ACU) Ratings of Congress report, Representatives Dave Brat (R-Va.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) have maintained a 100% lifetime conservative rating.  Although 11 other members of Congress also received a 100% rating for 2018, they have not maintained it for their entire careers in Congress.  Of those 11, only Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was awarded 100% for both 2017 and 2018.  The ACU rates elected officials by defining conservatism, as detailed in both its report and website, and taking into account their stances on specific types of legislation.

The Internet Erupts With Speculation About Who Started The Notre Dame Fire.  Ever careful to watch for false-flags and conspiracy theory concerns, video is emerging of a Gilets-Jaunes in black clothes at one of the two towers half an hour after the start of the fire at Notre-Dame.  [Video clip]  One definite way to disenfranchise the yellow vests — as they crush French autocracy — would be to set them up as the fall-guys for this national disaster.  Surely that is not possible! [...] In the end, there are only two options.  Either this was an accident, or someone intentionally started the fire.  And if the fire was intentionally started, obviously someone had a motive for doing so.

Reeducation Digest #1.  As a public service for long-time viewers of CNN and MSNBC who were shocked to discover that the two-year long narrative of Trump-Russia collusion was a total and complete hoax, the following tidbits may help in your red-pill journey. [...]

Let me tell you about 'White Privilege'.  I'm an adult white man living in the United States of America in 2019 and I feel absolutely no white privilege at all.  None.  I worked hard all my life at my chosen profession.  I didn't come from a family of money.  I had many menial jobs as a teen and young man until I was able to work my way into the career I wanted to have.  I hated social climbing and office politics so I didn't engage in it.  Whatever I achieved I got through hard work, talent, and perseverance.  No one ever gave me anything that I didn't earn.

Candace Owens:  The anti-Ocasio-Cortez.  It has been a long time since a person as young as Candace Owens appeared on the political scene who is as brilliant, grounded, and quick-thinking as she is. [...] Owens's grace and class are the antithesis of Ocasio-Cortez's empty-headed, ditzy meanderings.  Owens's videos are all worth watching, and her performance on Tuesday [4/9/2019] in front of the House Oversight Committee was spectacular.  She put the Democrats on that committee to shame, especially Jerrold Nadler and Ted Lieu.  Both of them tried their best to humiliate her, to use her as a prop in their latest narrative that Trump is responsible for a make-believe rise of white nationalism and white supremacy.  The two of them are imbecilic at best.  Their focus on "white nationalism" is nonsense, but that is all the Democrats have now:  nonsense.

Report: Lori Loughlin Thought The Feds Were Bluffing, Now "Freaking Out" About Having To Do Time In Prison.  [Scroll down]  Loughlin has now been dropped from and edited out of her current show, a frontier drama on the Hallmark Channel.  Her character apparently isn't minor, either; she plays the town mayor.  It would have been much easier for producers to leave the episodes they've already completed alone and just write her out of future ones, but apparently Loughlin has already reached a level of such O.J.-esque ignominy that they can't bear to have her onscreen.  They can add her back in five to 10 seasons from now, I guess.

Democratic socialism is the scenic route to serfdom.  In his 1944 book "The Road to Serfdom," Nobel prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek argued that socialist economic planning resulted not just in accumulating losses of economic efficiency but "the very destruction of freedom itself."  History was kind to Hayek's worldview.  The United Kingdom, Sweden, and India tested socialistic planning without sustained repression.  But people in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Cambodia and Cuba were not so lucky.  Natural experiments between socialism and capitalism in East Germany and West Germany, North Korea and South Korea, and Hong Kong and China, bore out the link between economic liberty and personal freedom.  Upon reunification, for example, GDP per capita in East Germany was one-third of the West German level, and the latter did not require the East's Stasi or emigration restrictions.

Google's treatment of Kay Coles James is shameful, misguided.  It was bound to happen.  In fact, I'm surprised it took this long for leftists to viciously attack Kay Coles James.  The general strategy since she became president of The Heritage Foundation seems to have been to largely to ignore Mrs. James in an attempt to keep the masses unaware of her effective advocacy of conservative principles.  It was only a matter of time that they no longer would be able to bite their collective tongue and launch an all-out attack on Mrs. James' voice of reason.  But their plan backfired.

The Democratic Party, Not America, Is Experiencing a Civil War.  Contrary to the overheated speculation of so many, the United States is not on the cusp of another civil war.  Sure, things are tense in America's political system.  Things usually are.  Americans are not, however, about to take up arms against each other and hunt down those with whom they disagree.  Instead, what we are experiencing is the very public collapse of our managerial elite and this has resulted in a civil war within the Democratic Party.  To them it must feel like a more widespread conflict since most of our self-styled elite are Democrats.  The good news is this Democratic Party civil war is sure to end in disaster for the Left.  And this can only benefit the American people.

The Democrat-media meltdown over Special Olympics funding is everything we hate about Washington.  The current debate surrounding grant funding for the Special Olympics is an excellent case study of why our country will probably never get out of debt.  In case you missed it, there's been a fair amount of outrage over the Department of Education's budget proposal to cut $18 million in federal grant money to the Special Olympics.  The proposed budget states that "such activities are better supported with other federal, state, local or private funds."

Germany's Refusal To Fund 2 Percent Of Its Defense Is Not The Action Of An Ally.  Bob Gates, perhaps the most farsighted post-Cold War defense secretary, presciently predicted in 2011 "that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense."  Gates, who once rightly understood that the Saudis would fight Iranians to the last American, also essentially hinted the same with regards to Germany and Russia, "nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets."

Earth Hour:  A Dissent.  Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century.  Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.  Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores.  Getting children out of menial labor and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.  Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible.  The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Thomas Sowell Is Right to Predict a Socialist America.  America's size, diversity, and democratic character are precipitating our demise.  The emphasis on equity, a moral foundation that causes envy, will surely lead us to a political ideology, socialism, that is widely known as the "politics of envy."  To conclude, the many characteristics of the American democracy that made it great are simultaneously contributing to its downfall.  As man grows estranged from his ancestors and his institutions, we will look for easy answers in all the wrong places.  Socialism is the lowest hanging fruit to pick for modern man, and we will reach that fruit by trampling our own democratic principles.

The Era of the Private Automobile Is About to Be Over.  Once you think about it, it seems almost inevitable.  No, the age of the automobile is not about to end, but the age of the private ownership of automobiles is passing away, at this very moment. [...] Note that the advances in ride sharing have been produced by private enterprise, not by public entities.  I trust that you do not find that surprising.  In New York, government cannot make the subways function.  You did not expect them to innovate, did you?

What Did the Founders Mean by "Invasion"?  Even by the middle of the 18th century, the English language lacked a widely-used set of standard definitions to English words.  While English dictionaries existed, those that did were widely considered deficient for a variety of reasons. [...] With this background in mind, a firestorm of controversy has recently erupted over what is meant by the word "invasion" that appears in both Article I, Section 8, Clause 15, and Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.  Respectively called the Militia Clause and the Guarantee Clause, these powers were meant to assure that the general government would protect the states from invasions.  However, the two clauses have recently been cited by those who support sending military forces to the southern border to restriction immigration, with some going as far as to suggest that the president has a unilateral power to do so.  It seems reasonable, then, to take a glance back and analyze what the American founders had in mind when they constructed the invasion authority.

Blankenship Is Right:  Sue the Mainstream Media Out of Existence.  [Scroll down]  [S]wamp-bought media hitjobs such as the one perpetrated against [Don] Blankenship prevent anti-establishment candidates from taking office and discourage them from running.  Can we say with certainty that now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have dared accept his nomination by President Trump had he known in advance the flurry of irresponsible reporting on unsubstantiated sexual misconduct allegations to come?  And our concern shouldn't be limited just to these cases:  consider the reckless endangerment of the very lives and careers of the Covington Catholic children by the mainstream media.

Sorry, Sandy, Capitalism Needs No Redemption.  The Industrial Revolution did, in fact, lead to the concentration of capital in the hands of some more successful and innovative individuals, which allowed some of them to create large businesses that flourished (and many more that failed), particularly in places like America.  The country's framework of laws allowed free markets to exist relatively unimpeded.  Without this "ideology of capital," where the profit motive drove success for many individuals and companies, there would have been no mechanism to create the economies of scale necessary for producers to provide larger quantities of higher quality goods and services.  That, in turn, led to the lower prices which made those goods and services more desirable and attainable among more consumers in a competitive marketplace.  The net effect of this economic system has been wealth creation such that the world has never seen, a more robust economic marketplace, and the exponential betterment of human well-being.  To grasp this doesn't require an economics degree, but only the most basic understanding of how the principles of supply and demand guide economic progress in a free market of voluntary, reciprocal exchanges of value.

What Trump does not do.  When Democrats lost to a non-politician in 2016, they could not swallow the failure and began to degrade their opponent's victory (by manufacturing "Russia collusion"), insult people who voted for the winner (calling them racist), and assassinate the character of the winner (calling him a dictator).  To make the case for the third act, they invented a story that Donald Trump likes dictators and wants to be one and will not leave office if not elected in 2020.  But his actions show the opposite.  Trump does not want to be a king or a dictator, while his predecessors behaved as if they wanted to be.  To demonstrate this fact, I will provide examples of what Trump has not done and what King Barack H. Obama and King George W. Bush did. [...]

Time to Embrace the 'American's Creed'.  If today's politicians, at all levels of government but especially members of the United States Congress, strongly embraced and let the "American's Creed" guide their daily actions and decisions, it would certainly be in the best interests of America.  Such a "lifestyle" should help overcome, one hopes in a major way, the terribly bitter and divisive political environment that presently exists in America.

Uncle Joe Biden Meets Hollywood McCarthyism — and Folds.  Mike Pence, one of the finest and most decent guys around, is shunned and cast out by an entire sector of America.  His candid and well-lived Christianity is an affront to those who are the very living example of the characteristics they falsely attribute to him.  Why is Pence so reviled?  Well, it's because he not only talks the Christian talk; he walks the walk.

Inviting Self-Professed Socialist Democrats to Venezuela.  It's an obscenity to allow the "Socialist Democrats", who are really propped-up "Justice Democrats," to continue spouting their socialist ideals on society as long as the good citizens of Venezuela are having to rummage, dog-like, through street garbage for scraps to eat and collecting sewer water for their children.  AOC, Omar and company are equivalent to the socialist Venezuelan politicians who converge nightly in Caracas steak houses while the people they were elected to serve slowly starve to death in the dark.  If these Justice Democrats dared try to extoll the virtues of socialism in the streets of Venezuela the way they do in America, they'd be torn apart limb by limb.

Hey Ilhan!  Hey Alexandria!  Venezuela's democratic president wants you to come to Venezuela to see some socialism.  In the past, lefties have flocked to political pilgrimages to newly created socialist countries to drink in the collectivism and praise the new regimes.  It happened in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade sugar cane-cutting harvest, it happened in Nicaragua with the Sandalistas (ain't that right, Bill de Blasio), and it certainly happened in Venezuela during the salad days of socialist Hugo Chavez (until socialized Cuban Castrocare actually killed him in 2013).  Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Naomi Campbell, and Dial Joe-4-Oil Kennedy were all in, and don't think they weren't loud about it.  Well, now a new invitation has been issued to the current defenders of socialism, from Venezuela's democratically elected president, Juan Guaido.

Trump's Anti-Socialist Strength Could Turn Venezuelan-Americans Into Republicans for Decades.  Ernesto Ackerman watched the horror play out in Venezuela this weekend on a large screen on the stage of a rally he had helped organize in support of the country's opposition leader, Juan Guaido.  The event was initially meant to bring Venezuelans in the city together to coincide with the protests back home.  It ended up being something very different.  "A killing of civilians without arms, burning the humanitarian help, we are dealing with the genocide," the Venezuelan-American activist said as they watched the violence play out in real time.

Don't conscript women into combat.  A federal district judge presumed last Friday to overturn U.S. Supreme Court precedent on a long-dormant topic — the military draft.  The judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, ruled that the current requirement that only men and not women register for the draft at age 18 through the Selective Service system is not "substantially related to Congress's objective of raising and supporting armies."  There's plenty to debate here.  Is the ruling legally sound?  Should Selective Service exist?  When is conscription morally defensible, if ever?  How are women in combat affecting troop readiness and morale?

Three Cheers for the Labor Market.  If your prospects are tapped out in the place you are, then move.  Go where the action is.  That isn't always easy.  Neither is being disabled or a convicted felon trying to make a new life for himself.  Nobody's asking you to take a Conestoga wagon through Indian country to homestead a farm in the western territories.  Just get on with it.

All News Is Bad News.  America is a country in trouble, of course, what with a gay black actor faking a mugging by racist white folk, and women claiming rape when hard hats whistle (they get twenty years minimum for whistling twice, life in jail for a long wolf whistle).  America is also in trouble when a Muslim woman goes over to Syria, gets married three or four times, is widowed three or four times, then wants to return and watch TV in Alabama.  Even worse is the fact that an intellectual congresswoman called AOC wants to do away with airplane travel to save the planet and take away all of Jeff Bezos' money.

Sorry, Pope Francis, your sex abuse speech was a disgraceful display of excuses and evasions.  Pope Francis's closing address to the Vatican Summit on Child Protection was a disgraceful display of excuses and evasions.  He began with an extended meditation on how a "great number of" abuse cases are "committed within families."  He urged the assembled bishops to focus on "other forms of abuse" experienced by "child soldiers," "starving children," "child victims of war" and "refugee children."  He laid out an agenda that, bizarrely, focused on matters have nothing to do with clerical abuse (such as combating "sexual tourism").  And, most shamefully of all, he lashed out at those demanding that bishops who covered up abuse and silenced victims be held to account, declaring that the church must "rise above" those who "exploit, for various interests, the very tragedy experienced by the little ones."

If We Can't Cut Entitlements, What Can We Do?  Thanks to the overspending of Congress and successive presidential administrations, America's debt totals $22 trillion, and it is projected to grow faster and larger in the years to come. [...] We must deal with the drivers of our future debt:  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  But for those who think it is not politically feasible to tackle entitlements, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published a report with a broader range of suggestions.  They include limiting highway and transit funding to expected revenues (translation: don't spend more than you collect), eliminating Head Start, and creating a federal value-added tax (VAT).  Disappointingly, many of the CBO's alternatives are meant to grow government revenue rather than shrink government expenditures.

Trump Should Just Let the Democrats Self-Destruct.  President Trump has demanded that Ilhan Omar voluntarily resign.  The idea of impeachment of another Muslim Democratic congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) is also being actively promoted.  The events surrounding Ilhan Omar, of course, are a shame for America.  The anti-Semitic focus of her recent statements is obvious.  However, this does not mean that President Trump has an urgent need to intervene in the process of natural political selection and demand the resignation of an anti-Semitic congresswoman.  Trump's intervention in the natural self-destruction of the Democratic Party is a strategic mistake.

Hey, Democrats, I've lived in a socialist country with income 'equality' and it was miserable.  [A]s Democrats justify grandiose proposals by decrying income inequality, many of us who immigrated to the United States from socialist countries see great irony.  After all, unending income equality is what drove us to leave our native lands in the first place.  My family left post-Mao Communist China in the mid-1980s precisely because there was so much equality to go around.  As a child, I lived in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China.  Everyone in my city was equal in having no running hot water, no modern toilet facilities, no refrigerator, no washer, no dryer, and no color television.  Imagine a world without Whole Foods, Safeway and Walmart, or the plethora of products stocked on their shelves.  Imagine no Vitamin Water, no Gatorade, no Starbucks, no Panera Bread, no candy bars and no sea salt potato chips.  Now imagine instead being allotted food stamps from the government, indicating how much your family can eat.

The Whole Lot of Them Are Bat-Crazy.  In his SOTU address, the President showed deep compassion for African Americans, for Hispanic Americans, for women — for all the groups that the liars and real haters allege he disdains.  All the haters who accuse this President falsely of racism and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and all are self-serving liars who themselves view every person with bigotry, identifying each by gender, race, sexual preference, religion.  That is what their Identity Politics is all about:  "Vote for me because I am your Identity, too, or will try to change myself to be."  Stacey Abrams was the perfect Democrat counterpoint:  not Caucasian, not male, and still whining about losing.  The Loser as counterfoil to Make America Great Again.

Look Upon the Media's 'Life of the Mind'.  [Scroll down]  The primary mission of the media today is not to inform dispassionately but, like Charles Boyer, to convince the public that it cannot trust the evidence of its own senses, observations, or experiences, and is in fact losing its collective mind unless it undergoes an immediate attitude readjustment and gets with the program.  Many of the reporters and commentators can't help themselves.  As Ben Rhodes famously observed, they're small children who literally know nothing, and thus are prime receptacles for all kinds of counterfactual nonsense.  (The myth of manmade climate change is a prime example, since it is so easily countermanded by a simple glance back at history.)  Others are simply careerists, busily building their "brands."  The news business is no longer a calling, nor even a profession, but a trade once again, this time not in service to the truth but to the Narrative.

How Venezuela Struck It Poor.  Venezuela was considered rich in the early 1960s:  It produced more than 10 percent of the world's crude and had a per capita GDP many times bigger than that of its neighbors Brazil and Colombia — and not far behind that of the United States.  At the time, Venezuela was eager to diversify beyond just oil and avoid the so-called resource curse, a common phenomenon in which easy money from commodities such as oil and gold leads governments to neglect other productive parts of their economies. [...] Such success makes the sorry state of Venezuela's oil industry today, not to mention that of the country at large, all the more surprising — and tragic.

No gray areas are left anywhere:  The lesson of Ralph Northam's fall.  It's hard to recall a politician who has so quickly and starkly been exposed as a cipher who ascended to a major office almost by accident (any Democrat would have won in Virginia in 2017).  So there won't be a lot of tears for Ralph Northam, but the controversy consuming him is disturbing nonetheless for what it portends about the drift of our political culture.  It is increasingly frenzied, unforgiving and irrational, and only likely to get more so.

A Digital Iron Curtain Descends Over The Internet.  A centralized environment will be inherently collectivist.  It's impossible for it to be anything else.  And when a handful of companies control the internet, they become its political and cultural weak point.  Any government or totalitarian movement that can compromise them will control the internet.  If we want an open internet, then we must once again envision it as a chaotic environment of competitive companies, none of whom can get so big that they hold its future and ours in their hands.

It's Time to Get Real About Our Enemies.  There is more to #TheResistance than the political panic inspired by the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).  They are riding a monster not of their own making.  In order to survive, they are providing cover and normalization of something not at all normal.  Conservative pundits have latched onto the fun words "hysteria" and "Trump derangement syndrome."  These words, though cute, mask the seriousness of what is actually happening.  The mass hysteria is a goal and a tactic, whipped up by cool-headed, purposeful people.  It was not caused by Trump's tweets or orange coloring.  It has everything to do with a long game to change our country.  The exaggerated, weird loathing of President Trump and all Republicans — that flies in the face of our peace and prosperity — is the daily work of thousands of professional leftists.

Elizabeth Warren is not proposing a tax; she's proposing asset forfeiture.  In most cases, the revolution begins with a peasant prelude and reaches its crescendo with some variation on the theme of Napoleon; socialist revolutions in particular have a peculiar habit of beginning with a man in a work shirt and ending up with a man dressed like Cap'n Crunch.

Battle of the Brainless:  Justin Trudeau vs.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Sorry Americans; I know you like to finish first in everything but in this contest you lose.  The Canadian PM is hands down less intelligent than the newly elected representative from New York.  It is true AOC's airhead statements are becoming more and more bizarre, but the things she comes out with show a lack of education and the fact she is a committed socialist who has never learned the truth about socialism.  Trudeau, on the other hand, says things that no person above the age of five and of average intelligence would ever say.

Harry Reid Exposes Greatest Liberal Scam of All-Time.  The U.S. government is partially shut down over the wall.  But it's all a massive liberal scam.  A Ponzi scheme.  Pure fraud.  Bernie Madoff couldn't come up with a better scam.  Because the same liberal politicians and donors who scream about the "racism" and "immorality" and "ineffectiveness" of a wall all live behind walls.  President Trump needs to buy TV infomercial time and run a 30-minute TV show in a Ross Perot fashion — featuring aerial views of the mansions and estates of liberals, protected by walls, gates, and armed guards.  You know, the exact same protections they don't want you and me or our children to have.  Exhibit A is Harry Reid, the Democratic former Senate Majority Leader from my home state of Nevada.

Do intellectuals oppose religion?
Is Religion Anti-Intellectual?  Should you believe in a God?  All the discord and vitriol in our culture boils down to how you would answer.  Border walls, gay marriage, abortion, national defense, school choice — where you stand on these issues and the myriad others comprising our daily tussle is for the most part defined by how you answer this question.

Why is the Vatican standing up for the Venezuelan dictatorship?  Look at it this way:  can you imagine Pope John Paul II sending in his diplomats to legitimize the military dictatorship of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski while it was in its showdown with Solidarity?  Pope John Paul was with the democrats all along, and as they won freedom with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution, the Vatican in the end played a pivotal role for freedom.  Poland, as a matter of fact, is one of the few countries in Europe where Catholicism is still significantly practiced.  No such luck in Venezuela.  The battle lines have been drawn, and the first Latin pope and his Vatican bureaucrats have picked the bad guy, the ruling dictatorship, over the suffering people, all in the phony name of preserving peace, something whose potential came and went years ago.

Congress Is Not a Coequal Branch of Government — It's Supreme.  The notion of coequality of the branches is a myth that has been popularized over the past half century, during the rise of the imperial presidency, as a way to boost the executive's standing in the eyes of the public.  There are three main reasons that Congress is supreme.  First, Congress can get itself involved in the actions of the other branches.  It can override presidential vetoes.  It can deny appointments to the executive and judicial branches.  It can impeach officers of the executive and judicial branches.  It can set legislative and judicial pay.  It also has wide discretion in determining the size and shape of the executive and judicial branches.  Every executive department and indeed every officer except the president and vice president are creations of Congress.  And Congress also has total authority to design the court system as it sees fit.

More Populist, More Conservative.  It's not the free market that is financializing the American economy and empowering Wall Street's leveraged buyouts of American businesses.  It's the federal government's preferential tax treatment of corporate debt and guarantee of "too big to fail" bailouts.  It's not the "invisible hand" giving investment income preferential tax treatment over workers' wages, even though in a globalized economy that discrepancy can incentivize American investors to create jobs overseas instead of here.  It's not Adam Smith who simultaneously ended vocational tracking in American high schools while flooding college campuses with students and borrowed dollars that would have been better off elsewhere.  Nor did Milton Friedman make it unprofitable for residential real-estate developers to build anything other than mid-rise apartments and McMansions.  That's federal and state policymakers.  It wasn't capitalism that stripped religion from public schools and, indeed, the public square, denying working communities a source of social capital and solidarity they depended on.  That was a group of activist courts.

Sen. Cruz:  Democrats Forcing Partial Government Shutdown To Appease Their Base.  Senator Ted Cruz is blaming the partial government shutdown on what he calls the most radical and extreme members of the Democrat Party.  During an interview with the Daily Caller Friday [1/11/2019], the Texas lawmaker said Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are being held captive by far-left Democrats.  He claimed Democrats are filled with hatred and anger for President Trump and are politicizing the shutdown.

What was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing, making a third Democratic response to Trump's wall speech?  The Trump speech started as a duel between Trump, who spoke out about a border wall last night, and not one, but two Democratic responders.  That had a precedent in how a State of the Union address response goes to the other party, but the Democrats couldn't even agree on a single responder.  They had a pair of them, hoping to hog more camera time, perhaps, but it came at a cost of a unified message.  Nancy Pelosi, who leads the House, was a logical response agent, but Democrats went and put New York Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer up there as well.  The result, as they stared out at the TV cameras together, all botoxed and heavily made up, was "American Gothic," except maybe with oily game show hosts instead of farmers.

Schumer and Pelosi's response to Trump's address becomes instant meme sensation on Twitter.  The Democratic leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, gave their response Tuesday to President Trump's prime-time Oval Office speech that called for border security.  Pelosi said Mr. Trump had "chosen fear.  We want to start with the facts," while Schumer said "We don't govern by temper tantrum" in their joint televised statement.  The lawmakers' stoic appearance standing at the same podium in front of a row of flags made for perfect meme material — and Twitter users quickly noticed — comparing them to everything from the famous painting "American Gothic" to angry parents and Bond villains.

Creep Show:  Pelosi and Schumer Freak Out Viewers:  Blank Stares, Scowls and Crazy Eyes Consume Dem Response.  President Trump held a national address the perils of open borders and illegal immigration on Tuesday.  Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi delivered the response.  Big mistake.

Pelosi, Schumer spark laughs on social media for 'angry parents' rebuttal to Trump address.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., triggered plenty of laughs on social media Tuesday night [1/8/2019] for their rebuttal to President Donald Trump's address from the Oval Office.  During his address, Trump called the conflict at the southern border a "crisis of the heart and the crisis of the soul" and repeated his request for $5.7 billion for a steel barrier.  Meanwhile, Pelosi and Schumer stood firm with their position that the government shutdown must end in order to continue talks about border funding.  However, folks on Twitter drew more attention to the serious tone of the Democrats' remarks and had some fun at their expense.

The Internet wasted no time roasting Schumer and Pelosi.  The Democratic response to President Trump's speech by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi quickly got ripped apart online, as jokesters mocked the way they spoke while standing close together behind a small podium wearing scowls.  "Yikes.  I like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi but they gotta work on the whole 'not looking like villains from the next bond movie' thing next time," said Twitter user Dan Luke.  "Why are Chuck and Nancy every pair of white suburban parents who just witnessed you shotgun a coors light while home for break?" Twitter user Zachary Miller wrote with a screenshot of the pair.  "We trusted you with Dad's car because we thought you could be responsible with it, but we see now you're not ready," Vulture writer Kathryn VanArendonk joked.

Pelosi, Schumer say Democrats should get 'equal airtime' after Trump address.  Democratic leaders on Monday night [1/7/2019] called for equal airtime in response to President Donald Trump's primetime address to the nation on southern border security scheduled for Tuesday evening.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., argued that since Trump's speech will be broadcast, the other side of the aisle should have their fair share of broadcast time, too.

The Editor says...
The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader were attempting to elevate their status to that of the President by demanding equal media coverage.  In reality, they were in no position to demand any such thing.  Moreover (in hindsight), the message delivered during their "equal time," and the way they delivered it, was a public relations fiasco.

The Coming Democratic Disillusion.  By the seventh year of his presidency, when some 100 U.S soldiers were killed in Iraq every month and gas on average cost $2.80 per gallon, George W. Bush was about as popular as Donald Trump is today.  And in 2007, as we all remember, Pelosi's Democrats set about enacting universal health care and ending the war in Iraq.  Fooled you!  Actually, the victories of the 110th Congress were much more modest:  a minimum wage increase, lobbying reform, and a ban of incandescent light bulbs.

Keep It Closed for Two Years.  I don't know about you, but I am enjoying the 25% Government shutdown.  I really am.  This is the closest we ever may come to demonstrating how much of our Government is wasteful, unnecessary, duplicative, and pointless.  As but one example — only from the 25% now shut down — we simply do not need a federal Department of Education.  States and municipalities can and should run education at the local level.  Under conservatives, a federal Education Department — at best — does nothing that justifies its existence; under liberals, it works to destroy civil rights and the national culture.

Anti-Semitic doctor who threatened Jewish patients should lose medical license.  Anti-Semitism should not be tolerated in any setting — least of all in an environment where medical personnel take a pledge to provide care and comfort to patients.  But that's exactly what's at the center of a controversial case unfolding in Ohio.  Physician Lara Kollab, a first-year resident at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic, took part in social media rants that included anti-Semitic hate speech and dangerous threats.  In her tweets, Kollab referred to Jewish people as dogs, downplayed the Holocaust, and said she was brutally unsympathetic about it.  She said Allah will kill the Jews and threatened to purposely give all the (derogatory term for Jews) the wrong meds.  This behavior is abhorrent and dangerous.

Stereotypes are often accurate.  Almost any belief about almost any group has been considered a "stereotype" in empirical studies.  It is, however, logically impossible for all group beliefs to be inaccurate.  This would make it "inaccurate" to believe that two groups differ or that they do not differ.  Alternatively, perhaps stereotypes are only inaccurate group beliefs, and so therefore accurate beliefs are not stereotypes.  If this were true, one would first have to empirically establish that the belief is inaccurate — otherwise, it would not be a stereotype.  The rarity of such demonstrations would mean that there are few known stereotypes.  Increasing recognition of these logical problems has led many modern reviews to abandon "inaccuracy" as a core definitional component of stereotypes (see Jussim et al, 2016 for a review).  Nonetheless, an emphasis on inaccuracy remains, which is broadly inconsistent with empirical research.

Dems unprepared for a partial government shutdown that lasts for months and months.  Conventional wisdom among the media and politician branches of the Democratic Party holds that President Trump and the Republicans will pay a serious price for the very partial (25%) "government shutdown" as it drags on.  The passage of a House budget bill with not even one dollar, as Speaker Pelosi averred, is supposed to increase pressure on President Trump in their view.  They seem to believe that the public so loves visiting national parks in the middle of the winter — one of the few aspects of the 25% of the federal government that affects ordinary voters — that Republicans will crack under public pressure.

The Editor says...
There is no point in having national parks, national monuments and national museums if we don't have international borders.

Why Trump Shouldn't Cave On Border Wall, By The Numbers.  Despite all the hand-wringing about a government shutdown, President Donald Trump still has a strong hand.  The amount he's asking for is a relative pittance.  And the shutdown is exposing how useless much of the federal government is. [...] According to various news accounts, federal agencies sent about 400,000 "nonessential" workers home during the shutdown.  (Another 400,000 "essential" workers are putting in hours without pay.)  Not counting the Postal Service (which is self-funded) and the military, there are about 1.7 million federal workers.  That means that at least one quarter of the entire federal workforce is "nonessential."

False Flag Destroys Roy Moore — Why No Apology?  Reid Hoffman is not yet a household name, but as co-founder of the business platform LinkedIn, he is in the crosshairs of conservatives as an enemy of the people.  Hoffman's sin is funding the organization that faked a "Russian bot" infiltration that piled on the misery of Judge Roy Moore's ill-fated campaign in Alabama for the U.S. Senate.  Alt-left billionaire Hoffman gave American Engagement Technologies (AET) $750,000, with $100,000 earmarked for offshoot cybersecurity firm New Knowledge.  It, in turn, fabricated 1,000 Russian-sounding Twitter accounts to follow Moore and discredit his campaign.  Oh, but not satisfied with the Twitter disinformation campaign, the company went further, creating fake Facebook pages urging Alabama conservatives to support a "write-in" candidate instead of Moore.

Shut the doors of Government.  And leave them closed.  The continued shutdown of the government is good to the extent the government is shut down.  Most estimates are that about 25 percent of the U.S. Government shut down.  The good ends there.  A better shutdown would be, perhaps all of it.  Then a return to some kind of federal system.  No.  There is no federals system now.  There is a corrupt national system.

The Real Reason Why Fewer Americans Think Religion Matters.  Religions make moral proclamations that transcend individual belief and cultural consensus.  They also make moral claims that require our submission.  Unsurprisingly, as America shifts toward moral autonomy, fewer Americans rely on religious systems that make transcendent, unchanging, ethical claims and demands.

The Fed Must Repeal Its Disastrous Rate Increases.  With the stock market falling another 8 percent in the wake of the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates earlier this month, it's now clear that the biggest threat to the Trump economic boom is the Fed itself.  At a time of strong growth, wage gains, and record low unemployment, Fed policies have created one of the most dangerous deflation cycles in decades.  Falling prices — which we are seeing now in farm products, oil, silver, copper, iron, and so on — can be as destructive to growth as inflation was in the 1970s.  The job of the Fed is to keep prices stable, yet this year prices of all commodities are down 12 percent — with most of that decline following the two disastrous rate increases, first in September and then another one a week before Christmas.

7 Presidents Who Were Tougher Than Trump on the Media.  [President] Trump regularly tweets about "fake news."  He has doubled down on the view that overly critical news outlets are the "enemy of the American people."  He talked about more stringent libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations, threatened the broadcast license of certain networks, and the Trump White House pulled the press pass for CNN personality Jim Acosta after a confrontation at a press conference.  But so far he hasn't taken government action, as Roosevelt and other past presidents have.

In DC a single day is a "prolonged shutdown".  Today is the sixth day of the government shutdown.  The first four days were scheduled days off.  The first two were Saturday and Sunday, followed by Christmas Eve, which President Trump decreed as a day off for federal workers, and Christmas.  On Wednesday morning [12/26/2018] — barely three hours into the first actual workday in the shutdown by Congress — Politico reported, "Federal workforce starts to feel pinch of prolonged shutdown."  If federal workers cannot last a single day under these circumstances, maybe we should replace them with adults.

The Editor says...
If federal workers are "non-essential personnel" whose services we can do without for a few weeks, their jobs should be eliminated.

Brandon Smith:  The Fed Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda.  I believe according to the evidence that the central banks are motivated by ideological zealotry with the core purpose of total global centralization of economic and political power into the hands of a select group of elitists.  This agenda is really just a modern "reboot" of feudalism or totalitarianism.  They sometimes refer to the plan in public as the "new world order," or the "global economic reset." I often refer to the encompassing ideology as "globalism" for the sake of expediency.  To attain this goal, central bankers must influence mass psychology using traumatic events.  Fear opens doors to centralization of power.  This is simply a fact of social behavior and history.  The more afraid a population is, the more willing they will be to give up freedoms in exchange for safety and security.  Therefore, the most effective weapon at the disposal of the globalists and their central banking counterparts is engineered economic crisis — a weapon that can, if allowed, destroy entire civilizations almost as fast as a nuclear war, while still keeping most of the expensive infrastructure intact.  Beyond that, economic crisis is also a weapon that can influence a population to embrace even greater enslavement while viewing their slave masters as saviors rather than villains.

Americans' faith in faith is failing.  Although Americans' church attendance is declining and they believe its importance in national life is dwindling, nearly three-quarters of them maintain that faith is important to them.  After one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, Gallup is reporting that a large majority of Americans (72 percent) say religion is important and 51 percent say it's very important.

The Editor says...
God does not expect you to have faith in faith.  He expects you to have faith in Him, because He has paid for your sin through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ.  Faith in candles and statues and beads and incense and stained glass and organ music and regular church attendance is of no value.

I did not vote for Jim Mattis.  General Jim Mattis decided to quit as secretary of defense in protest to the president's decision to withdraw our 2,000 troops from Syria has flipped the switch in Washington back to hawk.  After warning us for three years that President Donald John Trump would lead us to three or four wars, the Washington Establishment is angry that we are not going to war with Russia and Iran in Syria.

If a Green Beret Is a War Criminal, then So Is Obama.  One would think that in war the duty of a soldier is to kill the enemy before he kills you or your fellow soldiers.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are different in that the enemy doesn't usually obey the rules of war, like wearing uniforms and rank insignia, and there are no "front lines" per se, only improvised explosive devices and sniper fire from second-floor windows or civilians used as human shields.  That is where Mathew Golsteyn found himself in 2010 when the Green Beret killed a Taliban bomb-maker who had killed two Marines, Sgt. Jeremy R. McQueary and Lance Cpl.  Raymon A. Johnson, in a war where only one side obeys the rules and the other is trapped by rules of engagement that make no sense and an Obama administration treating the whole thing as a law enforcement matter.

Democracy, Deliberation, and the Internet.  For 2500 years a consistent criticism of giving political power to the masses has been the question of competence.  To critics like Socrates and Plato, the knowledge of history, philosophy, and facts necessary for governing are beyond the abilities of the average citizen.  Hoi polloi had to spend their time making a living rather than studying these disciplines, or they were by nature driven more by their self-interest, appetites, and passions than by the rational search for knowledge of the true and good.  Thus from Plato's Republic to today's progressive technocrats, some form of technocracy has been preferable to rule by the "low-information" voting masses.  In the last few decades, the explosion of information instantly available on the internet has made this fear of giving political power to the uninformed more urgent in an age of "fake news."  Has the availability of an astonishing volume of information worsened the dangers of ignorance to governing, or has it provided a means of correcting it?

It Didn't Start With Hillary.  I'm always amazed at the number of people who have no knowledge of The Venona Papers.  Now, I grant you that reading some of the books and articles put out about them can be an eye-rubbing, mind-stultifying experience.  The mental effort to focus on the analysis, and to follow the logical reasoning of those who've spent years identifying those agents and their enablers can be hard.

Wanna Make Your Community Unaffordable?  Fill It with Government Workers.  There's no industry to speak of in the D.C. area; even more than Los Angeles, it's a one-industry town and in this case that industry is government, which (unlike Hollywood) creates not one cent of wealth but sure knows how to spend other people's money.  Accordingly, housing prices have soared, transforming places like Falls Church, Va., and Silver Spring, Md., into fancy bedroom communities.

When Does Trump Say, 'Enough Is Enough!'?  So what if Trump personally paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet?  Obama's campaign, not him personally, paid Reverend Wright hush money during the 2008 campaign and I don't recall any special counsel investigations or Congressional hearings into campaign finance violations.

Obama's Big Campaign Finance Violation That Everyone Wants to Forget Will Redeem Trump.  It appears all the pundits are out and claiming President Trump should be impeached because of his former attorney Michael Cohen's statements that allegedly implicate him in campaign finance violations. [...] It's strange that Barack Obama was hit by the SEC with one of the biggest campaign finance violation fees ever levied but no one called for his impeachment.

More about Obama's fundraising scandals.

Vandals, or Militants?  The origin of the present protest is not the price of bread but an increase in gasoline taxes.  Yet, with gasoline now occupying a central place in our way of life as bread once did, there is at least some link between the two eruptions.  And Louis XVI was guilty by inattention, just as Emmanuel Macron the First, France's president, seems strangely indifferent to public sentiment.  To enact policies that raise gasoline prices — already the highest in Europe — on the eve of the year-end holidays and without offering a justification, was a major political error.  Macron's mistake was made worse by the justification given after the uprising:  the government explained to skeptical citizens that the new tax was actually an ecological measure, and therefore justified, since the goal was not to add to the state's coffers but to help fight climate change.  Obviously no one believes this excuse, including the government that issued it, or so we must hope.

It's Time to Move Corruptible Bureaucrats Out of D.C. and into Flyover Country.  Today, D.C. is awash in expensive restaurants, some with Michelin stars even, and most of them have private dining rooms.  Dinner parties in those spaces abound, and if you're a foreign agent, or one of the FBI's gang of spooks, you want to get inside the "private" rooms, either physically (get one of your own invited to the table) or electronically.  The proliferation of expensive eateries requires money, as do private schools and costly colleges and universities, which are important to Washington parents.  A smart friend pointed out to me that you can't pay for all this with a government bureaucrat's salary.  Not even with two.  But they do pay for it, and the restaurants.  That means extra income from somewhere.  Writing books and blogs and op-eds doesn't come close to generating enough cash.

The Editor says...
If we move all the corruptible bureaucrats to Abilene or Salt Lake City, the lobbyists will move there, too, and then we'll have two centers of corruption.  Location isn't the problem.  The overgrown centralized government that prints and spends money is the problem.

Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang.  Former CBS chief Les Moonves's career had already ended in disgrace for repeated instances of alleged sexual harassment and assault uncovered last summer by The New Yorker.  Yet until this week the board that fired him for preying on women was planning to beg His Majesty's forgiveness for decoupling him from his kingdom, pressing into his hands a $120 million payoff.  Maybe not anymore.  The New York Times, with the cooperation of a washed-up talent manager who, at 75, decided to open his mouth about Moonves, reported on how the triangular sex trade works in Hollywood.

What Is Saudi Arabia to Us?  [Scroll down]  In other words, what is going on, including murder, is a purely dynastic power play.  But that is Saudi Arabia's nice side.  The fundamental reality is that this is a slave society, (the Arabic word for black man is the word for slave) which considers work something that inferiors do for superiors, prizes idleness, and practices cruelty as a means of asserting superiority.  Everyone knows that women, treated as property, end up disproportionately in the harems of the wealthy.  But few stop to think that this custom dooms the majority of Saudi men to lives without legitimate sex, never mind families. [...] The ultra-puritanical Wahhabi sect, which authorized the House of Saud to take power by murdering non-Wahhabis, is inexorably interwoven with the Saudi power structure.  No doubt, many believe its teachings.  And yes, Wahhabis pay for radical mosques throughout the world, America very much included.  But hypocritical corruption is at its core.  Fly first class from Riyadh to Paris or London.  Watch the women with Burqas step onto the plane.  Off comes the headgear.  On take-off, they doff the Burqas, revealing Dior fashions with plunging necklines.  And the booze flows.

Give Thanks for What Remains of Free Speech.  Free speech is increasingly imperiled as nations around the world turn to authoritarianism, which comes packaged as everything from iron-fisted dictatorial rule to coercive "progressivism."  One thing every brand of authoritarianism has in common is speech codes.  Dissenting ideas dilute authority, so they must be suppressed.  We should be thankful for the free speech that remains, and rise from our Thanksgiving tables prepared to fight for it.  Our political speech is soggy with endless calls to "fight" for various "rights," few of which bear any resemblance to what America's founders considered to be inalienable rights.  One important clue to their thinking is that rights were seen as something an unjust government could take away from citizens by force, not something benevolent governments present to citizens as a gift.

Media Hysteria Over Nationalism is Democrat Revisionist History.  No, President Macron:  nationalism isn't treason — it's necessary to a free and thriving nation.  Americans who are serious about their freedom should be ecstatic that the question of the importance of nationalism is enjoying a renaissance, after laying dormant under the four U.S. presidents before President Trump.  In the wake of Trump's declaration last month that he's a nationalist, it's been astounding to observe the revisionist history, historical ignorance, and flat-out lies Democrats, the DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex), and members of the NeverTrump CMIC (Conservative Media Industrial Complex) have been willing to propagate.

The Medical Industrial Complex.  Our dysfunctional system combines the greed of capitalism with the corruption of socialism — the worst of both worlds.  Companies raise prices to what the market will bear.  But since third-party payers — both public money and private insurance — grotesquely distort the market, companies charge exorbitant prices that a natural, normal market would never abide.  In a natural market, where individuals chose, nobody ever opts to pay $4,000 for a drug when a competitor charges $125 for the same drug.  But in this distorted market, where groups — insurance and government bureaucracies — make the choices, such waste happens regularly.  In our The Twilight Zone, the company does not go out of business but the country, slowly, does.

It's Not What Happens Next.  It's What Won't Happen.  [Scroll down]  First, there will be no big ticket legislative packages going through.  No major immigration reform supporting the highest priorities of either party.  No new tax cuts, but also no tax increases.  No new gun control legislation.  The fact is, these folks will be lucky if they can name a new Post Office.  The President isn't going to be impeached.  The Democrats would need to round up every one of their members in the House to get the ball rolling and too many of them are on record saying that would be too extreme.  And even if they managed it in the House there is zero chance of a conviction in the Senate.  Donald Trump will finish his first term at a minimum.  The wall isn't going to be finished.  That's somehow become a badge of honor among Democrats, despite being one of the most doable solutions to immigration problems imaginable.

Birthright and the Angry Election.  President Trump wants tomorrow's [11/6/2018] election to be about the "caravan" of asylum seekers coming to the U.S. through Mexico and the false accusations made against Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation proceedings.  A lot of people are angry about those things.  For the Democrats, this election is all about anger:  anger at Trump for beating Clinton two years ago, anger at his attempts to control immigration, and anger at his success in making the economy robust at the expense of some of their pet programs.  Inevitably the election is a referendum on Trump.

Are You Better Off Than You Were Two Years Ago?  President Reagan won a landslide election in 1980 when he asked voters a simple question:  "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  Voters knew they weren't.  Midterm voters should be asking themselves that same question now, before casting their ballots next Tuesday.  Only this time, the answer is yes.

The Electronic Committee of Public Safety.  Megyn Kelly will probably go into opulent seclusion and find herself disinvited from ceremonial appearances and speaking events, guillotined as a racist, with no more sympathy than a once privileged, beheaded Bourbon.

Annoy Liberals By Refusing To Care About Their Stupid Fake Outrages.  In the current convulsion, our moral and intellectual betters who make up our glorious elite are in a fake frenzy because Third World thugs are acting like Third World thugs. [...] Chopping up political opponents is generally a bad thing, though I will not hold my breath waiting for the libs to, for example, cancel their holidays in Havana because the Castro clan has butchered tens of thousands of people for preferring freedom to tyranny.

The Kingdom and the Power.  [Jamal] Khashoggi was a legal permanent resident of the United States, a Washington figure with a huge network of contacts, and a Washington Post columnist.  Any harm to him — including "merely" his kidnapping and disappearance into prison or the holding of a show trial — would inevitably become a cause célèbre and damage relations with the United States.  It would also inevitably damage Mohammed bin Salman's own reputation.  So the decision to act against Khashoggi was a revelation of ignorance about the United States, impulsiveness, brutality, or all three.  In the shadow of the Khashoggi killing we can now see the forcible detention of Lebanon's prime minister, Sa'ad Hariri, last year as a prelude.  It too revealed a thuggish approach and a remarkable lack of understanding of how such events would be viewed in the outside world.  It is perhaps not coincidental that MbS, rare among Saudi princes, has spent his entire life in the kingdom and never lived or attended school in the West.

Just in time for Halloween:  Democrat-led voter intimidation!  If we have learned anything about liberals, it is that they will do nearly anything to gain power.  This election season their strategy is all about enhancing turnout by ginning up their base with hateful negative messaging, divisive identity politics, demonization of president Trump, and threats of violence.  Witness the perfectly timed hit job on Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, designed to scuttle his confirmation or at least whip up an anti-Trump frenzy and perhaps separate the supposedly fragile "suburban white female voter bloc" from the Republican Party.  In recent days, another exquisitely orchestrated assault on the president's border policies, a "caravan" of "migrants," is headed toward our southern border from Honduras, gathering human and political momentum with each mile.  Is the media hysteria over the death of an obscure Saudi journalist meant to embarrass Donald Trump, who has been cozying up to the Saudis lately as a regional counterbalance to Iran?  Even the curiously scheduled Sixty Minutes interview of the president last weekend appeared to be designed by the left as a game-changing hatchet job, although, fortunately, it did not turn out quite as they had planned.

It's Past Time For Pope Francis To Come Clean, But Instead He's Burying Himself.  As news about the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal spreads, public confidence in Pope Francis' handling of the matter has plummeted.  A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that six in ten American Catholics say the pope is doing an "only fair" or "poor" job of managing the scandal.  That is almost double the share who said he was doing a poor job earlier this year, and triple the share who said this in 2015.  The lack of confidence is also broadly based — both Catholic women and men, young and old, and church-attending or not, have grown increasingly critical of this pontiff.

Bring on More Kavanaughs!  No man or woman — let alone their children — should be forced to endure the slanders that Brett Kavanaugh and his family experienced in the past three weeks.  If good and decent people of talent and brains now decide to run and hide in fear of a similar onslaught, it would be disastrous for the United States and for our future.  Surrender to that onslaught, giving a victory to the bullies and McCarthyites of the Left who want to end all opposition and dissent, and have been working most intensely for the past decade to undo the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is unthinkable.  They cannot be allowed to cement their hold on power.  No, now is not the time to hide.  Now is not the time for Americans who believe in the Constitution, in freedom, in the rule of law, in the presumption of innocence, of freedom of speech, of limited government, of due process, of the right to bear arms (rights all delineated clearly in the Bill of Rights) to shirk their responsibilities and hide from the assault of the smear machine of the Left.

Liberalism:  An Intrinsically Uncivil Ideology.  When Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder occupied positions of power in the federal government, they would often lecture conservatives on the virtues of civility and dialogue.  To counter Rush Limbaugh and the power of talk radio in the 1990s, rattled liberals once proposed "civility" boards, recruiting such models of civility as Paul Begala to serve on the "Penn Commission," an undertaking so stupid it didn't even last Bill Clinton's presidency.  In power, liberals peddle self-serving babble about "civility"; out of power — witness Hillary's recent pitiful interview and Eric Holder's endorsement of kicking conservatives — they peddle self-serving babble about the need to suspend civility.

Kavanaugh May Change Election Map.  This is impetuous, but I think the electoral map has changed with the Kavanaugh decision.  The Democrats avoided direct confrontation and tried to sandbag the nominee by a late allegation of sexual assault from 30 years before.  They gambled that whipping up post-Weinstein militant-feminist support would induce the president to say something outrageous that would split his party and drench him in another momentary shower of confected outrage, such as during the partial migration ban, the Charlottesville imputations of softness toward Nazis and the Klan, the Helsinki comments, and the detention of abandoned minors of illegal immigrants at the southern borders.  This would be the biggest such explosion yet and would leave the Supreme Court vacancy unfilled, assure control of the House for the Democrats, and possibly the Senate, and facilitate grid-lock and continued distractions about impeachment for another two years.

Vatican Cardinal:  Pope Francis Is 'Ice-Cold, Cunning Machiavellian'.  The German progressive weekly Der Spiegel has ended its love affair with the pope, declaring that the Church's sex abuse crisis is "increasingly about Pope Francis."  In a stunning cover article titled "The Silence of the Shepherds," the magazine blasts the pope for his unwillingness to answer direct questions regarding what he knew about the serial homosexual abuse by U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and when he knew it.

Hillary Clinton, Brett Kavanaugh and the Art of Trolling.  One of the dominant features of our time is that more and more people define themselves by what they hate.  For many partisans, what motivates them the most isn't support for their side's policies but their hatred of the other party.  Most Republicans didn't vote for Donald Trump; they voted against Hillary Clinton.  Most Democrats didn't vote for Clinton; they voted against Trump.  This dynamic doesn't just apply to presidential candidates.  It saturates both parties and both sides of the culture war, and it even distorts how we process basic facts.  The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences just came out with a report on how people will misinterpret objective data — in this case on climate change — if there's any hint that the data came from a Republican or Democratic source.  The moment Democrats saw a Republican logo, the ability to interpret a chart went out the window for many of them, and vice versa.

Video of Americans yutes talking about their problems should kill off any hope you have left.  Here's the background — President Trump said during a speech that now is the best time to be a young person in America, because of his presidency.  OK, kind of a spurious claim, but let's run with it.  So, the BBC goes out and talks to American yutes and asks them if they feel fortunate.  [Video clip]  It's unbelievable the level of ignorance you have to operate under to believe that the problems of young people are worse than ever before.

I Really Don't Feel Like Submitting To Socialist Tyranny.  Do You?  Allow me to unleash that which leftist nincompoops fear the most, besides gainful employment and their mom walking into their room at night unannounced while they are interacting with their computer/girlfriend.  Math.  Let's take the richest man ever was, Jeff Bezos.  He's got a net worth of at least $150 billion.  It not in actual dollars, though, unless he has the world's biggest mattress.  It's mostly in Amazon stock.  We'll just leave aside the inconvenient issue of what would happen to Amazon's stock value if it were "seized" and nationalized and just assume he's got a big pit full of dollar bills.  We take all that and split it among the 330 million Americans and everyone gets... $454.55.  Congrats.  Everyone gets one payment on their 2015 Toyota Camry.

When funerals become politics.  Sixteen years ago, on the eve of the 2002 midterm elections, and at a time when the United States was beginning to divide over the Afghanistan intervention and a looming Iraq war, Sen. Paul Wellstone, Minnesota Democrat, tragically died in a plane accident.  Mr. Wellstone's Minnesota funeral was meant to be a commemoration of a life of public servant well lived.  But the funeral service was soon hijacked by partisan speakers and ended up a loud and often grating political pep rally.  The message to mourners of all beliefs and persuasions was to translate their grief into votes for progressive candidates like Mr. Wellstone.  Popular discontent over news of the politicalized funeral may well have explained why, two weeks later, the in-power Republicans actually picked up seats in George W. Bush's first midterm election.

Trump and His Enemies.  The United States is now like Egypt, in that the armed forces are the only respected institution left standing.  A narrow majority disapprove of the president, and steadily larger majorities are doubtful of the judiciary, despise the Congress, loathe the academy, and detest the national media.  In a democracy, somebody will pay for this, and it is unlikely to be Donald John Trump, the principal accuser of the others.

Kavanaugh confirmation chaos offers a preview of what life would be like if Dems ran the government.  Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to the Supreme Court was set for its second day Wednesday [9/5/2018], after the unhinged left was on full display on the opening day Tuesday.  Partisan rancor reigned as outbursts, interruptions, protests, and juvenile political stunts broke out when opponents of the nomination attempted to highjack the day's proceedings.  Each Trump-hating Democrat on the committee took his or her turn flaunting the left's radical anti-freedom agenda, as the American people got a glimpse of what life would look like if Democrats were entrusted with control of government.

Leading U.S. Exorcist:  Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Is Demonic, Likely to Get Worse.  In a recent interview, a world-renowned exorcist said the sex abuse scandal currently rocking the Catholic Church is demonic in nature and likely to get worse before it gets better.  "We are in for a long storm," said Father Gary Thomas, the exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, California.  Fr. Thomas' training in Rome was the subject of the 2010 book The Rite:  The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Matt Baglio.  The book was made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins in 2011.  "It's only going to get worse," Father Gary Thomas told the National Catholic Register's Patti Armstrong.  "But as bad as it is, it has to come out.  It is unacceptable."

The Audacity of Obama.  Few things could be more embarrassing than giving Barack Obama a prize for "ethics in government," as the University of Illinois did on Friday [9/7/2018]. [...] The media has made a great deal of Donald Trump's personal moral failings and fabrications.  The funny thing is, his exaggerations and braggadocio don't affect our lives.  But when Barack Obama told us that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it," knowing full well that this was untrue, he defrauded every American.  And when he and his staff knowingly misinformed the media about the nature of the Iran Deal, he made every American (and every Middle Easterner) less safe. [...] And now that Donald Trump has waved that wand, sparking the economy, renegotiating trade deals, bring America to the point that — for the first time in history — the Department of Labor reported more jobs available than people looking for work.  Obama wants you to believe it was all his doing.

Journalists Celebrate Bob Woodward's Trump-Bashing Book After Trashing His Reputation For Years.  The mainstream press is rushing to defend Bob Woodward after President Trump attacked him over his new book.  That's funny, because journalists themselves had been saying far worse things about Woodward for more than a decade.

Catholic clergy in the news:
The Catholic Scandal Is More About Power Than About Sex.  A sociopathic cardinal and kingmaker caught retrospectively with his pants down is big news.  That the pope knew and covered for him is even bigger.  So the torrent of coverage is inescapable.  You have already read the sorry details about "Uncle Ted," his beach house sleepovers with seminarians, the cuddling and groping, all while Theodore McCarrick moved up the clerical ladder, reaping power and influence.  Then appeared Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò of Kosovo, former apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C., to finger a bevy of hierarchs in color-coded zucchettos who protected and advanced him.  Worse, he stated that Pope Francis had been aware of McCarrick's sexual history.  The pope who should have cashiered a serial predator made him a trusted advisor instead.  It is a blockbuster story.  But where does it lead?

The Scandal of Left-Wing Journalists Covering a Left-Wing Pope.  Last year, my wife and I visited Italy for the first time.  In Rome, we arranged for a guide to take us through the Vatican.  I envisioned an elderly gentleman, but our guide turned out to be an attractive young woman who, I soon decided, was a practicing Catholic.  At one point, she asked me guardedly what I thought of Pope Francis.  I'm not a Catholic, I said, so it's probably none of my business.  But I don't like him.  He seems to care more about left-wing politics than about Christianity.  When it comes to politics and economics, he is ignorant; he should stick to theology.  She discreetly kept silent, but I was pretty sure she agreed.

The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.  It is not the first time such allegations have been made, but it may be the first time the allegations have been so exhaustively detailed, including the naming of priests and their alleged victims.  In Ireland, where Pope Francis visited last week and issued another apology (but took no responsibility) for un-priestly behavior, more stories surfaced detailing what happened to unwed mothers and their babies seven decades ago in a home created for girls and women who became pregnant out of wedlock.  The girls and women were abused, their babies either buried in the home's yard, or forcibly taken from them to be adopted, all this from a church that claims to be "pro-life."

Two Funerals and a Missing Cardinal.  Pope Francis was under attack for failing to act on countless documented cases of sex abuse within the Catholic Church.  The Vatican's ex-ambassador to Washington, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, fired the first salvo, detailing the misconduct of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Donald Wuerl and calling on the pope to resign.  Ricochet had the best wrap-up of the crisis in the church and the Lavender Mafia flourishing under Pope Francis. [...] There are calls for Cardinal Wuerl to resign and he appears to have gone missing, with rumors that he was spirited out of the country to avoid prosecution.  Certainly all this turmoil in our justice system and the Church is unsettling.  But it's a useful reminder that in all hierarchies, sooner or later, the mission of the organization becomes the protection of the hierarchy, not the stated mission, and every now and then, a thorough housecleaning is in order.

They Destroy Everything They Touch.  The Pope has a bigger agenda," said Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, in an interview about bombshell allegations about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.  "He's got to get on with other things of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church.  We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this."  And in that quote, which Cupich has protested was taken out of context (it wasn't), Cupich showed a sad reality, which is that the Catholic Church is the latest in a long line of exceptional institutions of Western civilization brought into deep decline by the infiltration of the cultural Marxist/postmodern Left.  The "rabbit hole" Cupich refers to is a testimony released Saturday by Archbishop Carlo Viganò, a distinguished Vatican veteran who had served as the papal nuncio, or ambassador, to the United States, which included a scathing critique of Pope Francis.

The Coming Global Middle-Class Majority:  Thank Capitalism, Not Socialism, For The Boom.  Capitalism has failed.  Socialism is ascendant.  That's a common message we get from the media these days.  Which is funny, because capitalism in the last few decades has had the most revolutionary impact on improving human lives in history.

Is the Pope a Catholic?  No one can have much to add to NRO's coverage of the crisis in the Catholic Church.  Michael Brendan Dougherty, Kathryn Lopez, and other colleagues have covered all the shocking events fully and with a kind of angry or hurt conscientiousness: the nature and extent of the sexual abuse; the quiet shuttling of pedophile priests from one parish to another; the legalistic bullying and manipulation of victims and their families; the placing of the Church's political and financial interests above justice and charity; the fact that bishops showed greater concern, even tenderness, towards clerical abusers than towards those they abused; and the repeated assurances that these abuses were being corrected when in fact they were being concealed and smoothed over.  These revelations have been deeply disturbing, and anyone predicting them a few years ago would have been dismissed — as indeed some critics of the bishops were dismissed — as dealing in fantasies of sexual perversion and blasphemy.  Despite the sensational nature of the revelations, however, we all had the eerie sense that there might be worse to come.

How The Pederasty Cover-Up Will Make Civil War Within The Catholic Church.  Sixteen years ago, reporters at The Boston Globe conducted an extensive investigation of the sexual abuse of minors by priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.  Not long thereafter, reporters elsewhere detailed similar abuse in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the like.  The word used in the press to describe what had been going on was pedophilia, which is a misnomer deliberately employed to cover up what journalists then considered and still consider now an inconvenient aspect of the truth.

The sneering contempt of Pope Francis.  On Saturday night [8/25/2018] a document with the stark heading "Testimony" appeared online.  In this dossier Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the United States, accused the pope of reversing sanctions imposed upon the disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI.  He also alleged, among other things, that various curial insiders attempted to hamper Benedict's own internal investigation of McCarrick, that under Francis the cardinal served as a kingmaker who was responsible for the appointments of various eminent bishops who are close allies of the pope, and that all of this was quid pro quo for McCarrick's quiet masterminding of Francis' own election.  Viganò ended by calling upon the pope to resign.  It is almost impossible to the overstate the significance of this letter.  If Viganò is lying, he is guilty of one of the greatest slanders in the history of the Church.  If he is telling the truth, the Eternal City is mired in filth unseen since the days of the Borgias, and Francis is among the worst wretches who has ever besmirched the Chair of Peter.

Should the Pope Resign?  Many years ago in the early 1980s I was drawn ever so transiently into the bureaucratic intricacies of the Roman Catholic Church in America.  There was a saintly priest at Indiana University, Fr. James Higgins, who was driven from the university's Newman Center to a parish some 20 miles away from campus.  The archbishop of Indianapolis replaced him by two utter lightweights.  Their homilies had nothing to do with Catholic doctrine and much to do with their Yoga classes, interpersonal relationships of an odd sort, and, in one instance, the thrill of approaching a cliff and questioning whether to jump or not.  I looked over at my young children and decided I would drive 40 miles every Sunday rather than wait for the idiot to jump.  The more I looked into the plight of Fr. Higgins the more I discovered the early glimmerings of the full-blown crisis that confronts the Church today.  The sex scandal and its decades-long cover-up now confronting the Church is the most serious crisis that the Church has faced since the Protestant eruption of centuries ago.  The boys who took over from Fr. Higgins were planted on campus by a corpulent, luxury-loving archbishop, whose interests were worldly rather than spiritual and, incidentally, not very sophisticated.

Why Are We in Media Hell?  [Scroll down]  So, for instance, Senator John McCain dies.  For the record, the man was a heroic patriot with whom I often disagreed. [...] Either pay tribute, say Rest in Peace, or keep your mouth shut.  Nothing else is required.  And this is how we all behave — for about five minutes.  By the sixth minute, however, the reactions on the news channels and social networks have turned predictably vicious.  Some can't get out of their own heads long enough to silence their political snarling.  Others use their tributes to McCain to make nasty comparisons to the living.  Still others start attacking the way some paid their respects.

Prayers for the souls of hundreds of thousands of children that died because of McCain.  The Roman Catholic religion, and the Church, are fronts for the world's biggest business empire, a multinational at least 1500 years older than the next one, Holland's VOC which existed maybe 100 years.  It has played power politics for longer than anyone else, all over the world.  Its real estate portfolio alone is worth more than many a country.  For that matter, it effectively owns many a country.  There would have to be a huge outcry over the child abuse before there could ever be an investigation.  Multiple popes have promised exactly such investigations, and nothing has happened.  It would upset the business model too much.  And most faithful still believe their priests are decent men, anyway.  Yes, there's that word again, 'decent'.  If a priest can no longer be maintained in a specific church because he's been too obvious, too perverted and too greedy, he simply gets transferred to another parish.  They've been doing this for 1,500 years, they got it down.  And when things heat up, they beg god for forgiveness.  While the Church gets ever richer.

The Catholic Church is beyond redemption.  The new round of revelations involves pornographic episodes of sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.  (The situation in Philadelphia, the state's largest diocese, was separately documented in a 2005 grand-jury report.)  On top of that, the leading figure from that 2002 convention in Dallas, the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, is accused of sexually assaulting two children in addition to carrying on a series of exploitative sexual relationships with adult seminarians — relationships that had been an open secret among his colleagues.  And just last week The [New York] Post revealed that the Archdiocese of New York has paid out close to $60 million to sex-abuse victims in the last two years.  The rot is not exclusive to the United States.

The Unmasking of The Weekly Standard.  Barack Obama really owes Bill Kristol — big time.  First, had Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives not pushed for a deadly, prolonged war in Iraq after September 11, there would be no President Obama. [...] Second, Kristol's magazine, The Weekly Standard, just gave political cover to Obama's most unforgivable scandal:  The weaponization of our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to target Donald Trump's presidential campaign and violate the constitutional rights of private U.S. citizens.

It's Not Just CIA's Brennan:  No Former Spy Should Have Access To Nation's Secrets.  Maybe former CIA Director John Brennan's loss of his security clearance and subsequent public meltdown is doing us all a favor.  Increasingly, many wonder:  Why should anyone have access to U.S. state secrets when they leave government?

Incrementalism:
List of Qualified Conditions for Medical Marijuana Use in Minnesota Grows.  Minnesota residents with autism or obstructive sleep apnea can now qualify for the state's medical marijuana program.  Those additions are effective Wednesday [8/1/2018], marking the latest expansion of the program that launched in 2015.  Minnesota lawmakers passed one of the nation's most restrictive medical marijuana laws in 2014, banning the plant form and restricting its use to patients with just a handful of serious conditions.  Patients with intractable pain were added to the fold in 2016.  The state allowed residents suffering post-traumatic stress disorder to buy the medication starting last summer.

The Editor says...
Next, they'l be adding those who have been triggered and victimized by microaggressions, the poor folks who have been addressed by the wrong pronoun, and the unfortunate fellow with no sound from his left stereo speaker.  They all need the healing power of medical marijuana!  What a sad generation of helpless, spineless, godless, lost people.

How Support For Socialism Arises From Ingratitude.  The free market took off at about the time the American experiment in liberty got going.  Before that time, life for virtually everyone was like a bad dream they could not wake up from.  People lived tired, dirty, hungry, downtrodden, and at the mercy of their circumstances.  You don't have to trace very far back in your family line to reach a time when your own people would have found the ease, affluence, and expansiveness of the life you lead totally astonishing.  Would they also be astonished by your lack of gratitude for what the free market has given you?  Or would they find you celebrating the free market and the gifts it provides?

And They Wonder Why We're Angry.  When the interpreters regained control of the House in 2006 — much as they seek it now — they immediately deregulated the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under the guidance of House leader Barney Frank.  The lack of oversight over these massive federal government loan operators caused the massive economic collapse robbing the people of more than six trillion dollars in home values.  Home values in Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas did not drop.  To this day, the suburbs of D.C. remain among the ten wealthiest counties in America.  There was no great recession in Washington, D.C.  The housing crisis and recession were strapped by the interpreters to the political corpse of President Bush, and the super-populist interpreter President Barack Obama was ushered into power.  Attempts to criticize or limit his political actions were regularly interpreted as racist.

Pope Francis collectivizes the guilt.  I am sure the holy father means well, and I am sure he is doing the best he can with his limited socialist background.  But his letter to the faithful on the massive Church scandal out of Pennsylvania alone leaves a lot to be desired.  The pope rightly condemned the abuses by priests of minors and seminarians, criticized the bishops who covered it up, and condemned the culture of "clericalism" — that weird belief among some clerics that they can do anything they like and get away with it, simply because they are clerics entrusted with powers from God. [...] But then his socialist orientation got the better of him.  He made it a matter not of individual guilt, but of collective guilt, societal guilt, something we all are part of and must atone for.  This is a big tenet of liberation theology and similar lines of lefty thought.  Society is guilty.

The Catholic Church's Homosexual Problem.  According to Cardinal Raymond Burke, "It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men.  There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this.  Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root.  It is of course a tendency that is disordered."  If you're surprised to hear this candid admission, you're not alone.  As Cardinal Burke observed, "There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this."  Yes, it was fine to talk about Catholicism's problem with pedophilia.  It was fine to discuss sexual scandals in broad terms.  But it was basically forbidden to connect them directly to homosexuality.

An Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops.  Last week, a Pennsylvania grand jury reported that several hundred Catholics priests might be predators.  The Catholic Church is losing the moral high ground by failing to recognize and report on these offenders.  Individuals who commit crimes are not real priests; they are criminals who have no place in the Catholic Church.  If proven guilty, they must face criminal justice.  These issues could have been resolved in 2002, when the church appointed a lay-independent commission.  The commission's chairman was Governor Frank Keating (former Oklahoma governor), a highly competent executive and former FBI agent.  He was the right man at the right time to expose wrongdoers and refer them to the prosecutors.  Keating began with an open mind, but quickly realized that some of the accusations were true and that the bishops covered them up.  It also became evident that the bishops did not have the moral courage to permanently resolve the crisis and expose the predators.

Why Hasn't Pope Francis Removed Cardinal Donald Wuerl?  On Tuesday afternoon [8/14/2018], the Pennsylvania attorney general released a shocking and sickening grand jury report documenting hundreds of cases of sexual crimes against minors committed by Catholic clergy in six Catholic dioceses over the course of 70 years, mostly before the sex-abuse crisis rocked the Boston archdiocese in 2002.  We've read enough of the report that we cannot fathom why Cardinal Wuerl, who served as bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, has not resigned or been removed by Pope Francis yet.

The Devil Resides In The Vatican.  Before his death in 2016, the Vatican's chief exorcist for over a quarter century, Father Gabriele Amorth, observed, "The Devil resides in the Vatican, and you can see the consequences."  We are seeing the consequences now from Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. all the way up to the College of Cardinals.  Fr.  Amorth described "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon."  The Pennsylvania grand jury report relates one instance of ritualized, satanic abuse of a young boy by four priests.  There is some ambiguity regarding the precise nature of the incident owing to page-long redactions in the report. [...] Fortunately most of the 301 priests listed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report are now dead, and many have been dead for decades.

Vatican Cardinal: 'Homosexual Culture' In The Church Part Of Abuse Crisis.  Cardinal Raymond Burke has called upon Pope Francis to clean up what he calls a "homosexual culture" in the Church that has contributed to the sex abuse crisis.  As noted by Matt Walsh and other Catholic commentators, roughly 80% of the sexual abuse victims in the Catholic Church were male, many of them being postpubescent.  Recently-ousted Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexual relations with both adult males and minors; far too often, he preyed on male seminarians entering the priesthood.

In the face of horror, the Catholic Church is worried about PR.  They read like scenes from a Marquis de Sade novel. [...] Yet the blockbuster grand-jury report on abuse in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania is credible, deeply researched and all too real.  The findings — that 300 predatory priests victimized 1,000 children over seven decades — mark a crisis of still-unfathomable scale in the American church.  It involves clerical fathers who gravely sinned against their children and against the Father in heaven, and others who averted their eyes or made excuses or covered up the sins.  The most painful aspect of all this is the blasé response of many American hierarchs and especially those, like Washington Archbishop Donald Cardinal Wuerl, who are implicated in the report.  Wuerl and his colleagues have treated the report as a PR headache rather than a moral and spiritual wake-up call.

The Shame of the Church.  The release yesterday [8/14/2018] of a state grand jury report on the widespread sexual abuse of minors by priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses only serves to confirm — as if further confirmation were necessary — that there is a deep moral rot in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, and one that will not be easily eradicated.

The Catholic Church's Rotherham.  'We are deeply saddened."  So begin the many perfunctory statements of many Catholic bishops today in response to the Pennsylvania grand-jury report detailing how priests in that state abused children and how bishops shuffled these priests around. [...] What exactly are they sorry about?  Soon the bishops are telling us about a chance for "renewal" after the promised implementation of new policies.  They tell us about "overcoming challenges" in the Church.  Or they use the phrase "a few bad apples."  I find it impossible not to notice that these expressions of sorrow never arrive before the courts, the state attorneys general, or the local press arrive on the scene.  That fact gives you another idea about what causes the bishops' sorrow.

Open Offices are the Communism Of Seating Arrangements.  It starts noble enough.  You're plugging along, working on a presentation or analyzing some numbers, then someone pops in with a question about a project that involves both of you.  Instantly, you're out of the zone and stuck trying to get back in it.  Or maybe your coworker is on a roll, performing a complicated task requiring a number of steps that must be performed in a specific order, and you pop over to his desk to discuss a project and pull him out of his work.  Either way, someone is getting hit, and not with the rhythm.  No one argues that the cube farm is the ideal working arrangement.  It does afford some privacy, with its small fences, but it also makes it easy for you to interrupt your coworkers and for them to do the same to you.

Conservative Confusion About Who and What We're Fighting.  [T]hink about who will take over the leadership of crucial committees if the Democrats flip enough seats to regain a majority in the House:  Adam Schiff will probably become the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee — Adam Schiff!  Before we go any further, think about that.  This buffoon is still braying about Russian collusion even as he covers up the crimes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Schiff's first order of business as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee will be to halt any ongoing investigations into Obama administration abuses of power — particularly the illegal deployment of the FBI, CIA, and IRS against domestic political opponents of the Democratic Party, including the Trump presidential campaign.  Schiff will likewise close down all inquiries into Mrs. Clinton's copious catalogue of crimes.

Kremlin Eyes U.S. Power Grid as Pols Take a Powder.  In the last two weeks, the Department of Homeland Security held four briefings, including one in New York City on July 31, warning that Russian hackers are already practicing how to throw the switch and cause a blackout in the United States.  We'd have no lights, no gas at the pump, no life support in hospitals, no mass transit, no food supply.  Yet nearly all Washington pols are ignoring the danger.

The Profound Impact of the Superficial.  Stephen Josephson, a therapist who specializes in "First World problems," told me that when he asks kids what they want to be when they grow up, the most common response is "rich and famous."  He added that those kids are at risk of depression.  "Everyone wants to be rich," said the American billionaire David Siegel, who sells "luxury" timeshare units on credit to middle- and working-class customers.  "If they can't be rich, they want to feel rich — and, if they don't want to feel rich, then they're probably dead." [...] He followed it up with the surprising insight that "money doesn't make you happy.  It just makes you unhappy in a good section of town."  If everybody knows that money doesn't bring us happiness, why do we devote our lives to trying to get more of it?

A pernicious example of anti-American propaganda:
Time to retire the Blue Angels.  Seafair has always brought a festive mood to the Puget Sound region.  No one can deny the excitement of the Navy's Blue Angels roaring overhead.  Yet I find their annual visit in poor taste.  Given the many worthwhile activities taking place during Seafair, I wonder why it is necessary to use the Blue Angels as part of the celebration.  The Blue Angels certainly provide entertainment; but do we really need this type of diversion?

The Editor says...
The article above apparently appeared in the Seattle newspaper, since it was on their web site.  It is not surprising that someone in Seattle would be opposed to an exhibition of America's military strength, because Seattle, from what I hear, is full of America-hating hippies.  The Blue Angels air show is a recruiting tool for the Navy.  It inspires young men and women to consider military aviation as a goal — and it's not a career that just anyone can enter.  Moreover, there is no wasted talent:  everyone involved in the Blue Angels air show is combat ready, and combat-ready pilots have to practice sometime, so they might as well let everybody watch.  Let the Communist spies get a good look at them, too, and imagine what it would be like to be under attack by guys like the Blue Angels.  The whimpering Seattle hippies probably don't appreciate the noise generated by fighter jets, but I can assure you that's the sound of freedom.

Are we giving fighter jets to a friend or foe?  Is Turkey still a friend to keep close, or an enemy to keep closer?  On Wednesday [8/1/2018], the Treasury Department sanctioned Turkish officials over the country's detention of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, on flimsy charges.  It's the latest incident in deteriorating relations with the NATO ally, complicating matters far beyond the captive pastor.  When Recep Tayyip Erdogan was still considered a model ally, Turkey became a partner in a 2001 program launched by Lockheed Martin to manufacture the state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jet, designed to consolidate the West's air superiority in battle.

Allen West: 'Pursuit of Happiness' Means Equal Opportunity, Not Equal Outcomes.  Retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, a senior fellow with the Media Research Center and a former congressman, told the National Conservative Student Conference Tuesday [7/31/2018] that they will not be successful in life if they whine, insulate themselves from the reality of the world, and fear taking risks.  He also stressed that the "pursuit of happiness" in the Constitution means equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes, the latter an ideology pushed by socialists, such as New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Either John Podesta was quite a Russian dupe, or ...  Was John Podesta a Russian dupe?  At a minimum, he was a Russian dupe, based on information from a long, interesting article today titled "How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies," from Politico magazine.  Politico points out that the very firm that Podesta was involved with, Rusnano USA (via its Joule subsidiary), is the likely new vehicle for Russian spying these days, effectively replacing the now shuttered Russian consulate in San Francisco. [...] Rusnano, eh?  That's the one former Clinton campaign chief John Podesta was involved with, though Politico doesn't mention it.

Milking the System.  Why should children under the age of 5 in a country like Britain be in receipt of free milk, mostly through the intermediary of their mothers?  Milk, after all, is one of the cheapest of commodities, so cheap that its producers are constantly complaining of its price, and the problem seems to be that of overproduction rather than of scarcity. [...] Do people who mostly possess televisions whose screens are the size of many found in art cinemas really need to be given free milk?  And if they do, because they have expended whatever money they have on subscriptions to cable television, what does this say about their sense of priorities, and the culture in which they developed their priorities?  Moreover, one might have hoped that women who really could not afford the cost of milk (than which practically nothing is cheaper) would hold off having babies until they could scrape together the price of a pint or two.

NATO's Challenge Is Germany, Not America.  Does NATO still protect the West?  Does it prevent destructive European feuding?  Does it ensure the postwar global order of free trade, commerce, travel, and communications?  And is NATO — or the United States and its leadership of NATO — the real reason there has not been a World War III or a return to global tribalism and chaos?  NATO's post-Cold War expansion to 29 nations and to the border of Russia meant the alliance became more expansive at the very time the old existential Soviet threat disappeared.  Larger membership tended to weaken common ties, even as common dangers disappeared.  The result was that the idea of NATO membership became more important to the countries that are part of it than the reality and responsibility of actual military readiness.

America's Delusional Self-Destructiveness.  [Scroll down]  So, to our perpetually hysterical media, Trump is now a traitor who is siding with Russia over his own country.  Yet the childish reactions have obscured a number of important facts.  To begin with, as Pat Buchanan, Daniel McCarthy, and others have noted, our corrupt intelligence agencies have been inept and averse to America's interests for decades.  As such, they are hardly more credible than Russia, which, of course, has been meddling in our presidential elections for a long time.  Most important, Trump is trying to avoid a second Cold War with a formidable nuclear power.  That is a goal that, to say the least, scolding the proud Putin on the world stage would have done nothing to facilitate.

12 Advances of Civilization by Flawed White American Males.  Since 1965, 75 million people have immigrated to the U.S. — the largest migration of human life the world has ever seen, despite the fact that far too many of those immigrants have agreed to take part in fostering the left's slander against the flawed American white males who, in the first place, generously let them in.

The Left's Trump-Putin Meltdown.  In a press conference with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump refused to validate the findings of a deeply corrupt and compromised intelligence community that has been working assiduously since before he was even elected to discredit and destroy him, and now the sky is falling. [...] It is also interesting that the people who are crying "treason" the loudest today never uttered the word when Barack Obama shipped billions of dollars in cash in the dark of night to the Islamic Republic of Iran, even as the mullahs were chanting "Death to America."  Treason is defined in American law as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  Wouldn't billions given to a terror-supporting rogue state be a great deal more aid and comfort to an enemy than some skepticism about our manifestly corrupt intelligence agencies at a press conference?

Nolte: Watch the Oh-So 'Sacred' Intelligence Community Lie, Lie, Lie.  In 2002, in the lead up to the disastrous Iraq War, we were told to salute and buy 100 percent into the Intelligence Community's (IC) assessment that of course Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and of course those weapons would end up in the hands of terrorists.  Therefore, we had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive war, and anyone who disagreed, or who even expressed skepticism, was deemed a traitor, suspect, and un-American.  And to my everlasting shame I was one of those shaming others.  But at least I learned.  The establishment media, Democrats, and the neocon dead-enders in Never Trump are all desperate to return to 2002.  But this time it is worse, much worse, because this time we are supposed to salute and buy 100 percent into an IC assuring and reassuring us nuke-heavy Russia is destroying everything sacred about America.

Once Again, President Trump Is Magnificently Right — This Time About Russia.  President Trump offended the entire political spectrum with a tweet this morning blaming the U.S. for poor relations with Russia.  "Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity," the president said, and he is entirely correct.  By this I do not mean to say that Russia is a beneficent actor in world affairs or that President Putin is an admirable world leader.  Nonetheless, the president displayed both perspicacity and political courage when he pointed the finger at the United States for mismanaging the relationship with Russia. [...] I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the U.S. elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America's longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics.

A Ghastly and Tasteless Escalation of Tensions... With Ourselves.  Trump's intelligent conservative enemies among the commentators are now down to mere bile, like seasick passengers who have vomited out everything else.  The inevitable Carl Bernstein, who a few months ago was announcing a constitutional crisis because Trump's mental incompetence required the application of the 25th Amendment, is this week proclaiming the new constitutional crisis provoked by the president's treason.  This may all be another manifestation of the president's undoubted singular genius at provoking his enemies to uncontrollable outbursts of psychotic foolishness.  There are the usual comparisons with a kaleidoscope of horrible miscreants from Jim Jones to the ever-popular Adolf Hitler.  But it was all unwise, unnecessary, and debilitating.

Everyone Is Smart Except Trump.  [Scroll down]  Here's the thing:  Putin is a dictator.  He answers to no one.  He does whatever he wants.  If there arises an opponent, that guy dies.  Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella.  Maybe he gets shot on the street.  Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction.  But, one way or another, the opponent dies.  Trump knows this about Putin.  And here is what that means: [...]

Do ordinary Americans take seriously the Left's Russia hysteria?  Trump Putin RussiaI'm so old I can remember when Teddy Kennedy, the revered lion of the Senate, during the height of the Cold War asked the Soviets to intervene in the 1984 presidential election.  I'm so old I can remember when Democrats constantly castigated conservatives for being paranoid about Soviet interference into world and American affairs.  I'm so old I can remember when Democrats and their fellow travelers brushed off stories about Soviet atrocities as mere Cold War propaganda.  I'm so old I can remember when we were told Communism is just another type of government and we should be more open to the Soviets and that the Cold War was a sorry relic of a fascist American past.

Why are greens silent over this ongoing ecological war?  Since the end of March, Hamas-spurred terrorists have flown hundreds of Molotov cocktails and improvised firebombs into Israel, setting aflame thousands of acres of farmland, forests and nature preserves.  The damage to Israeli agriculture is said to be in the millions, and a drop in tourism dollars compounds that.  The cost of fighting the fires, too, is enormous, not to mention the stress on locals.  But it's not just an economic hit.  Israel's Environmental Protection Ministry fears that particulate matter from the fires may boost cancer and vision problems as well as respiratory illness.  The world regularly shrugs at such Israeli suffering.  But what about the assault on Mother Nature?  The fires are destroying nature preserves, killing some animals and destroying the food supply for others.

Did Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Save America?  Over the past 55 years, regardless of any Republican in the White House or in charge of Congress, no one has been able to halt the incessant spread of left-wing radicalism in the nation's institutions and culture as well as the exponential growth of government with its tentacles increasingly intertwined in the day-to-day lives of all Americans.  As long as the people remained largely disengaged the potential damage to society as a whole and to the financial health of the country was ignored by the vast majority of the population.  Since 2012 this indifference has begun to change as the reality of the nation's future and the motives and tactics of those in the American Left has come into focus. [...] What these permanent adolescents and their megalomaniacal leadership fail to understand is that they, due to their hubris, obliviousness and single-mindedness, are responsible for the circumstances that eventuated with Donald Trump as President and the Republicans in control of Congress.

How the United Kingdom Became a Police State.  This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth.  It will demonstrate, contrary to official narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger.  It will also expose how the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers.  I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.

Guilt by Inadvertent Association.  The propensity to condemn others, usually writers, for what we might call guilt by inadvertent association is a method of abuse or disparagement often used by those who are incapable of intelligent rebuttal.  It is a technique favored by the left and its legion of trolls, who like to point out that an author quoted in a conservative argument has dubious affiliations or, analogously, that the founder of a political organization is responsible for some of the suspicious characters who gravitate around his banner.

The Left Can't Come To Grips With The Loss Of Power.  Key Trump administration officials have been confronted at restaurants.  Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged protestors to hound Trump officials at restaurants, gas stations or department stores.  Progressive pundits and the liberal media almost daily think up new ways of characterizing President Trump as a Nazi, fascist, tyrant or buffoon.  Celebrities openly fantasize about doing harm to Trump.  What is behind the unprecedented furor?  Just as Barack Obama was not a centrist, neither is Trump.  Obama promised to fundamentally transform the United States.  Trump pledged to do the same and more — but in the exact opposite direction.  The Trump agenda enrages the left in much the same manner that Obamacare, the Obama tax hikes, Obama's liberal Supreme Court picks and the Iran nuclear deal goaded the right.  Yet the current progressive meltdown is about more than just political differences.  The outrage is mostly about power — or rather, the utter and unexpected loss of it.

Keep the Kids Away from 'Drag Tots' — This Cartoon Is Coming Soon.  A new show proves the need for parents to monitor carefully what programs their little ones are watching:  On June 28, a cartoon called "Drag Tots" is premiering on World of Wonder network, and it is exactly what the title conveys — a cartoon about baby drag queens.  Not only that, but these are baby drag queens with a message:  The president is bad.  "In the show's first trailer ... a voiceover warns that the world is 'on the brink of chaos' because of President Donald Trump and his controversial administration," notes The Hollywood Reporter.  "After a clip is shown of Trump touting his plan to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the voiceover suggests a quick fix to all of today's political unrest:  'baby drag queens.'"

Ted Cruz for the Supreme Court.  The 5-4 SCOTUS decisions upholding the constitutionality of President Trump's travel ban and declaring the unconstitutionality of public sector unions extorting money from non-members to support political parties, candidates, and causes they oppose are two more benefits from President Trump's appointment of originalist Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy provides another opportunity to appoint another justice like the late Antonin Scalia, an originalist who believed that the words of the Constitution should be interpreted as written by the Founders in the context of the time in which they were written.  I put forward the name of Sen. Ted Cruz.

'Jurassic World' Is Dumb, Leftist Claptrap.  As in virtually every movie and television series made by Hollywood of late, it is quickly hammered home to the audience that white males, military figures and corporations are the true enemy of humanity.  Beyond that, the film has more holes in it than a pasta strainer and the filmmakers could not care less.  They are playing movie goers for chumps to be manipulated and exploited while insulting their intelligence.  The massive box office for the movie is proof that their craven calculations are working.

ACLU Won't Support Free Speech If It's Offensive.  The ACLU admits it doesn't support free speech as written in the Bill of Rights so maybe it's time to start calling them what they are — Leftists.  They were always hard-left but they use to believe in free speech.  Imagine a group calling itself a civil liberties union but they're wishy-washy on free speech.  This is what the hard-left does.  They support free speech to ensure their own survival but when they have enough power, they ditch it.

World Asteroid Day:  Will we defend our planet together or perish like the dinosaurs?  Saturday [6/30/2018] is Asteroid Day, an annual, global educational event aimed at learning more about the hazard that nearby asteroids pose to Earth and our civilization, and marshaling support for the search and deflection technologies we need to protect our planet.  Many thousands will gather around the world this weekend to hear the latest science on the asteroid hazard, and what we can do to prevent a future damaging impact.

The Editor says...
If you have the time to be concerned about issues like this, your life is too soft.  When was the last time someone was struck and killed by a meteorite?  Statistically, you are at greater risk from earthquakes, tornados or flooding.

Much Ado About Caring.  [P]ublic outrage on social media is the easiest and most risk-free way to prove to the world that you're a good person without actually having to help anyone. [...] If you're going to step up on a digital soapbox and complain about a situation without doing anything of substance to fix the situation, I will immediately suspect that you are more concerned with appearing to be good than actually doing anything good.

How to Go Out in Public as a Trump Supporter without Getting Beat Up or Denied Service.  It's obvious that Trump supporters are increasingly unwelcome in the public square.  Tomi Lahren can't go to brunch without getting assaulted, Milo can't drink at a bar without being chased out by vulgar swine chanting "Nazi scum," Sarah Sanders can't take her family to dinner, and Pam Bondi can't go to the movie theater without being harassed by screeching SJWs.  There's no doubt you're next, random Trump supporter. [...] If you really want to be left alone, then don a hijab or burka and no one will dare approach you for any reason.

Tyranny Has Finally Arrived in America.  Enough with the endless investigations that lead nowhere and leave the guilty unpunished.  Enough with absurdity of agencies investigating themselves in order to protect the institution they serve rather than the people.  We need to see indictments and trials to restore the foundations of our political order.  The president and his Attorney General need to give more support to the Congressional oversight committees trying to do their jobs of holding accountable the abusers of the public trust.

Venezuela's Future — and Ours.  Venezuela and North Korea could not be more dissimilar in terms of their respective cultures, peoples, and histories.  And yet they have arrived in approximately the same place:  at the terminus of F. A. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom."

Illegal Immigration, Internment Camps, and Useful Idiots.  The Bush family has a famously adversarial relationship with English.  It became clear this week that at least one of them is also illiterate where U.S. history and immigration policy are concerned.  This was demonstrated when former First Lady Laura Bush took to the pages of the Washington Post to denounce President Trump for enforcing a statute signed into law by her own husband, George W. Bush.  Even worse, she compared the HHS facilities where the children of illegal immigrants are briefly housed to the infamous internment camps where Democrat icon FDR imprisoned 110,000 American citizens of Japanese descent.  This comparison not only played into the hands of the very Democrats and partisan journalists who remorselessly savaged both her and her husband for eight solid years, it is wildly inaccurate.  Mrs. Bush clearly knows very little about the plight of children caught up in the illegal immigration crisis, and even less about the internment camps she so glibly evoked.  It's blindingly obvious that she has been suckered by the propaganda relentlessly pumped out by the "news" media, completely taken in by their lurid images of wailing children and "cruel" DHS officials.  Laura Bush has thus become just another useful idiot.

Democrats don't cry for U.S. citizens — or aborted babies.  [MSNBC's Rachel] Maddow, for instance, didn't have an on-air crying meltdown when Kate Steinle, an American citizen, was shot and killed by an illegal with previous deportations and a felony record who was back in-country, taking advantage of San Francisco's glorious sanctuary city sunshine.  She didn't publicly cry, either, when Omar Mateen, serving an Islamic terror master, shot up a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.  Did Petkanas go off on a "how dare you sir" rant about Barack Obama-era open-door border policies and lead-from-behind nationally risky foreign affairs diplomacy?  The same open borders and foreign affairs strategies that put U.S. citizens in harm's way?  Guess not.  Or, if you really want to speak to the plight of innocent lives — neither Maddow nor Petkanas nor anyone on the left cry rivers of tears for the 44.5 million babies the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate were aborted in this country between 1970 and 2014.  Ouch.  At least these kids on the border being ripped from their parents' sides, as the left would put it, had a chance at life.  Not so the aborted millions.

Forget Facebook, Google.  Here's what I worry about much, much more.  Today in China, if you email friends about books like Orwell's "Animal Farm" or Huxley's "Brave New World," your message will be blocked.  Even pictures of Winnie the Pooh were banned because someone said president Xi Jinping resembled the stuffed bear.  And now, another step, one subtler than just banning things:  the social credit score.  The government brags the system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."  That's totalitarianism.

Melinda Gates [is] Wrong, Of Course — White Males [are the] Key to Innovation.  According Melinda Gates, the wife of the (white, male) Microsoft pioneer Bill Gates, only women and minorities can give us innovation.  Perhaps Mrs. Gates should talk to the psychologists who actually research these things.  Because their finding is that it is overwhelmingly high IQ — and therefore white — countries that are responsible for per capita innovation.  And it is specifically those high IQ, white countries whose populations have the highest levels of the male hormone testosterone.  We tend to assume that a country's scientific achievement is essentially a reflection of its average IQ.  Controlling for population size, smart countries produce the most science Nobel Laureates, the most important scientific breakthroughs, so it's the countries with the biggest brains that are the engines of civilization.  However, a recently published study, led by Dutch psychologist Prof. Dimitri Van der Linden has concluded it's not so simple.  Of course national IQ is important — but so are national average levels of testosterone.

A Baptist Reader Says The Election Of J. D. Greear Means The "Soros Wing" Has Captured The Southern Baptists.  Commenters call these people the "Soros wing" of the SBC because they all have ties to the open-borders, Soros-funded Evangelical Immigration Table.

Pope calls on oil execs to convert to clean fuels.  Pope Francis warned that climate change risked destroying humanity on Saturday [6/9/2018] and called on energy leaders to help the world to convert to clean fuels to avert catastrophe.  "Civilization requires energy but energy use must not destroy civilization," the pope told top oil company executives at the end of a two-day conference in the Vatican.  Climate change was a challenge of "epochal proportions", he said, adding that the world needed an energy mix that combated pollution, eliminated poverty and promoted social justice.

The Editor says...
Anyone who believes man-made climate change might "destroy civilization" is a person with no faith in God and no knowledge of the Bible.

What's Next for Conservatism:  Today's young Libertarians, who came of age as Ronald Reagan was readying history's dust bin for the Evil Empire, think the previous age consistently overrated communism's threat.  It didn't; and the youngsters should show more respect for the analytical ability and survivalist instincts of their freedom-loving forebears whose blood ran strong for so long — even as they should respect their forebears' desire to preserve a culture free from, and opposed to, radical social experimentation unmoored from the truths and traditions that sustained Western Civilization for centuries.

Let's not polish Saint Bobby Kennedy's halo yet.  Look, of course it's terrible that RFK was murdered at the age of 42, leaving behind all those kids and Ethel pregnant with the last of them.  But since his passing, there's been even more historical revisionism about Bobby than with almost any of the other liberal icons.  So, as the gushing from his fawning biographers like Comrade Chris Matthews of MSNBC begins, let's remember a few things about St. Bobby.  First of all, he was not going to be elected president in 1968.

'Roseanne' Canceled; Why Not 'The View'?  The "Roseanne" revival was abruptly canceled by ABC Tuesday following crude, racist tweets sent by show star Roseanne Barr about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.  And while there's absolutely no excuse for Barr's tweets, it's extremely hypocritical of ABC to continue airing "The View" given all the abhorrent things the co-hosts have said.  In February, Behar infamously and openly mocked the Christian faith of Vice President Mike Pence and millions of Americans when she proclaimed that the ability to hear messages from God is not a marker of faith, but "mental illness."  It took Behar weeks to apologize, and she only did so after constant public criticism and ridicule.

Roseanne and the High Cost of Embracing Craziness.  If Roseanne Barr is a poster child for anything, she's a poster child for cultural brokenness.  Consider, for a moment, the cascade of failures that brought us to today — a day when one of the most popular shows on television is canceled after its toxic star tweeted a racist insult of Valerie Jarrett.  First, ABC shouldn't have brought her back.  She was, quite obviously, one of the more toxic and troubled personalities in American public life.  This was a woman who, after all, trafficked in grotesque conspiracy theories, said that anyone who eats at Chick-fil-A "deserves to get the cancer that's sure to come," and defiled the National Anthem more thoroughly than a thousand kneeling football players.

Socialism's victory tour.  You know when you are living in a socialist country when there are no more pets, because they have been eaten.

Mr. Trump, end DOJ's campaign of secrecy — Declassify everything possible.  Democrats and their media allies are again shouting "constitutional crisis," this time claiming President Trump has waded too far into the Russia investigation.  The howls are a diversion from the actual crisis:  the Justice Department's unprecedented contempt for duly elected representatives, and the lasting harm it is doing to law enforcement and to the department's relationship with Congress.  The conceit of those claiming Mr. Trump has crossed some line in ordering the Justice Department to comply with oversight is that "investigators" are beyond question.  We are meant to take them at their word that they did everything appropriately.  Never mind that the revelations of warrants and spies and dirty dossiers and biased text messages already show otherwise.

Mr. Sessions, Your 'Extraordinary Circumstances' Are Here.  In March, Attorney General Sessions wrote to three Republican congressman, declining to appoint a special counsel in the matter of the FBI, CIA, Obama administration and... and... frankly, I don't know what to call it, since there is so much from the Clinton Foundation to the emails to the FISA court to who knows what.... because, the AG said, a special counsel necessitated "extraordinary circumstances."  I sympathized somewhat with Sessions at the time.  Special counsels do not have the best track records.  Often they are appointed for dubious politicized reasons.  In the Valerie Plame case, a special counsel put Scooter Libby in jail for outing the insignificant Plame as a CIA agent when she was already easily identified in Who's Who (not to mention that the never-indicted Richard Armitage, not Libby, did the initial public outing anyway).

How Low Can the ACLU Fall?  During recent testimony before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said that "the issue of reporting undocumented students is a 'school decision' and 'local community decision,' adding that 'we have laws and we also are compassionate.'"  That is an accurate, well-balanced statement:  for better or worse, Americans do not have a legal duty to aid law enforcement.

It's time for Mueller to put up or call it quits.  The FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane, a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, on July 31, 2016.  Ten months later, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein passed the counter-intelligence baton to special counsel Robert Mueller to continue the inquiry.  Thus, the question of whether there was "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" has dragged on for 22 months.  To quote former FBI director James Comey when defending the drafting of an exoneration of Hillary Clinton in May 2016, 11 months into her email investigation and before interviewing her, "If you've been investigating something for almost a year, and you don't have a general sense of where it's likely to end up, you should be fired because you're incompetent."  Thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian companies were charged with conspiracy and identity theft involving a Russian propaganda campaign.  Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were charged with financial crimes occurring years before Donald Trump even announced his presidential candidacy.

Mueller caught in a trap of his own making.  Special counsel Robert Mueller looks likely to face a huge humiliation in court and a massive public relations disaster.  And it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.  Unless a Trump-appointed judge bails him out and grants an exception to federal law, trampling on the rights of the defendants he indicted, Mueller will have to go into court to try a case he doesn't seem to think he can win — or else face the humiliation of dropping the charges he brought against 13 Russian entities (some of which did not exist at the time of the alleged crime) with great fanfare. [...] I am no lawyer, but the problem with this excuse is obvious to even me:  if the case is so complex that extra time is required, then why was the indictment brought in the first place?  Why did the special counsel rush the indictment when he now confesses that it was too complex to go to trial?

Trump White House's feud with John McCain is an ugly scrimmage in the war against political correctness.  Kelly Sadler, a White House communications aide, made a crack recently during an internal meeting about how Sen. John McCain's opposition to President Donald Trump's CIA pick, Gina Haspel, didn't matter because McCain is "dying anyway."  Once the remark was leaked, presumably by someone who doesn't much like Sadler, the media — mainstream and social — exploded as if the stock market had crashed.  What a horrifying thing to say!  Proof of the rottenness at the core of the Trump White House!  Off with her head — that is, let's get her fired and ruin her career!  Of course, it was not at all a nice thing to say.  And yes, Trump says many, many not nice things.  And it could be that his rudeness and crudeness trickles down to the staff.  But Trump's directness has been a big part of his appeal, even to evangelicals and other "deplorables" accused of hypocrisy and obtuseness for backing a profane man.  They were tired of being told what they are allowed to say and think.  And nobody is going to tell Trump what to say.

Pass 'right to try' to advance my child's life — tomorrow, it could be yours.  Lawmakers have another chance to make things right by passing "Right to Try" legislation that will give terminally ill patients one more shot at life.  Legislation making experimental drugs and treatments accessible for individuals with life-threatening conditions is set to be voted on Tuesday by the House of Representatives.  Thanks to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a similar bill passed the Senate last August and is a lead priority for President Trump.  Until now it has been in political limbo due to a lack of bipartisan backing.  As the mother of a child with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening illness, I want options when it comes to experimental treatments that could prolong my daughter's life.  But as an American and taxpaying voter, I also want to see Congress working to take morally correct action for the most vulnerable and sickest among us.

Goodbye, Netflix.  After about thirteen years of being a loyal customer of Netflix, the time has come for me to say goodbye. [...] Given that I'm a conservative, one might be inclined to believe that my choice to leave Netflix is predicated upon the company's most recent decision to partner with Barack and Michelle Obama's new company, called "Higher Ground Productions," to produce loads of new content.  In a way, I guess that's correct.  But this choice by Netflix has not alone led me to this decision.  Rather, this was the straw that finally broke the camel's back — the latest in a series of indicators that the network has become little more than a propaganda arm for radical left-wing political actors.

A Royally Useless Spectacle.  The man who is sixth in line to be king of Great Britain is getting married today, and America has lost its mind.  What does it mean to be sixth in the line of royal succession to an office that depends solely and exclusively on who your father is?  It means that five family members have to die before you get the real goodies.  Granted, those goodies are amazing.  Who wouldn't want to live in a thousand-year-old castle (too bad it's in Scotland) or have dozens of "servants" cater to your every whim and need?  But that lifestyle depends on people believing that you are deserving of such wealth and privilege because you happened to be lucky enough to be sired by a big-eared dolt whose mother is currently known as a "queen."  I find it unbecoming that citizens of our republic should be so enamored of the goings-on of a family who takes the issue of "bloodlines" seriously.

Right Here:  Mass Murder Is The Problem, And Today, Hollywood Has The Answer.  Searching for answers in the wake of a terrible tragedy, many people turn to God.  Others consult friends and family.  Perhaps some find wisdom in the words of experts.  However, there is a large contingent among the masses that looks nobly to that greatest bastion of superior thinking:  Hollywood actors. [...] In light of the terrible mass murder of 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Texas today, many Tinseltown elites took to the Twitterwaves in order to solve the planet's problems in 280 characters or less.

Time for Mccain to Resign.  It is unfortunate that a careless person in the Trump White House made the callous remark — even if in a supposedly private setting — that John McCain doesn't matter because "he's dying anyway."  First, that staffer, Kelly Sadler, obviously doesn't know the first rule of Washington, which is that nothing is ever truly off the record, especially in White House staff meetings, though coming in a close second is the rule that "in Washington, all microphones are live."  Of course, while Sadler was foolish, how does the substance of her remark differ from the liberals who gleefully point out that the Trump majority is temporary at best because so many Trump voters are old and dying off quickly?  I have heard political science professors say this very thing several times in recent weeks at academic gatherings.

Honest Discourse About Article V Convention Needed.  Whether States should ask Congress to call a convention under Article V of our federal Constitution is one of the most important issues of our time.  The Delegates to such a convention, as Sovereign Representatives of The People, have the power to throw off the Constitution we have and set up a new Constitution — with a new and easier mode of ratification — which creates a new government.  Americans need the Truth.  But former law professor Rob Natelson's recent article in The Hill is filled with ad hominems and misstatements.

The War on Wisdom.  Last year, Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, co-authored an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer with a professor from the University of San Diego School of Law in which they wrote that the "bourgeois culture" and "bourgeois norms" that governed America from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s were good for America, and that their rejection has caused much of the social dysfunction that has characterized this country since the 1960s.  Those values included, in their words:  "Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake.  Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness.  Go the extra mile for your employer or client.  Be a patriot, ready to serve the country.  Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable.  Avoid coarse language in public.  Be respectful of authority.  Eschew substance abuse and crime."  Recognizing those norms as universally beneficial constitutes wisdom.  Rejection of them constitutes a rejection of wisdom — i.e. foolishness.

Happy Birthday, Karl Marx.  Not.  Marxist dialectic was never about logic.  It's about anti-logic:  the kind, you might almost say, that collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.  It's about ignoring the obvious truth, for example, that if a troublesome intellectual like Marx had had to live under any of the totalitarian regimes he inspired — Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc — he would quickly have found himself dead in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head, or, at best, in a mental institution.

A Reality Check for Those Who Deplore the Nuking of Japan.  In his book With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge will enlighten you on the true cost of war and the paramount need to end it as quickly as possible.  If you have the stomach to learn what war really is like, read his book.  When you are done, judge for yourself whether E.B. Sledge was a good man — and then make a stab in the dark as to whether he might have approved of Truman's decision to nuke Japan.  If all this leaves you cold because it seems inadequately grounded in reason, then please explain why it is reasonable to keep civilians out of things when discussing a war for survival.

No, We Shouldn't Include Girls In Everything.  It's fitting that the Girl Scouts are still the Girl Scouts while the Boy Scouts have changed their identity and now even their name to include girls.  Girls can still have their own spaces and their own organizations in our culture.  They are forced to allow boys into their locker rooms and bathrooms, which is insane and dangerous, but even in that case the boy has to pretend to be a girl in order to gain admittance.  Boys, on the other hand, are expected to include girls in everything.  They are provided no area and no time to be boys, and do boy things, and be around other boys.  We used to understand that boys need space apart from girls.  Not anymore.  It's been trending this way for a while now.

An Imminent Counterattack Begins the Fight of Our Lives.  Unparalleled government abuses of power are about to become public.  The question is what we, the people, will do in response to this overt attempt by deep state players to strip us of our freedom. [...] The Left's ongoing refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election and live according to the rule of law, along with their willingness to destroy people's lives, are irreconcilable with a constitutional republic of self-governing people.  There can be no negotiated settlement over such fundamental differences.  We must boldly reclaim the righteousness of liberty and equal justice under the law on behalf of all Americans.

Congressman Louie Gohmert Just Absolutely Wrecked Robert Meuller With Epic 48-Page investigation Blowout'.  "What I have accumulated here is absolutely shocking upon the realization that Mueller's disreputable, twisted history speaks to the character of the man placed in a position to attempt to legalize a coup against a lawfully elected President," writes GOP Congressman Louie Gohmert.  Gohmert is referring to the exhaustive expose he just released called:  Robert Mueller:  Unmasked.  And the GOP Representative does exactly that, shining a bright light on decades of Mueller misdeeds, stating:  "Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence.  He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the prosecution of anyone."  And that's the nice part.

The last word on Chappaquiddick (for now).  Believe it or not, there are still things to be said about Chappaquiddick.  One of them is that the real thing that protected Ted Kennedy from the wrath of the crowd after his failure of nerve in that night of dark water was much less his family's money and power than the strength of the victim mystique. [...] The Kennedy legend, which began with PT-109, died at Chappaquiddick, where the script was played backward.  One brother saved the rest of his crew, and pulled a shipmate to safety, while the other left a woman to die in his car.

Is a false flag attack on a US Navy ship next?  Even without the recent upgrading of the Kinzhal system, the experience of the British fleet in the Falklands conflict illustrates the vulnerability of warships to low-flying missiles.  In addition to the sinking of the HMS Sheffield and Sir Galahad, virtually every British ship was hit by at least one of Argentinian's French-made Exocet missiles — a weapons system which was already 20 years old at the time.  [Video clip]  Reportedly the only thing that saved the UK force from obliteration was that the Argentinians had got their missile altimeter settings wrong.  The Russians will not make the same sort of error!

Would You Vote for a Felon?  I Plan To.  The GOP primary in June for Staten Island promises to be newsworthy and a difficult decision for residents of this conservative NYC borough.  The race will be between two men I have supported in the past and for whom I have great respect, but I plan to vote for Michael Grimm, described in the mainstream media as the disgraced former congressman who served seven months in prison for felony tax evasion.  It is my hope that the president will pardon Grimm and Dinesh D'Souza, another individual who was also railroaded for being conservative.  These men both admitted they made the mistakes; however, their sins have always been ignored when perpetrated by Democrats.  President Trump just pardoned Scooter Libby, another soul railroaded by the left, so I'm hoping he'll rectify the damage done to Grimm and D'Souza.  Michael Grimm was sent to prison for felony tax fraud committed when he under-reported business income and paid employees under the table.  Frankly, about 90% of businesses in New York do the same thing, it seems to me, but they aren't the targets of a congressional cabal.

Not only is Flynn not going to jail, his plea is going to be reversed.  Mueller's now on a desperate fishing expedition with Michael Cohen that's going to lead to...well nothing really.  Mueller was given free reign because they knew the team he'd be working with would do this kind of absurd over reach.  They haven't even come CLOSE to laying a finger on Trump or any Trump campaign collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.

Maybe the Russians Did It.  If ever a military incident seemed to scream "false flag," it's the alleged chemical weapons attack on Douma.  The Chief of Russia's General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, predicted a staged chemical attack almost a month prior.  If Syria launched such an attack, it did so a week after President Trump spoke of bringing American troops home, when Syria was clearly winning its war against myriad rebel groups, and knowing the attack would bring global condemnation and possible military action by the US and its allies.  The losing rebel groups have chemical weapons (chlorine gas can be produced by mixing ammonia and bleach).  If Syria's government was blamed, any retaliation by the US and its allies would aid the rebel cause and further the interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel, America's putative allies who would dearly love to see Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad deposed.

Can We Judge People By What They Look Like?  In Fact, Yes.  Unless it involves mocking President Trump's supposedly "small hands," there is nothing that horrifies our multiculturalist masters more than judging by appearances.  It is impossible, they claim, to infer anything about how someone is likely to behave by their gender or because they are from a particular ethnic group.  Everyone is unique (but also, somehow, equal).  Judging by appearances is not just superficial but plain evil.  It will be fascinating to see what they'll make of the recently-published book by British academic Dr. Edward Dutton titled How To Judge People By What They Look Like, which argues that even within races and sexes you can, with a fair degree of accuracy, infer people's personalities from appearances.  You may even get an inside track on how smart they are by taking a good look at their physical characteristics, according to Dutton.

A California Reader Warns That A "Speaker Kevin McCarthy" Will Be Wholly Owned By The Cheap Labor Lobby.  There are rumors that Kevin McCarthy is going to replace Ryan as Speaker.  [Paul Ryan endorses Kevin McCarthy to be next House speaker, By Matt Richardson, Fox News, April 13, 2018]  It's horrible news for Americans if he is — McCarthy's district includes Paramount Farms, probably the largest employer of illegal aliens in the nation, they've imported so many migrant farm workers they've turned Bakersfield from a white American city into a brown Socialist Latino city.  McCarthy can't enforce federal immigration law and stay in office, Paramount Farms was also used in the Reagan amnesty, pretty much any illegal alien in the nation claimed a work record there and there was no verification.

Attacking Trump's Attorney:  Calling All Tea Partiers.  Let's get the Tea Party visible again with rallies in support of Trump's agenda, the border wall, ending sanctuary cities, and other important issues.  We must inform the masses about Trump's remarkable achievements.  Here's a taste:  for each regulation that Trump has introduced, he has ended 66 of Obama's overreaching, job-killing, and insane leftist regulations.

Trump should offensively depose Yates and Comey.  [Scroll down]  Critically, one would argue that before a sitting president, President Trump, could or should be forced to testify, the defense should be able to depose Yates and Comey to expose what was an objectively cognizable conspiracy to knowingly lie in their FISA court application whose result could be to effect a coup d'etat.  The first question would be:  Is such an offensive motion by the Trump defense team for a Yates/Comey deposition in, and of itself, an "obstruction of justice?"  The answer is that if legitimately attempting to zealously defend your client against a governmental conspiracy in seeking to depose the authors of a sworn written FISA document where the statement is objectively false is an "obstruction of justice," then any legitimate act of President Trump's legal defense by the President is, in and of itself, an "obstruction of justice."  A person and his legal team legitimately defending himself can't be considered "obstruction of justice," otherwise every legitimate act in every legal defense for every alleged defendant in the United States is obstruction of justice.

Media Matters:  Bully Masquerading as Tax-Exempt Charity.  According to public records, David Brock's Media Matters group has ignored important legal requirements for tax-exempt charities.  Instead of reveling in the impact of his attacks against Laura Ingraham, David Brock and his team at Media Matters for America (MMFA) need to try complying with the strict laws that do regulate activities of publicly supported, tax-exempt organizations.  In theory, MMFA is an "educational" charity.

Chappaquiddick Wasn't the Only Scandal.  [I]n regard to the mainstream media's breathless, non-stop coverage of the self-levitating Trump-Russia collusion theory, consider this bit of trivia:  In 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, Western researchers quickly descended on Moscow to plow through the treasure trove of previously classified official documents.  Among those researchers was Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times and the BBC who found a May 14, 1983 letter from KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov.  Bearing the highest security classification, it summarized a confidential offer by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviet leadership to help stop President Ronald Reagan's aggressive, anti-Soviet defense policies.

When the Lie Becomes a Pillar of the State.  The whole Soviet system was built on lies.  As Alexander Solzhenitsyn was later to write, "In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." An unceasing attempt to establish the Lie and to destroy the truth has been as characteristic of the Left here in America as it was in Soviet Russia.  The Lie has become systemic because a reductionist ideology based on lies has thoroughly invaded the academia, the media, and the body politic.  It has metastasized to the point that if it is not eradicated — not just modified — the body will die.  What is the chief characteristic of the great Lie that grips so many of America's institutions?  It is that human beings are on their own when it comes to the pursuit of Truth.  The issue has been the same since the creation of mankind.  It is the belief in the sovereignty of the individual as opposed to the sovereignty of God.

Running in hot pursuit of George Orwell.  George Orwell is dead and gone, and more than a half-century has passed since he wrote "1984," but he would recognize America today.  He was an Englishman (real name Eric Blair) who understood that no state is immune to human mischief.  "Every record has been destroyed or falsified," he wrote in "1984," his novel of Utopia despoiled, "every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has been stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."  We're almost there, and the Mob has replaced the Party as the intimidator of men who were once free.  Once we cleansed the square of Robert E. Lee, whose memory is held by perfectly honorable men and women to be a hero of their past, all toil and trouble for the abused and mistreated among us would be avenged at last and forgotten forever.  Weak men of cramped mind went along with the barbarians who wear ignorance as their only badge of distinction.  Now the Mob moves on, as the attentive and alert knew it would.

Fahrenheit 451 Updated.  [Amy] Wax and [Larry] Alexander were roundly condemned by their university colleagues. [...] What they found especially egregious was Wax and Alexander's observation that "All cultures are not equal."  That hissing noise you hear is the sharp intake of breath at the utterance of such a sentiment.  The tort was compounded by Wax's later statements in an interview that "Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans" because "Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior."  Can you believe it?  Professor Wax actually had the temerity to utter this plain, irrefragable, impolitic truth.  Everyone knows this to be the case.  As William Henry argued back in the 1990s in his undeservedly neglected book In Defense of Elitism, "the simple fact [is] that some people are better than others — smarter, harder working, more learned, more productive, harder to replace."

Why We Cannot Afford To Ignore Anti-Freedom Activist David Hogg.  Let's say, just for the sake of this discussion, that your house catches on fire.  Would you ignore the flames, thinking that they'll go away if you give them no attention?  Of course not. [...] Nor should we ignore Hogg and his not-so-merry band of demagogues, who are now burning the country down in their mission to strip us all of at least two of our most fundamental rights.  You see, not only do they want to take away our right to keep and bear arms, but they also seek to silence anyone critical of their point of view.  Just look at what Hogg and the George Soros-funded Media Matters are doing to Laura Ingraham.

Laura Ingraham is Too Weak.  Laura Ingraham said Baby Hitler David Hogg "whines."  This offended people who do not watch her show.  She apologized.  Idiot. [...] Baby Hitler refused to accept her apology.  The left does not want her apology.  The left wants her dead because she is a conservative.  She is not a victim of anything but her own cowardice.  As an experienced journalist she should know this by now.  Never apologize.  That is a sign of weakness in both spirit and mind.  If you cannot stand by your words, shut up.

Rhode Island considers cash incentives to win new residents before Census.  One Rhode Island state representative wants to pay cash to people willing to move there, as the state faces the prospect of losing half their congressional delegation after the next census and reapportionment process.  State Rep. Carlos Tobon (D) has introduced legislation that would give families $833.33 per month — up to $10,000 — to move to Rhode Island for a year.  Those families would be counted in the 2020 census as Rhode Island residents.  The goal, Tobon said, is to attract enough residents to maintain Rhode Island's two seats in the House of Representatives at a time when most population projections show the state has not grown fast enough to warrant two seats.

The Editor says...
This could be construed as buying votes.  If you accept compensation to reside in a state for a year, specifically for the purpose of tampering with the outcome of the census, which then amplifies the power of that state in the House of Representatives, you abetting an attempt to affect the balance of power in the Congress.  Are you willing to relocate to another part of the country at the request of the highest bidder?  To migrate across state lines for a better job is one thing, but this bonus is for one year only, and $10,000 is not enough:  That's not much more than it would cost most people to move to Rhode Island, and it's certainly not enough to compensate for the high cost of living there, not to mention the cost of heating one's house in Rhode Island's long winters.  None of this matters much, because the idea is unlikely to become law.  Where is the State of Rhode Island going to get ten thousand dollars, multiplied by the number of additional residents they'd need to acquire another seat in the House of Representatives?  That would be a lot of money.

Mental health:  The issue everyone dodges until after the mass shootings.  A new report by the Secret Service on recent mass shootings finds a vast majority involved people with mental illness whose behavior could have tipped off authorities about their latent danger.  While recent protest demonstrations across the country were aimed at creating new laws, the report suggests a clear unwillingness to address the issue of mental health, which could be covered under existing laws and regulations.

Silicon Valley has gone from liberating to creepy.  Next stop, government regulation.  Silicon Valley's reputation used to protect it from regulation.  Now it's changed in ways that make regulation more likely.  From the old days of Lotus and Visicalc and CP/M, to just a year or two ago with Facebook and Uber, Silicon Valley has basked in its glowing reputation.  It was seen as a center of innovation, where hard-working entrepreneurs started businesses in garages, and produced things that made everyone's lives better.  Because it was constantly innovating, it stayed ahead of regulators' ability to regulate, resulting in "permissionless innovation" — change that didn't have to ask for permission first.  And that seemed fine, as it brought us personal computers, spreadsheets, word processing, databases, laptops, cell phones, smart phones and social media.

Was Social Media A Mistake?  Here's An Experiment To Find Out.  What strikes me most is the contrast between this and the Internet era before social media, before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube swallowed up everything.  I'm talking about the 2000s, the great era of the blogs.  Do you remember what that blog era was like?  It felt like liberation.  The era of blogging offered the promise of a decentralized media.  Anybody could publish and comment on the news and find an audience.  Guys writing in their pajamas could take down Dan Rather.  We were bypassing the old media gatekeepers.  And we had control over it!  We posted on our own sites.  We had good discussions in our own comment fields, which we moderated.  I had and still have an extensive e-mail list of readers who are interested in my work, most of which I built up in that period, before everybody moved onto social media.  But then Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube came along and killed the blogs.  There were three main reasons they took over.

This Omnibus pork barrel has a shelf life of 6 months.  We need to consider the [...] storm coming down the line with OIGGate, ClintonGate, ObamaGate and other scandals.  There's no way that these won't touch Congress itself.  More than a few Congress critters are implicated, especially on the Dem side (also GOPe).  Each hit the Uniparty takes, makes Trump stronger.  Each hit the Dems take, makes Trump stronger.  Removing GOPe swamp creatures also makes him stronger.  Keep that in mind, as the next few months unfold.

Deep-Freezing the Truth at Penn.  The diversity imperative demands dissimulation and evasion.  The academic-achievement gap, the behavioral differences that produce socioeconomic disparities, and the ubiquity of racial preferences must all be suppressed in public discourse, since they undercut the narrative that white racism is the driving force in American society.  This dissimulation was on display last week at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, when Dean Ted Ruger announced that law professor Amy Wax would no longer teach mandatory first-year law courses at the school. [...] Wax was deemed a "white supremacist" for suggesting that not all cultures were equal in preparing people for participation in a modern economy.

The Dangers of Drugged Driving.  There are measures that law enforcement, government, and the public can take to combat drugged driving, including implementing a system for testing whether a motorist is high, akin to the use of Breathalyzers to test for elevated blood-alcohol levels, experts say.  Increasing public awareness of the problem would also help.  The public widely agrees that drinking and driving poses a serious danger, but studies have found that a significant portion of the public doesn't feel the same way about driving while high on marijuana.

Nobody Wants to Talk About What Many Mass Shooters Have in Common.  Some blame guns, others blame mental health, and still others confidently blame false flag events and crisis actors.  But one commonality among numerous mass killings in the United States remains absent from these conversations.  It is always reported when details of the shooter are published, but the widespread connection is rarely acknowledged:  A mounting number of mass shooters have ties to the military, including Nikolas Cruz, who was a member of his school's military prep organization, JROTC (Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps).  The United States has indulged in a culture of 'patriotic' militarism for decades, glorifying this institutionalized violence as a sign of strength and morality.

Collapsed bridge, courtesy of Obama program.  The $14 million project was partly federally funded through Obama's Tiger program (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery).  "The 174-foot, 950-ton section of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest Eight Street using Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods, which are being advanced at FIU's Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC).  This method of construction reduces potential risks to workers, commuters and pedestrians and minimizes traffic interruptions.  The main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was installed in a few hours with limited disruption to traffic over this weekend," the press release said.  It went up quickly.  It came down even quicker.

Collapsed FIU Bridge Was Funded by Federal Grant Program Criticized for Shoddy, Politicized Review Process.  The pedestrian bridge that collapsed at Florida International University's Miami-Dade campus today, killing several people, was funded with $11.4 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program.  The TIGER program has come under repeated fire for awarding money based on politics rather than merit.  Eight vehicles were reportedly crushed when the 174-foot, 950-ton pedestrian bridge, installed Saturday over Southwest Eighth Street in Miami, collapsed this afternoon [3/15/2018].  The bridge was supposed to demonstrate methods developed by FIU's Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC), whose work is also funded by U.S. DOT grants.

Time To Ditch Daylight Saving Time — It's A Killer That Doesn't Save Energy.  Sunday, March 11, is the start of daylight saving time across the country.  But it might be the last time people in Florida have to switch their clocks.  The legislature there voted overwhelmingly to abolish the biannual changing of the clock, and stick with daylight saving time year round.  Last year, Massachusetts considered a similar move by switching to Atlantic Standard Time, which would permanently set their clocks ahead one hour.  Maine also passed bills to ditch daylight saving time.  Arizona and Hawaii don't abide by daylight saving time.

The Problem With White Guys These Days.  [Daniel] Johanson wants to inform you that he is a white man but is NOT happy about it one bit: [...] I gotta tell you:  The way he describes it, it sounds positively exhausting to be a white man.  As a white man, Daniel Johanson has a bone to pick with all those dead white men who composed all those dead white symphonies, as if poor black Americans are threatening to burn down cities from coast to coast if they aren't allowed easier access to opera music.  Have you ever met a black person that didn't love opera music?  I haven't.  And when I say that, I mean that I've never asked any black people about it.  It's one of those topics that you instinctually know not to raise with them because they'd probably laugh in your face.

Tell the Truth on Tariffs!  While totally free trade is an ideal and a goal, it is impossible to accomplish without becoming wholly interdependent on other nations.  There will always be another country capable of driving your domestic industry into the dirt on some product or another, as no one nation can be the most efficient and best producer of everything that nation requires.  Because some industries cannot be outsourcedwithout risk to national security — even to friendly nations — trade representatives have always balanced imports and exports of these products through the use of taxation (tariffs) to both protect the viability of their domestic industries and to ensure a place for their own exports in the economies of other nations.  While a simplistic explanation, it covers the basic function of tariffs.  Throughout history, administrations and regimes have misused tariffs, sparking "trade wars."  And it is true that these disruptions have proven costly to both sides, but to say "no one wins in a trade war" is patently false.

Homeland Security Oversight Is a Mess.  Here's What Should Change.  Since its founding in 2002, the Department of Homeland Security has never been reauthorized, which has allowed various problems to fester.  Last July, the House passed a reauthorization bill that addressed many of the problems.  But more can be done to address the inefficient and complex congressional oversight structure that continues to plague the department.  On Wednesday [3/7/2018], the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed the Senate's version of the reauthorization for Homeland Security, which is good news considering the department is desperately in need of reform.  Specifically, the Senate bill proposes a commission to fix the department's impractical congressional oversight structure.  The Department of Homeland Security was created after 9/11 to bring several national security-related agencies — including the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — under one roof.

Forget Gun Control:  Bring Back Mental Hospitals.  After another inexplicable act of violence in Parkland Florida claimed 17 lives, the usual chorus (and some of the not so usual chorus) is screaming for gun control.  We don't need gun control; we need nut control.  With the first one constructed in 1773, our country has a history of building and maintaining mental hospitals.  In 1955, the United States had more than 100 mental hospitals with a population of over 560,000 people.  The U.S. population in 1955 was around 165 million.  Today, with a population around 323 million, we can safely assume more than 1 million people would be institutionalized by 1955 standards.  Where are these millions of people who should be in mental hospitals?  Living in our communities, wandering the streets while arguing with imaginary figures, or in prison having been declared to be insane, but competent after having committed a crime.

Don't Be Fooled:  Russia is Weak and Dying.  The Russian presidential elections are two weeks away and the outcome is hardly in doubt.  Vladimir Putin on Wednesday gave his annual state of the nation address to the Russian Duma.  During his speech, the strongman-president raved about Russian strength.  Then, with bizarre computer-generated images of weapons projected behind him, Putin detailed five new Russian weapons systems.  The new weapons are dangerous, of course.  But their appearance is misleading.  In reality, Putin's announcement was a sign of desperation and weakness.  Fact is, the Trump Administration's yearlong show of strength against Russia from Ukraine to Syria has worked well.

Scientologists Open Two New Mega-Churches in a Single Weekend.  Mainline denominations are bleeding members at unsustainable rates.  Even the overall growth of evangelicalism has become stagnant, and the only reason that's true is because it's growing among Hispanics and African-Americans.  However, one religion that seems to be growing and thriving is the weirdness that is Scientology.  To be clear, I'm not convinced that Scientology should be classified a religion and not a cult.  I've always thought of it as a pyramid scheme with eternal rewards in place of a pink Cadillac.  How it could be growing is beyond me. [...] However, since movie stars seem especially susceptible to Scientology, the religious cult has taken on an aura of glamour for some people.

The Coming Controversy Over Admitting White Refugees from South Africa.  The news that South Africa is moving decisively in the disastrous direction of Zimbabwe — confiscating the land of white farmers, which is by definition ethnic cleansing and almost certainly will involve mass murder (as it did in Zimbabwe) — has already sparked a petition to allow the resulting refugees into the United States: [...] Similar petitions have been created in the E.U. and Australia.  Stand by for the inevitable backlash.  President Trump is putting a lid on refugee flows, and the left is dead certain that this is because of racism.  Asking to make an exception for white people is going to be called every nasty name under the sun, with special emphasis on those starting with R.

Much of the federal government should be shut down.  The conventional wisdom about the government shutdown chaos in Washington is completely wrong.  Whoever you listen to, their explanation for the shambles is political.  If you're on the left you blame President Trump — just as you blame him for everything from bad weather to burned toast.  If you're on the right you call it the "Schumer Shutdown" — after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — and point out that today's Democrats are being driven by their extreme "open borders" base.

The absurdity of government 'shutdowns'.  First of all, government shutdowns aren't the end of the world.  President Ronald Reagan had eight government shutdowns in his terms in office and the nation experienced strong economic growth.  Quite frankly, if Republicans really knew how to win a messaging fight, they should shut the government down.  When shutdowns take place, all non-essential federal employees are sent home.  While there is a pause in their pay, historically Congress has voted to make that pay retroactive once government reopens.

CPAC's disastrous, misguided embrace of Marion Le Pen.  [Scroll down]  What has changed?  There are, I think, three possibilities.  The first is that conservatives are taking their cue from Trump, whether out of tribalism or personal ambition. [...] The second is that immigration, especially Muslim immigration, has become such a vast issue for conservatives that it squeezes out everything else. [...] The third explanation is the likeliest.  For some culture warriors, my enemy's enemy is my friend.  Leftists uncomplicatedly loathe the Le Pens, so some rightists, whether from contrarianism or ignorance, defend them.

The Russians Colluded Massively — with Democrats.  Team Mueller did find Russian interference in the 2016 election — and how!  The February 16 announcement of federal criminal indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies was a Cold War flashback.  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told journalists that Russians close to the Kremlin infiltrated the last presidential campaign "to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy."  But Rosenstein threw a bucket of wet sand onto the Left's simmering narrative that DJT = KGB.  The Russian meddling began in 2014, well before Donald J. Trump's campaign commenced.  The Russians promoted Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's Democratic-primary bid and Green-party nominee Jill Stein's general-election effort.  After Trump won, the Russians organized pro-Trump and anti-Trump demonstrations, once in New York City on the same day.  They also staged an anti-Trump rally in Charlotte.

NRA's Wayne LaPierre Makes Valid Point On School Security.  For all the talk about gun control these days, we're not hearing much about school security.  As per usual, the people screaming so loudly for gun control are acting like it's a silver bullet for any and all problems at schools.  They don't seem to even be capable of acknowledging the possibility that new gun laws might not make all the evil in the world go away. [...] LaPierre has a valid point.  Armed security is everywhere; we see it everyplace from our banks to Hollywood awards shows.  And yes, some of us even see it in our schools.

The Failure to Confront Evil in Florida Shooting.  So far, reactions have been governed by emotions, which tend to be irrational and uninformed.  Almost always, it is the Republican leadership that is blamed for someone else's act of free will.  That an individual person has free will and that they act according to it is an unimaginable reality in the culture of victimhood.  As a result, the media is conflicted.  Should they treat the shooter as a victim of the system?  That is tempting because then, perhaps, reform of the system might prevent future incidents?  Of course, this always means more regulation.  But if criminals are seen as victims, where does that leave the actual victims who have perished in crimes?

Obnoxious, ignorant teens now demand curbs on guns.  Teens across the nation, fed up with school shootings, are planning marches, media events and three-minute demonstrations at the White House in order to get across their messages of frustration with the Second Amendment and to demand lawmakers take immediate action.  Now if only they weren't so [...] entitled, snarky and obnoxious.

Thoughts On The Mentally Ill.  There is an issue of liberty that makes dealing with this situation a huge problem.  So let us just imagine that someone 'brings this guy in' to talk about the youtube comment.  They put that with all of the other contacts that the cops have had with him and realize he is a loose cannon.  Then what?  How do you propose that the state respond?  Involuntary detention?  For how long?  For what specific purpose?  Current statutes say that if he is clearly suffering from a mental illness and is imminently dangerous to himself or others, he can be held and involuntarily treated in a locked psychiatric facility. [...] What about the other hundred idiots that say this sort of thing but DON'T go on killing sprees?

Was the Florida School Shooting Part of the CIA's MK Ultra Program?  [Scroll down]  What's even more interesting is this tie into cell phone technology, mixed with psychotropic drugs and mind control.  As far as I know, none of these school shootings existed before cell phone technology.  That's not to say that has to be used, but it is an interesting fact to consider.

Hollywood Elite Triggered By Breitbart's Positive 'Black Panther' Review.  Early Friday afternoon [2/16/2018], Breitbart News published my mostly glowing review of Marvel's Black Panther.  By Friday night, some among the Hollywood elite were triggered by the review, including Don Cheadle, another member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Outside of the fact that the review was mostly positive, the trigger seemed to be my noting the obvious connection between the film's hero, T'Challa aka Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and President Trump.  I also noted the obvious comparison between the film's villain, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), and Black Lives Matter.

Florida Teacher of the Year's gun violence post goes viral after school shooting.  The middle school teacher said over her almost two decades as an educator that she's seen an increase in violence and a lack of compassion among students.  "Until we, as a country, are willing to get serious and talk about mental health issues, lack of available care for the mental health issues, lack of discipline in the home, horrendous lack of parental support when the schools are trying to control horrible behavior at school (oh no!  Not MY KID.  What did YOU do to cause my kid to react that way?), lack of moral values, and yes, I'll say it — violent video games that take away all sensitivity to ANY compassion for others' lives — as well as reality TV that makes it commonplace for people to constantly scream up in each others' faces and not value any other person but themselves, we will have a gun problem in school," the sixth-grade language arts teacher wrote.

The Tea Party is dead — it's the Covfefe Party now.  The Tea Party is dead.  The Covfefe Party has killed it.  The Tea Party was the term given to the grassroots movement that emerged out of nowhere in spring 2009 in response to an explosion of government spending and direct federal involvement in the economy the likes of which we had never before seen in peacetime.  Both those who sought to claim the Tea Party's triumphs for their own conservative causes and those who sought to use the Tea Party as an umbrella term for every conservative policy idea they wished to discredit misunderstood it.  The Tea Party wasn't complicated.  It wasn't a conspiracy.  Simplicity was the hallmark of its success.  Its message was:  You're doing too much — too much spending, too much regulation, too much interference in the private economy.  Too much government.  And the message resonated because it was true.

Did Michael Flynn Actually Do Anything Wrong?  Special  prosecutor  counsel Bob Mueller has one significant scalp on the wall:  that of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI and has yet to be sentenced.  But, in a brilliant column, Byron York reviews the sequence of events as we have tortuously come to know them.  Based on what we now know (or think we know), it is highly doubtful whether Flynn did anything wrong at all.

General Flynn Should Withdraw His Guilty Plea.  His New Judge Is A Government Misconduct Expert.  Extraordinary manipulation by powerful people led to the creation of Robert Mueller's continuing investigation and prosecution of General Michael Flynn.  Notably, the recent postponement of General Flynn's sentencing provides an opportunity for more evidence to be revealed that will provide massive ammunition for a motion to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and dismiss the charges against him.  It was Judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn's guilty plea, but he suddenly was recused from the case.  The likely reason is that Judge Contreras served on the special court that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil the Trump campaign based on the dubious FISA application.  Judge Contreras may have approved one of those four warrants.

Andrew Weissmann:  Robert Mueller's Dirty Cop.  One of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's lead attorneys has an ethics problem.  Actually, a lot of ethics problems, considering what he's gotten away with.  According to investigative journalist Sara Carter, Weissmann has been busted for withholding evidence in a previous court case involving prosecution of organized crime, to put an extra thumb on the scale of justice in his own favor.

President Trump, Buy The Newseum!  What a lot of people don't realize is the Newseum is basically an event space, which drives more than twice the revenue of the actual admission dollars.  This only happens because of the A+ location — which it can't afford.  Because of the revenue derived from the event space, if the Newseum moves, which seems inevitable in very short order, it will really be a going out of business move.

Newseum: Monument to America's Most Disgraced Institution in Talks to Sell.  The Washington D.C.-based Newseum is a massive failure, bleeding red ink and in serious talks to sell out and relocate.  Someone actually believed that a massive monument to the most disgraced institution in America — journalism — was a good idea.  Then, to the surprise of no one in the real world, that massive monument to left-wing liars and frauds not only failed, it is now talking seriously about selling out and moving elsewhere.  The Newseum currently stands seven-stories tall in a pretentious $450 million building right on Pennsylvania Avenue, a stone's throw from the U.S. Capitol.  The only problem is that it is running massive deficits.  Last year alone, what Kyle Smith described as a "cathedral of sanctimony," lost over $8 million.

The Great Flynn Case Mystery.  I have been wondering why, shortly after Judge Rudolph Contreras was (without explanation) recused from hearing the Michael Flynn case and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan took over, Special Counsel Robert Mueller agreed to postpone the sentencing until May, after the inspector general's report is due.  I have no assurances that my suppositions are correct, but I'm beginning to think that at the next hearing of this case, Judge Sullivan will hear Mueller dismiss the case.  Here's how I come to that. [...]

Scandal, Corruption, Lawbreaking — And So What?  Democrats at some point will see that what they thought was the formerly defensible is now becoming absolutely indefensible.  Adam Schiff, after months of leaking, making grandiose false statements on cable TV, and getting punked by Russian comedians, is now a caricature.  He became the sad legislative bookend to the neurotic James Comey.  Schiff will probably soon be forced to pivot back to his former incarnation as a loud critic of FISA-court abuse.

Republican Embarrassments.  George W. Bush doubled the national debt.  After running against Bush profligacy (remember the Chinese credit card trope), Barack Obama doubled it again by doubling Bush's levels of borrowing.  Conservatives blasted Obama for his even greater lack of thrift.  The Tea Party movement emerged in reaction to reckless expenditures and borrowing to fund Obamacare.  Now Donald Trump is caught in the same old matrix.  His deregulation, tax cuts, and energy expansion will likely increase federal revenue.  But his various budget concessions and his own proposed increases in defense spending and infrastructure would likely bleed the budget at a far greater rate than the growing federal revenue.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.  [W]hile every generation undoubtedly had valid complaints about the pop culture of their time, there is no way, even in the era of bell-bottoms and pet rocks, the popular culture at the time was a dumb as it is now.  People are filming themselves eating laundry detergent and posting the videos online, because being stupid for attention is now something people aspire to.  First off, if you're dumb enough to eat poison, the genepool can do without you.

NBC apologizes to the Korean people for its insulting comments.  [Scroll down]  So how on earth could someone like this say something so earth-shatteringly insensitive?  This was a gaffe of classic Michael Kinsley character:  Inadvertently telling the truth in an offensive way.  The Koreans are reacting in horror because of the implication that they admire the Japanese and are inspired to emulate them.  They do not want Japan to be seen as a shining examle to anyone, least of all to Koreans.  But among the people Ramo associates with, bygones will be bygones and there's a lot of money to be made.  Globalists adhere to a global culture in which mere national identity is an afterthought to the class interest in smooth transactions with many more to come.  Yes, the globaist elite is that out of touch with the common folk.

Stage a grand military parade?  Absolutely — it's overdue.  The Pentagon has confirmed that it is in the preliminary stages of planning a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue — one of President Trump's fondest desires.  Trump was, understandably, impressed in a visit to France last July by the pageantry of the Bastille Day parade.  The parade dates back to the 1880s.  Nothing the United States comes up with will match its resonance or its beloved, unifying nature.  Trump's motivation for ordering up a parade anyway is pretty obvious.  He likes big, brassy displays, and he gets a kick out of being the commander in chief of the most impressive military on the planet.

Disinformation: Russian Espionage, Infiltration, Influence Peddling, and Sabotage.  Disinformation is [Ion Mihai] Pacepa's warning to America and the Western World about the reach and influence of communist propaganda and disinformation and its ability to compromise Western culture, traditions, institutions and influence movements in target societies.  He warns us:  do not underestimate the magnitude of effort and the effectiveness of the communist intelligence, propaganda and espionage operations, or their ability to sow seeds of destruction in western societies.  For example, all foreign representatives of Russia (the USSR) are agents — physicians, nurses, engineers — they are all saboteurs or at least provocateurs for the movement, and they are agents for the regime or they would not be out of the country.

Senator Mark Warner and Entire Senate Intelligence Committee Compromised, Corrupt and Finally Exposed.  Tonight Fox News is reporting on the efforts of Senator Mark Warner to make secret and off-the-record contact with Christopher Steele in March of 2017.  Warner, a rabidly partisan Democrat, is the minority Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  The Majority Chairman is Richard Burr (R-NC) and also corrupt as [can be].  Not surprisingly, Burr is covering for Warner.

Joe 'The Drooler' Kennedy III's lip service hard to ignore.  By the squalid standards of his family, JoJoJo Kennedy had a successful evening in Fall River this week.  I mean, not one young woman was raped, drowned, crippled or beaten to death with a golf club.  No one tried to play footsie with Adolf Hitler, crashed an airplane, died of a drug overdose, told a Barnstable cop that she was drunk, screamed "Do you know who I am?!?" or began slamming his head into a wall (Uncle Max, this means you).  Many wiseguys, of course, have made sport of U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, especially that strange whatever-it-was going on with his lips, the thin line of drool.  Was it really caused by Chapstick, or, as one internet wag asked, Chappaquiddick-stick?

Democrats turned a hero into a horror story.  During Tuesday night's State of the Union address, the president honored an undeniable hero — a kind and caring New Mexico police officer who stepped up to save a child about to be born, and her desperate, homeless, opioid-addicted mother.  It was a three-hanky anecdote, made all the more vital because it concerned a drug-damaged, impoverished woman and the law enforcement officer who protected her, a man more likely to be treated with contempt these days than with the respect and love he deserves.  The feel-good moment didn't last.  Within hours, the hard left got hold of the inspirational story and mangled it into a cautionary tale about Republican misogyny, mistreatment of the poor and a handmaid forced to reproduce against her will, human roadkill in the evil war on drugs.  No mention was made of innocent children maimed by drugs and parental neglect.  It was dizzying.

Joe Kennedy's 'drool-mouth' outshines his State of the Union response.  Congressman Joe Kennedy III gave the Democratic response to the State of the Union — and drew comments both about his policy ideas and for what was dripping off his lips.  The 37-year-old Kennedy family scion — who is the grandson of RFK — appeared to have large, bizarre wet spots at the corners of his mouth as he talked after President Trump's speech, prompting people to wonder if it was drool or an abundance of Chapstick.  "Marco Rubio had dry-mouth during his #SOTU response in 2013.  Joe Kennedy has drool-mouth," tweeted GOP pollster Frank Luntz, as he compared Kennedy's speech to the disastrous 2013 Republican response by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) in which he awkwardly reached for water.

Health Ranger's Theory:  The Flu Vaccine Is Causing The Flu Outbreak.  If there is any part of you that's inquisitive you've likely wondered how on Earth this year's flu could be so bad.  Afterall, we have vaccines and Western medicine's advancements in technology to help people.  But the Health Ranger says that is the exact problem with the influenza outbreak.  As the reports continue to come in that this influenza outbreak is killing about 100 people a day, many begin to wonder what the purpose of getting a vaccine that's only 10% effective could possibly be.

Burger King Tries To Explain Net Neutrality.  Burger King is just about nobody's first choice when it comes to garbaging up on fast food and its latest gambit helps to explain why.

Black Nixon.  If you read the Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon, what jumps out to a modern reader is just how weak the case was against the President.  Impeachment is a political action, so the rules of evidence we see in a courtroom don't apply, but even so, the allegations seem weak in comparison to those against Bill Clinton.  The case against Nixon was what we would now call a corrupt enterprise, like a mobster.  Bill Clinton, in contrast, was accused of specific crimes that he committed while in office.  In both cases, the key question to be decided by the political class was what was best for the political system.  The guilt or innocence of either man was a secondary consideration, outside of the impact on the political system.  In the case of Nixon, his decision to resign, rather than fight impeachment, was all about defending the political order.  Whether or not it was proper to run Nixon out of town or allow Clinton to remain in office is debatable, but the calculus at the time was about the best interests of the political order.

When Government Shuts Down...Everyone Else Is Better Off.  Every single function they take on sucks resources out of the economy.  They squander and waste the majority of those resources, then end up giving people a $2 billion website that doesn't work.  Clearly this is a government in need of serious downsizing.  Any other organization in the world with a history of such gargantuan waste would be forced to strip itself down to its core and limit itself to only the most essential functions.  Sadly, though, the public attention seems to be focused on how terrible this shutdown is and how these politicians need to come together to reopen the government.  Are you kidding me?  This is a gift.  Keep it closed.

James Clapper's perjury, and why DC made men don't get charged for lying to Congress.  Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper is about celebrate one of the most important anniversaries of his life.  March 13th will be the fifth anniversary of his commission of open perjury before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  More importantly, it also happens to be when the statute of limitations runs out — closing any possibility of prosecution for Clapper.  As the clock runs out on the Clapper prosecution, Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have charged that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen committed perjury when she insisted that she could not recall if President Donald Trump called Haiti and African countries a vulgar term.  The fact is that perjury is not simply tolerated, it is rewarded, in Washington.  In a city of made men and women, nothing says loyalty quite as much as lying under oath.

'White Privilege' and the Great Stink of 1858.  In sophisticated Roman vacation spots like Pompeii, you can still walk on the double-raised sidewalk as long as you hop over the open excrement channel in the middle. In India, the Untouchables come from native Indian tribes who were kept for centuries out of the governing caste system, because their job was to collect and somehow dispose of mountains of poop that collected in cities like Calcutta.  In Arabia, it is still taboo to touch someone's left hand, because that was the hand used to wipe one's bottom before toilet paper was imported from the West.  It was only in Europe and America, and soon other places, where great engineering systems were constructed over the 20th century that allow college students and other snowflakes to take all that for granted.

The Value of Calling [Bad Places 'Bad'].  In a news cycle full of poverty, war, political intrigue, and all the usual torment, America's media have wasted valuable time this week debating the value of President Donald Trump's use of a bad word. [...] It is a fact that those of us with family roots in oppressed nations know all too well:  the left divides the world into "paradises" and [bad places] all the time, depending on how much money there is to be had in duping apolitical Americans into buying their classifications.  It takes barely any time to find a handful of examples of profiteers selling naive thrill seekers the notion that any variety of impoverished, exploited underdeveloped country is a secret oasis full of exotic beauty and free of the "stain" of Western luxury.

For example, Cuba.

Tonya Harding is no hero.  It's hard to recall a second act in American life like Tonya Harding's.  She doesn't deserve it.

Of Crudeness and Truth.  Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth.  Point out that women and men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and the Left leaps to its collective feet in openmouthed shock, like Margaret Dumont after a Groucho Marx wisecrack.  This is racism!  This is sexism!  This is some sort of phobia!  I'm shocked, shocked to find facts being spoken in polite company!  No one is really shocked, of course.  This is simply a form of bullying.  The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to silence our opposition to their bad policies.  The idea is to make it seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious.

The post-Weinstein Golden Globes was an exercise in hypocrisy.  This year's Golden Globes were meant to be a defiant, vibrant celebration of a post-Weinstein industry, an awards ceremony about so much more than meaningless awards.  We were promised a reckoning, the leveling of a male-dominated industry that institutionalized the rape, abuse and harassment of women for decades.  Like so much Hollywood product, advance buzz was greatly exaggerated.  Not one actor or actress, on the red carpet or on stage, made direct reference to their industry's greatest monster — the one they boast of slaying yet still want to appease.

The War on Driving to Come.  At some point in the future, be it years, decades, or a century hence, the federal government will seek to ban driving.  This, I'm afraid, is an inevitability.  It is inexorably heading our way.  The dot sits now on the horizon.  As is common, the measure will be sold in the name of public health.  "Now that robots can do the work," its bloodless advocates will explain, "there's no need for human involvement."

Spy corruption began with W.  Blame George Walker Bush for Obama's political abuse of the nation's spy agencies.  Sharyl Attkisson, an Emmy-winning investigative journalist, wrote in the Hill, "10 times the intel community violated the trust of US citizens, lawmakers and allies."  Her list began with President Bush 43.  And it began before 9/11.  In fact, it was one of his first acts as president.

Exiting NAFTA — The Myth of Global Markets.  If the U.S. were to exit NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the price you pay for most foodstuff at the grocery store would drop 10% in the first quarter and likely drop 20% or more by the end of the first year.  Here's why:  Approximately a decade ago the U.S. Dept of Agriculture stopped tracking, and reporting, U.S. consumer food prices.  The food sector joined the ranks of fuel and energy in no longer being measured to track inflation and backdrop Fed monetary policy.  Not coincidentally this was simultaneous to U.S. consumers seeing massive inflation in the same sector.

MAGA Success IS The Existential Threat.  In the larger analysis, Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) proposition is a daily reminder that citizen inspired government can eliminate the decades-long notion of politics as a profession.  There are hundreds-of-thousands of people within the institutional system known as politics.  Each member carving out a specialty and selling their expertise as necessary within the opaque organization known as government.  From city council, through state legislature and into federal representation, the primary selling point of each participating member is to declare their operational skill within the institution.  [Indeed], the professional political enterprise is so accepted as ordinary you can even go to college and earn a degree in how to be a politician.  Why?

A funny pattern emerging from Russia.  Russia has been engulfed in a sludge of news stories about supposed collusion with the Donald Trump presidential election campaign, none of which is holding water.  In fact, the unpleasant sense is emerging that the Federal Bureau of Investigation might have cooked the fiction up as a pretext to Get Trump.  It's unfortunate, because President Trump's desire for good relations with Russia was one of the better reasons for voting for him and it's obvious domestic politics is blocking that.  But beyond that, another Russia is emerging, one redolent with the winds of war, which Russia-watchers should pay attention to.

Teaching children about the evils of communism.  It's not easy to teach children about the evils of communism.  The vile ideology's long and bloody history of violent repression and murder does not make for a kid's story.  Nonetheless, children should be taught to reject communism early on since the proponents of this ideology purposely prey on them from an early age.  Luckily, there is a solution.

Sally Yates, One of the Biggest Frauds of the Year.  Drunk on the ruling class's praise of her subversive hackery at the Justice Department, Sally Yates evidently conceives of herself as a very august presence in American public life.  How else to explain her state of the union-style address in USA Today this week?  The piece is full of third-rate partisan cant dressed up as deep thoughts on "who we are as a country."  Yates has taken it upon herself to inform us of America's "core values."  Full of the usual jargon about "inflection points" and laughable liberal sanctimony ("our country's strength comes from honoring, not weaponizing, the diversity that springs from being a nation of Native Americans and immigrants of different races, religions and nationalities"), the piece is only notable for its audacious hypocrisy on the subject of "apolitical law enforcement."

Some Real Talk For Conservatives About 2018.  [Scroll down]  We owed Roy Moore nothing — he owed us loyalty, which he failed to show when he refused to drop out and make way for an undamaged candidate.  His determination to make this race about "clearing his name" cost us a Senate seat.  If he wanted to clear his name, there were courtrooms for that.  Instead, we got stuck with a guy we knew was a doofus even before he admitted he was a skeevy doofus.  Weird candidates lose.  The claims of illegality against him are shaky, but based on his own admissions, the best case was this guy scammed on high school girls in his thirties.  Okay, legal or not, that's going to turn people off.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.  People know almost without having to be taught, that the second amendment isn't about hunting.  That's why tyranny will ultimately fail.  The more the deep state tyrants try to squeeze the people, the more guns and ammunition they buy.  Now to be sure, they have to be willing to use them, but that time will come.  It's a peaceful, longsuffering people.  But they can be pushed hard enough to crack.  I don't know whether the revolution will be televised or not, but I'm certain that parts of America won't have power, so many people won't see it even if some do.

Are Anti-Trump Conspirators Using HAM Radio to Communicate?  Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy, was hired by Fusion GPS in April, 2016.  Months later, Mrs. Ohr joined Mr. Steele at the opposition research firm, after being hired by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson to investigate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.  Additionally, her husband, Bruce Ohr, reportedly met with Mr. Steele during this time period, and with Mr. Simpson after President Trump's victory.  It is not clear if Mrs. Ohr ever used her HAM license, or if she herself owns the equipment to do so, but what is interesting, is the 1970s technology, when blended with modern day communications, can create an untraceable protocol for clandestine transmissions.

The Editor says...
For those of you unfamiliar with ham radio, the transmission of encrypted messages is generally illegal.  The use of the ham radio bands in connection with any illegal activity is itself illegal, too.  Speaking to business associates about business is also prohibited.  And chatting across town from one's car, which was once a novelty, is now done by cell phone.  The only reason that I can imagine for Mrs. Ohr to get a ham radio license — if her intent was to communicate secretly and send data files without using the (presumably wiretapped) telephone — is to make it easier to buy transmitting equipment without raising suspicion.  The proprietors of ham radio shops tend to ask for your callsign when you buy anything — especially anything with a transmitter in it.  Incidentally, the "ham" in ham radio is not an acronym and is only capitalized by people who don't know much about it.

Who Really Lost in Alabama.  The Alabama Senate election was about everything except Alabama.  And in the end, Alabamans stayed home and let the inevitable turnout tide of passion politics take its course.  Minority voters rallied to Obama.  Republicans stayed home.  And the GOP is now holding on to a bare one-seat Senate majority.  The Democrats had abandoned Alabama, along with much of the South.  They weren't interested in Doug Jones until they smelled weakness.  And they still aren't interested in representing Alabamans now.  They just want another Senate seat to bring them closer to blocking and impeaching President Trump.

5 Things to Know About Doug Jones' Victory Over Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate Race.  [#4] McConnell and establishment Republicans dodged a bullet.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged Moore to step aside after the sexual assault allegations.  As late as Tuesday, McConnell remained confident the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee would investigate the allegations against Moore should he win the election.  There was a great deal of speculation as to whether, if Moore won, the Senate would even admit him. [...] Indeed, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced that he would resign from the Senate last week, in what many interpreted as a ploy to make the Democratic Party seem more morally pure than the Republican Party.  Moore's loss frees the GOP from the albatross of having a senator with these sorts of charges against him.  Had he won, Democrats would have used Moore as a symbol of alleged pedophilia with which to smear the GOP.

What is Hollywood going to do about this serial sexual harasser?  Obviously, the sexual abuse scandals that are now roiling Hollywood did not start recently.  But how far back do they date?  To answer that question, this investigative reporter tracked down the most flagrant and notorious of Hollywood's sexual predators.  I refer, of course, to that undeniable stinker, Pepé Le Pew.  Unashamed and uninhibited, Pepé Le Pew actually filmed his serial assaults.  True, many of his victims were of his same stripe, but on more than one occasion his arrogance and recklessness led him to cross the species-line.

Rebellious Jurors Make the World a Better Place.  After criticism by some local officials of a new program that refers people caught with four ounces or less of marijuana for fines and community service, El Paso, Texas, Police Chief Greg Allen turned out to be a surprise defender of bypassing the usual criminal justice rigmarole of booking, mug shots, and jails.  While careful to emphasize that he's no fan of drug legalization, Allen says it's a waste of his officers' time to put hours into an "an arrest that has no end result of a conviction because of jury nullification."  This is only the latest evidence that rebellious jurors are putting limits on how badly government officials can treat the rest of us.

Pearl Harbor:  Hawaii Was Surprised; FDR Was Not.  On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, shattering the peace of a beautiful Hawaiian morning and leaving much of the fleet broken and burning.  The destruction and death that the Japanese military visited upon Pearl Harbor that day — 18 naval vessels (including eight battleships) sunk or heavily damaged, 188 planes destroyed, over 2,000 servicemen killed — were exacerbated by the fact that American commanders in Hawaii were caught by surprise.  But that was not the case in Washington.  Comprehensive research has shown not only that Washington knew in advance of the attack, but that it deliberately withheld its foreknowledge from our commanders in Hawaii in the hope that the "surprise" attack would catapult the U.S. into World War II.  Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, stated in 1944:  "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor.  It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war."

100 Years of Communism, 100 Million Deaths, and the Morally Bankrupt Death Cult of Che Guevara.  It's time for the final installment of my series commemorating the evil impact of 100 years of communism. [...] Today we're going to wrap up the series with a look at Che Guevera and contemplate how a mass-murdering racist and homophobe became a cultural icon.

Leftwing Evangelicals:  An Oxymoron?  Donald Trump has been president for a year, yet my social media newsfeed and email inbox still overflow with stupefied leftwing evangelicals who hate Trump (literally) and loathe the conservative Christians that voted for him.  So then, where was the outrage from the same better-than-thou Chardonnay-swirling leftwing evangelical crowd when Christians voted for Obama?  It's obvious that their condemnation has less to do with evangelicalism or Christianity and more to do with their political leanings.  Otherwise, when Obama was in office, they would have expressed a little of that righteous indignation they currently can't control when Obama's policies harmed Christian bakers and nearly sent the Little Sisters of the Poor to the poor house.

If Roy Moore wins.  Senate Republicans will have decisions to make.  First, they must decide what to say.  Members who believe the most serious allegations against Moore and don't think the passage of nearly 40 years matters should feel free to say Moore is unfit for the Senate and thus should resign.  Once they say so, they will have done as much as Democrats did to John Conyers and Al Franken.  And much more than they did to Bill Clinton.  But if they declare Moore unfit, they should be prepared to explain why they consider Donald Trump fit for the presidency.  The allegations of sexual assault against Trump were much more recent than those against Moore.

A Time for War:  The Gathering Storm.  [Scroll down]  All the really bad stuff that is happening is happening to those who are conjuring the storm onto Trump, and not so much the other way.  This guy Strzok?  He has destroyed himself, his credibility, and his career.  Along with his FBI honeypot.  It appears that Andrew Weissman has done the same thing.  Look at James Comey.  He's losing.  Andrew McCabe is as well.  The FBI will be purged.  The Clintons have lost their power.  They are no more than a corrupt, ugly footnote to history.  No power, with little future.

Washington Post Against Enforcing Logan Act Before It Was For It.  The Washington Post, whose pages include numerous articles supporting the idea that President Donald Trump or his advisors violated the Logan Act before his inauguration, once dismissed the law in an editorial as an irrelevant atavism when used to criticize the acts of prominent Democratic officeholders. [...] The government has never successfully prosecuted anyone for violating this law.

10 Characteristics of False Flags.  In this video, Melissa Dykes of Truthstream Media breaks down the 10 common characteristics of false flags to help better understand why the official story of Vegas shooting is suspect at best.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
The video clip is 20 minutes long, but well worth your time.

Ted Kennedy Made Secret Overtures to Russia to Prevent Ronald Reagan's Re-Election.  Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy had "selfish political and ideological motives" when he made secret overtures to the Soviet Union's spy agency during the Cold War to thwart then-President Ronald Reagan's re-election, a Reagan biographer said in an interview with The Daily Signal.  When they came to light years later, Kennedy's secret contacts with the Russians through their KGB spy agency in the early 1980s didn't cause nearly the tizzy that Russia's alleged interference with this year's election has for President-elect Donald Trump among liberal activists and reporters.

Obamacare Mandate Repeal Is the Most Important Civil Rights Victory in Years.  After the humiliation of failing to keep their defining promise to repeal Obamacare, the Senate turned to tax reform, which also looked sketchy due to deficit projections.  But then the clouds parted and the stars aligned with the discovery that repealing the Obamacare mandate would save the government this $340 billion.  Talk about a win-win.  Here was a way to kill the most hated (and crucial) part of Obamacare and pass tax cuts.  And that is exactly what happened — the American people won a sweet two-fer:  lower taxes and freedom from a fascist mandate.

Roy Moore and the Fire This Time.  What began as a targeted hit on Roy Moore in his Senate race against a faceless Democrat with the generic name of Doug Jones has now turned into a blazing ammo dump, littered with the bodies of Hollywood celebrities and politicians in both the United States and Britain.  And yet, despite the best efforts of Gloria Allred, Moore is not only still standing, he is probably again leading in the race.  A pair of recent polls has Moore up over Jones by anywhere from two to seven points, and only Democrats will be surprised if Moore wins on Dec. 12.

Freedom Is a Right, Not a Gift from the Government.  We use the term freedom in political, economic, social, and religious contexts.  But what exactly does it mean to be free?  The answer to this question is crucial because different conceptions of liberty entail different political ideals, and different models of government.  A good starting point to explore what it means to be free is with the distinction introduced by the early 19th century intellectual Benjamin Constant.  In an 1819 work titled "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns," Constant offered two antagonistic ideas of what it means to be free.

Void the Non-Disclosure Agreements That Conceal Congressional Misconduct.  Our public officials are supposed to be accountable and transparent, especially when they are expending public money.  It is thus outrageous that Congress has made this cozy arrangement to sweep under the rug malfeasance by members of the club.  There is no legal or policy reason to refrain from legislation that would out the lawmakers involved in misconduct settlements — regardless of the type of misconduct (I wouldn't limit it to sexual episodes).  To the contrary, the other parties — I prefer to describe them as "victims" rather than "survivors" — should be permitted to speak publicly if they wish to do so.  If not, their privacy ought to be respected.  We can argue about what procedures should apply in the future; but to the extent that these existing non-disclosure arrangements guarantee confidentiality, it ought to be up to the victim whether or not to remain anonymous.  Meanwhile, the growing assumption of secrecy in government operations is very disturbing.

Alabama Sen. Candidate Roy Moore's Vietnam Army Buddy Knew Him to Be 'An Altogether Honorable, Decent, Respectable, and Patriotic Commander and Soldier'.  A man who served in Vietnam with Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore said in an editorial published the day after Thanksgiving that he knew Moore to be one of the better men with whom he served.  In what YellowHammerNews termed "an open letter to the voters of Alabama," former Army officer Bill Staehle of Asbury Park, New Jersey told Alabama voters just what sort of person he feels Moore is, based on his close personal relationship during one of the most trying times in their lives — a time of war.  Mr. Staehle, who was a captain in the 504th Military Police Battalion in the 1970s, begins his testimonial with a strong endorsement of Moore's character, at least as he knew him 45 years ago.

Shaky Allegations Against Roy Moore Are Not Enough to Disqualify Him.  Any commentary I have thus far made about the Roy Moore scandal has been on social media, and that has centered primarily on mocking the media's hypocrisy while also noting my thoughts on individual aspects of the story.  The big question, though, the question of whether or not the allegations add up to something serious enough to knock Moore out of Alabama's Senate race, I have saved until now.  It may no longer be fashionable to wait for all the facts before expressing an opinion, but when it comes to something as deadly serious as a man's reputation and allegations of child molestation, call me a fuddy-duddy.

"Stealin' Be Ok, No Big Deal" — LeVar Ball Showcases Mentality Behind His Son LiAngelo Ball Shoplifting in China.  After watching this bizarro interview with his father I can completely understand why LiAngelo Ball thought it would be perfectly okay to shoplift in China and live a life beyond the boundaries of ordinary moral behavior.  Somehow this guy thinks he's making a point that will benefit his son — epic fail.  The father of the UCLA basketball player who was arrested in China for shoplifting sunglasses appears on CNN to explain why he feels President Trump did nothing to help his son get released from Chinese authorities.

Time to Give Thanks to White Males.  While every other demographic group is coddled by the media, it is still PC to ridicule white males, partly because they are a benign majority who don't complain much.  This Thanksgiving seems an opportune time to give them thanks for forging a country that beckons the world's tired, huddled masses, and to appreciate their overall magnanimity in sharing our abundance.  The loony left, forever futile in foisting the discredited socialist tenet of equal outcomes upon unequal contributors, purports that white privilege explains discrepancies in achievement.  Actually, through their invention, brilliance, and industry, whites wrestled comfort and plenty from nature's tight grasp.  Guilt-ridden apologists, effete elites, and the race-hustling grievance industry may discredit Western Civilization and rewrite American history, but through our beneficence America's poor are comfortable, compared to the most of the earth's population.  Our bottom 99 percent comes "surprisingly close" to being in the top 1 percent of household incomes worldwide.

The Ultimate Argument for Roy Moore.  The reason why the bipartisan ruling class of officials, corporate executives, educators, the media, entertainment, etc. demand Roy Moore's political scalp is that it fell on Moore to be the focus of a pivotal effort to detach the Republican Party from that ruling class.  It has nothing to do with what he may have done four decades ago, and everything with the threat that his election now poses to their power to run the country while de-legitimizing the rest of Americans and their culture.  Had it been anyone else, the degree of hostility would have been the same, the charges possibly different but just as fiery and equally beside the point:  which sector of the population shall have its power enhanced, and which diminished?

McConnell doesn't get to play Roy Moore's judge, jury and political executioner.  American jurisprudence is well-known for its basic premise of "innocent until proven guilty."  In a court of law, a criminal defendant must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to be convicted of a crime.  That defendant walks into the court presumed innocent until that presumption is rebutted by evidence that a judge or jury finds convincing beyond a reasonable doubt.  A political campaign may not be a courtroom, but nonetheless Americans have an innate sense of fairness and due process.  Americans believe that due process is a precept applicable in many walks of life, including the workplace, which is why unions, for example, negotiate contracts that include binding arbitration clauses.  Why?  Because we want to believe that in most every aspect of life there is a semblance of due process.

Moore yearbook signature fraud.  [Scroll down]  The rest of the add-on is numbers or printed text, which cut down the forger's work, but the numbers, particularly "77," are a dead giveaway that the sentiment and the lighter blue add-on text were written by two different people.  Also, does the story behind this inscription pass the "smell test"?  If you saw the yearbook of a charming waitress on the countertop, would you pick it up and start writing in it without being asked to?  For a waitress you knew only in a business environment, would you write a really mushy compliment and end it with "Love"?  Instead of signing it with only your first name, which would be appropriate with the familiarity that goes with "love", would you sign it with your full name and abbreviated title, then print (not write cursively) a date that duplicates the date in the message, followed by the location?  Would you identify yourself as a "D.A." when you are only a deputy district attorney?

A Fair Hearing by a Jury of His Pervs.  On Twitter, Thomas Wictor has made a credible analysis establishing that the one piece of non-testimonial record against Moore, a yearbook notation purportedly by Judge Moore in 1977, is a forgery made with two different inks, and the "D.A." after his name (at a time when he was not district attorney) are the initials of his law clerk, who signed the court paper used as the forgery template.  Gloria Allred, notorious for sitting with unpersuasive sobbing women as she daubs their tears and peddles incredible tales, repeatedly refused to answer Wolf Blitzer's questions about whether the signature was a forgery and has said she never even asked her client, Mrs. Wilson, whether she actually saw Judge Moore sign it.  Moore has demanded the yearbook be turned over for forensic examination and Allred says she'll turn it over only to a (nonexistent) Senate Committee for its investigators to study.

A special counsel must investigate the Russia dossier, explain why Obama's FBI was involved.  For the past year, as our government has been mired in both an aimless and fruitless investigation into accusations of collusion between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign, Democrats have insisted that Congress follow where the evidence leads in this investigation.  My Democratic colleagues are absolutely right.  Congress should follow where the facts lead.  However, they're leading in a very different direction than the mainstream media narrative might suggest.  With regard to the original purpose of the investigation, Congress has held multiple hearings and interviewed dozens of witnesses looking into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  There is nothing there.  It's time to move on.

Attacking Judge Moore's Morality Is a Dirty Leftist Trick.  Judge Moore is hated by Leftists and establishment Republicans because he is an outspoken, character-driven Christian conservative; a faithful courageous defender of our Constitution, principles and values which have made America great.  Moore elected to the U.S. Senate would be extremely helpful to Trump draining the swamp and making America great again.  Judge Moore's unwavering commitment to biblical morals and support of Trump's agenda makes Moore the last person fake news media, Hollywood, Democrats and RINO Republicans want to see in the U.S. Senate.  Therefore, it is not surprising that Leftists and RINOs are clamoring for Moore to drop out of the race; claiming Moore is morally unfit to serve.  These same people told us president Bill Clinton['s misbehavior] in the White House was none of our business.

The Real High Ground in the Moore Case.  [Bill] Clinton of course was guilty.  He admitted it.  But Democrats — and many Republicans — defended him, and the Senate refused to convict him for perjury and suborning perjury after his impeachment.  Now some senators want to expel Moore before the election.  Phooey.  That's virtue signaling.  Absent an admission of guilt between now and Election Day, he deserves the support of every Republican and of every conservative.  Vote for Moore and be a conservative, or vote for someone else and be a liberal.  Anything else is nonsense.

Judge Moore's Wife Kayla Moore:  We Are Gathering Evidence of Money Being Paid to Accusers.  Judge Roy Moore is running for US Senate in Alabama to replace Jeff Sessions.  Judge Moore has NEVER been accused of inappropriate sexual conduct in his 38 years of public service before the charges this past week. [...] On Monday [11/13/2017] Roy Moore's wife of 30 years Kayla Moore wrote that they are gathering evidence the accusers are being paid to speak out against her husband.

Are We Sure About Roy Moore, Or Do You Just Hate Him?  The swiftest pile on over Roy Moore has come not from Democrats, but from a bunch of Republicans who have hated his guts for years.  And now it's pay back time.  Look, I know I'm going to get set on fire for this piece, but I think it needs to be said.  If the allegations are true, Roy Moore needs to step aside.  But how do we know?  I have to tell you that this seems like a political miracle for the Democrats with a most convenient timing and most convenient pile on.  To listen to most, if Roy Moore is guilty he needs to step aside and if he is innocent he needs to step aside and clear his name.  Moore's opponents have constructed the argument in such a way that the only way forward is for him to get out of the race.  That's awfully convenient for a lot of people who hate him for political reasons.

With or without a trial?
Senate GOP campaign chair:  Moore should be expelled if elected.  Senate Republicans escalated their calls for embattled Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to leave the race — with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying he believes the women who have accused Moore of sexual misconduct and the chair of the GOP's campaign arm endorsing an effort to expel Moore should he be elected next month.  "I believe the individuals speaking out against Roy Moore spoke with courage and truth, proving he is unfit to serve in the United States Senate and he should not run for office," said Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  "If he refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him, because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate."

The Persecution Of Judge Roy Moore Shows Why The GOPe Must Be Defeated.  Former Democrat pollster Pat Caddell has referred to Republicans and Democrats as, respectively, 'the stupid party' and the 'corrupt party.' That labeling gets more appropriate every day, as evidenced by the way the dysfunctional GOP establishment is helping along the persecution of Judge Roy Moore, its Alabama Senate candidate.  As you'll remember, Judge Moore ran in the Alabama Primary against one of Mitch McConnell's swamp creatures, Luther Strange.  McConnell and his fellow New Tories spent $30 million dollars on the campaign (an absurdly large amount in Alabama) to get him in, but the people of Alabama knew exactly who Judge Roy Moore was, and weren't impressed.  And he won by a substantial percentage.

Trump is the Next Target after Roy Moore.  There's a reason why President Trump says that the fate of Senate candidate Roy Moore will depend on whether the charges against him are proven to be true.  Trump knows that if they get rid of Moore, using charges that obviously cannot be proven, he's their next target.  Sex-gate will follow Russia-gate.  In this atmosphere, women charging sexual harassment are easy to find, even if their charges cannot be proven.  The men are assumed to be guilty as charged.  One can argue that everything but the kitchen sink has already been thrown at Trump and he has survived nonetheless.  But since the election we have seen that the allegations of sexual harassment have been cast as a major blight on American society, making it more likely that "new" accusers against Trump will be found and that a new variation of the "scandal" will be used to cast a pall over the presidency.  The same members of the GOP establishment lined up against Moore will be called upon to dump Trump.

Roy Moore for Senate?  I agree with Paul [Mirengoff] that the Washington Post's allegation that Moore tried to seduce a 14-year-old girl 38 years ago is more likely false than true, particularly given the gaping hole in the accuser's story that has been attested to by her own mother.  Beyond that, I question whether a newly-surfaced, 38-year-old allegation should ever — short of murder or something nearly as heinous — be grounds for defeating a political candidate.  There is a reason why our criminal laws include statutes of limitation.  After decades have gone by, it is often impossible to prove (or disprove) an allegation.  The accuser in the present case remained silent for 38 years, during most of which time Moore was a prominent figure in Alabama politics.  Now, a few weeks before a U.S. Senate election, at the importuning of a team of reporters from the Washington Post who are obviously determined to bring down the candidate, she sees fit to accuse Moore.  One of the kinder words we apply to this sort of conduct in the law business is "estoppel."  It is much too late to dredge up an accusation from the 1970s.

Troy Has Fallen.  Don't Let Helen Trick You.  Today, we Americans find ourselves sinking into swamp after swamp of institutional corruption, from Washington's Russia eruptions to Hollywood's frisky lust to academia's sheer madness.  A question repeats ad nauseam:  How do they get away with this stuff?  How did gropers and pederasts run amok in our nation's media for decades without being challenged?  How did a web of state operatives, lobbyists, agents, and propagandists fool so many people with disinformation for so long without being caught?  And at last, how did colleges that were conceived as lights of reason and character formation plummet into such unreason and depravity with nobody to stop them?  It isn't the wickedness that staggers the mind, since most people understand the existence and reality of evil.  It is the evasion of justice.

JFK murder is a mirror maze that won't be solved by a few more documents.  Last week we came close to a milestone as President Trump released all but the last few hundred public documents related to the Kennedy assassination.  Considering that the assassination took place 54 years ago, and we live in what is touted as a transparent society in which the people are sovereign, it's not really much to be proud of.  But, on the other hand, when you realize that the Warren Commission had originally sealed many of the documents from its original investigation for 75 years, people my age are lucky we didn't have to live till 2039 to see what the government thought we couldn't handle.

Dems Are Loath to Weaponize Russia Probe Indictments.  The indictment of Donald Trump's former campaign chairman and the guilty plea entered by a former low-level foreign policy adviser seemed to hand Democrats a weightier cudgel with which to club the president's party this week.  But even though special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia collusion probe is picking up steam, Democratic strategists and campaign operatives are urging party members to tread carefully.  Research in the form of focus groups, polling, and on-the-ground conversations conducted by various Democratic groups suggests that reaction to GOP policy will drive their voters more effectively than the ongoing Russia investigations, however newsworthy they have become.  Democrats figure that the eventual conclusions reached by Mueller and congressional committees will speak loudly for themselves.  In the more immediate term, many Democrats argue the party will be more successful in its electoral efforts by focusing on economic issues that matter to everyday voters.

What is Mueller Investigating?  And Why?  This morning's Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, in a story that doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of national attention, that Robert Mueller's ever-widening investigation has ensnared Vin Weber, a former Minnesota Congressman and long-time Washington lobbyist: [...] Mueller's operation is leaking on a more or less daily basis.  Isn't that illegal?  Aren't grand jury proceedings supposed to be secret?  Maybe the Attorney General should appoint a special counsel to look into possible crimes associated with leaks by Mueller's staff.

The Cunningness Of The CIA's JFK Assassination Cover-Up.  [Scroll down]  It was one of the most brilliant and cunning ruses in history.  They get the body out of Parkland by force, in violation of Texas law, and put it in the hands of the military in Maryland, which conducts a secret fraudulent and bogus autopsy.  Lyndon Johnson telephones Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade on the night of the assassination and orders him to shut down any investigation of a conspiracy because it might lead to nuclear war.  As soon as Oswald is assassinated, the FBI orders Wade to turn over all his investigative files to the FBI.  At the same time, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover both write secret memos and reports saying any further investigation must stop immediately.  Lyndon Johnson gets Earl Warren and Sen. Richard Russel to join the Warren Commission by telling them that the assassination could lead to World War III.  Johnson appoints former CIA Director Allan Dulles, who Kennedy had fired as a result of the CIA's regime-change operation at the Bay of Pigs, to the Warren Commission, thereby guaranteeing that there will be no investigation of the CIA.  Then keep all the records secret for decades, when many people won't care anymore who killed President Kennedy.

It's Starting To Look Like Putin's Real Goal Was To Drive Americans Crazy — And Guess Who's Helping.  Here's a thought experiment.  What if Russia's goal in its machinations before the November election wasn't to get President Trump elected, but to sow discord and dissent in the U.S.?  If that's the case, Russia's investment has paid off handsomely, and blame for that rests not with Trump, but his political enemies.

Harvey Weinstein Set Off The Left's Version Of The Televangelist Scandal.  It didn't stop with Harvey Weinstein.  Of course it didn't.  We all knew he was just the tip of the iceberg.  The scandal of powerful men using their position to force their attentions on young women in more or less disgusting ways hasn't even stopped in Hollywood.  It is now spreading to the political media, where it is about to cause a similar devastating loss of moral credibility. [...] Here is just a partial list of the miscreants who have been outed in the past few weeks.

Of Course It Matters That Team Clinton Funded the Dossier.  [Scroll down]  My sense is that Russia was playing both sides in the 2016 presidential election.  Its goal was not to influence the outcome — an achievement the Russians understood to be beyond their capability.  Rather the goal was to undermine the credibility of our democratic system and, in the words of James Comey, to "freak people out." [...] The Russians have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, thanks to the unwillingness of Hillary Clinton and her backers in the mainstream media to live with the result of last November's presidential election.

Swamp Central:  U.S. State Department.  In the long process of draining the D.C. swamp, the executive department to watch is State, whose leadership has long enjoyed a revolving-door relationship with the Bush and Clinton political dynasties, the CIA and the Department of Defense.  For the swamp draining to be real and lasting, changes must be reflected not just around the edges, but in the heart of the swamp as well, and it must not simply pander to domestic populist priorities like immigration; it must restore respect for the common foundation of all civilization: authentic marriage and the natural family.  The true litmus test for making America — and the world — great our response to the culture-destroying "gay" agenda, and the true measure of our national sanity is whether we stop trying to force the world to normalize it.

Roger Goodell Fell for Mainstream Media's Fake Reality and Destroyed NFL (Possibly Forever).  Thanks to George W. Bush's terrible second term, two unbelievably awful Republican opponents in John McCain and Mitt Romney, not to mention the charisma and impressive political skills as the most leftwing senator in the country, Barry O won two national elections and did so by impressive margins.  The problem is that America's so-called Smart People misread these victories.  And by "Smart People," I am, of course, sarcastically referring to Democrats, the imbecilic Republican establishment, and the corrupt national media — all of whom deluded themselves into believing that Obama's victory meant that the country had not just moved to the left, but to the far left.  Buoyed by this mistaken belief, not only did the Democrat Party move to the far-left (Warren, Bernie, Hillary 7.0, etc), so did the media.

America Has Built the Most Comfortable Civilization in the World.  Agatha Christie in "At Bertram's Hotel" makes a comment about Americans liking their rooms warmer in winter, and needing air conditioning in the summer.  There was a faint sneer to the words.  Americans, you know, like to be comfortable, and aren't hardened, easy-going travelers like the rest of the world.  They don't put up with discomfort and inconvenience with a smile.  For some reason, this is held against us.  The thing is, you stack all your cathedrals, all your palazzos, the broad expanses of European plazas, of arches and columns and ancient paintings, and they're all very fine, very impressive, very worth seeing.  But you can't have them and ease and comfort in the same day.  Because nowhere in Europe, no matter how much you're paying (unless you are at the very top of the tree and paying multi-millionaire type of money) will you find the consistent comfort and ease of American life.

The Mythical Far Right.  Few ideas are as silly or destructive as the idea that there is an "ideological spectrum" that has at one extreme Nazis and fascists and at the other end communists.  There is no "far right" that connects in any way with conservatism.  The communists and Nazis are not simply totalitarians, but totalitarians who believe in almost identical values.  That is why Orwell in 1984 could describe an Inner Party that everyone understands but fits nowhere on an "ideological spectrum."  Moving too far in the direction of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater never, ever leads to totalitarianism, but moving too far in the direction of Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi always leads to totalitarianism.

America Divided: It Starts With the Democratic Party.  Five political worldviews are currently vying for supremacy in the public square:  identity politics, progressive class-based redistributionism, libertarian anti-statism, reform conservatism, and Trumpist populism.  Despite some tensions, the first two co-exist in the Democratic Party.  The other three are jostling for control of the Republican Party.

Are the California wildfires Jerry Brown's Katrina?  Nobody knows with certainty the cause(s) of the Northern California wildfires that have overwhelmed the capacity of governments to in any way contain them.  A few theories exist.  NASA blames lightning, but I am not sure how much credence NASA deserves.

The Editor says...
If the wildfires were caused by lightning, why are they confined to California?  Is there no lightning in Mexico or Oregon?

Who Would You Want For A Boss — Mike Pence or Harvey Weinstein?  This isn't a difficult question.  Unless you live in Hollywood, and you were willing to accept this sexual abuse because it was Harvey Weinstein.  So long as he said all the right things, gave the right people money, and supported all the right causes, he continued to prey on women.

Humanity and Mr. Killer Paddock.  First of all, I keep reading that somehow it's unique in human history that men gather innocent human beings together, pen them up, and then slaughter them in large numbers.  The tragic fact of human nature is that mass killings of totally innocent human beings are not at all unusual.  Genghis Khan swept across Europe and Asia killing by the hundreds of thousands when it had to be done by hand and not by machines.  His victims were as innocent as could be.  In World War II, the Nazis killed Jews and Russians by the millions, making no distinction at all between the men and the women, the children and the adults.  A common way for them to do this was to unload cattle cars filled with Jews, line them up in fields, make them dig their own graves, then machine gun them.  The earth would still be rising and falling for days after the "burial."  Even before that, in World War I, the Turks killed one and a half million Armenians by shooting and starvation and exposure, and the world said nothing.  The Führer was inspired.  Stalin killed by the tens of millions, almost all civilians.  Not only did no one stop him, but many in the elite circles in the West thought of him as a hero.

An Unreal Existence.  At the end of the 20th century people believed in the truth.  While they had several truths, — liberalism, conservativism, classic Communism of the kind once espoused by Che Guevara and in places a naive form of apocalyptic Islam — at least each believed the world's problems could be solved if their truth should triumph over the rest.  The clash of civilizations since September 11, 2001 has left every culture wounded and guilty in its own way.  Western civilization, dominant through the modern era appears to be destroying itself in self-hatred, literally choosing extinction.

Stephen Paddock's 'secret life'.  My guess is that the "secret life" [Stephen] Paddock led was part of a life plan he absorbed from his father, who twice lived a life on the run from police under phony identities he manufactured.

False flag in Vegas shooting?  Stephen Paddock, 64, has been named as the Las Vegas shooter.  He is dead.  He killed 58 people at a concert and wounded 515 others.  In the Congress, calls are rising for new gun control laws..."  But, as it turns out, the evidence suggests there were multiple shooters in the Mandalay Hotel.  Paddock may or may not have been one of them.  The overall operation was designed to invoke widespread horror and fear, and usher in new restrictions on gun ownership. [...] [T]he background of the purported shooter, Stephen Paddock, gives no indication of any competence with auto weapons, gives no indication he could have dealt with the problems and challenges of using such a weapon — and on top of that, his state of mind at the time, as an non-professional, would have been unstable, to say the least.  Any reasonable law-enforcement group investigating this mass shooting would certainly keep its options open, regarding other perpetrators.  But that is not what is happening here.  The books are closed on this case.  There is no going back.  The desired result has been achieved.  One shooter, mass killings.  End of story.  Objective achieved.  That rush to judgment and "closure" is also a prime feature of the false flag.  It has to be.

The bitter fruit of Hefner's life's work has helped poison American families.  Hugh Hefner didn't invent pornography, and it would no doubt be thriving today even if he hadn't founded Playboy magazine those many years ago.  After all, man is fallen, and somebody would have filled that depraved niche in American life.  Hefner, however, played his part, and the part he played was immensely destructive to our nation's cultural, moral, and spiritual fabric.  Hefner mainstreamed porn, he put it in millions of homes, and he even glamorized it — recasting one of America's most pathetic industries as the playground of the sophisticated rich.  He then grew to a ripe old age, consorting with women young enough to be his granddaughters.  He was America's most famous dirty old man.

Hugh Hefner Was A Creepy Old Pornographer.  So Why Are Leftists Celebrating Him?  Let's be clear about one thing:  Hefner's attempt to glorify the "swinging" lifestyle was a dressed-up version of pure hedonism.  While he said he liked to listen to jazz, talk about Nietzsche, and be surrounded by beautiful women, he's only famous because of the last element:  without publishing pictures of bare breasts, Hugh Hefner would have been a nearly-anonymous, seedy-type trying to hit on women who could pass for his granddaughters.  Hefner is iconic only because our culture has been so degraded. [...] The media may pretend that Hefner's "sophistication" is the reason they're praising him today, but it's his obscenity and his open hatred of traditional morality that really turned them on.

Tom Cruise's Latest Film Fabricates History to Attack President Reagan.  Ronald Reagan, we were told in the 1980s, brought to the White House a worldview suffused with America-boosting Hollywood cliché and informed by dodgy facts.  Liberals blanched when Tom Cruise amplified this voice in the Reaganite Top Gun.  Three decades on, the charge is being trotted out again, only this time it is Cruise who is making it, in a film suffused with America-bashing Hollywood cliché and informed by dodgy facts.  Cruise plays Barry Seal, a real-life Louisiana TWA pilot-turned-drug smuggler for the Medellin Cartel who got rich in the 1970s and 1980s before he was eventually busted.  Desperate, he volunteered to turn informant for the DEA and earned the wrath of the drug lords after photographing some of them with cameras the CIA had installed on his plane.  All of this is shown in American Made, but as far as I can tell, most of the rest is fabricated.

Igor, bar the door.  Shared values can't exist in a world where each ever splintering group seeks its own "safe space" only a step ahead of the pursuing harpies of cultural appropriation.  "Divide and conquer" couldn't live in the same town as "we are the world" forever.  Sooner or later the global project had to square off against identity politics and it looks like the hyphens are winning.

That Shooting At Georgia Tech Was Suicide By Cop.  What with all of the other rioting going on all over the country, you're to be forgiven if you missed the latest mayhem breaking out around Georgia Tech this week.  It resulted from the shooting of a student there by the name of Scout Schultz on Saturday night [9/16/2017].  Schultz reportedly "identified as neither male nor female" but based on the pictures and some of the local reporting I'm going with male because I can't be bolloxed with writing an entire column while dancing around the use of pronouns. [...] Since it was a student being shot by the police, the New Normal dictates that people have to immediately take to the streets.

The NDAA is Fatally Flawed and Threatens National Security.  Looking at some of the early Christmas gifts buried deep on the National Defense Authorization Act for both liberals like Elizabeth Warren and our enemies like North Korea and Iran, it's almost hard believe Republicans won an election in November.  Somehow, deep in the fine print almost no one in Washington ever reads, are a series of provisions snuck in to the NDAA by Senator Warren and Obama Administration holdovers at the Defense Department that will actually make America less safe and grow government bureaucracy.

Is Google attempting to cover up an inconvenient hurricane truth?  Since nobody else seems to want to stick their neck out, this old fool might as well do it and point out the obvious: those who have shouldered the heavy lifting in the disaster and rescue work in South Texas and South Florida during our hurricane events have been — with plenty of exceptions, of course — those hated white males the left loves to disparage. [...] If you care to take the time to review the endless stream of videos out there from these disasters, particularly of the widespread flooding from Harvey, one truth quickly jumps out at you: the Americans driving those boats and operating other rescue vehicles are far and away mostly white males, and a disproportionate number of those being rescued are people of color.  Yes, there are numerous Hispanics and some blacks among the rescuers, but the undeniable reality is that the bulk of that huge rescue team was lily-white — and, even worse for liberals, Southerners, which represents a truly inconvenient truth for all those rabid progressives who would have the world believe that Southern White Males are all vicious racists, most of whom have freshly laundered white-sheet KKK attire hanging in their closets.

Flu shots are the greatest medical fraud in the history of the world.  My independent atomic elemental analysis of flu vaccines, published in the summer of 2014, proved that flu vaccines contain over 50 ppm mercury, an extremely toxic heavy metal linked to kidney failure, birth defects, spontaneous abortions and neurological damage.  This finding has never been refuted by anyone.  In fact, it was affirmed by vaccine proponents who insisted that it is perfectly safe to inject pregnant women, young children and senior citizens with mercury even though the flu vaccine insert itself readily admits there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the safety and efficacy of the vaccine in such groups.  Believe it or not, there are still millions of people, doctors, pharmacists and even journalists who do not yet realize there is a very high concentration of mercury in influenza vaccines given to pregnant women, children and senior citizens.  Most people, you see, have been lied to by the media which has stated over and over again that mercury was removed from all vaccines.  That's simply not true.

Electing to Investigate Voter Fraud.  Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes' non-efforts to prevent voter fraud are typical of Democrat officials.  She sounds like your run-of-the-mill, corrupt Democrat capo from Philly or Pittsburgh whose primary objective is maintaining Democrats' power without regard for the rule of law or maintaining a civil society.  Both social norms and the Constitution are targeted by the nihilist, communist left/Democrat Party for annihilation. [...] Leftist apparatchiks like Snipes are vital to the Joey Stalins of the Democrat Party, the malevolent Schumer and abortionist Pelosi.  Snipes most likely considers Antifa to be a community organizing group; in fact, it is — like ACORN and Black Lives Matter — violent, anti-American, communist, and darlings of the mainstream media.

Climate Change Sermon at Hurricane Relief Concert.  Last night our favorite celebrities held a benefit concert for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  So kind, right?  Well it didn't take long for those self-righteous stars to turn a charity night into a political statement because, why let a good tragedy go to waste, right?  [Video clip]

Houston, We Have a Problem.  Houston / Harris County has two enormous "dry reservoirs," along with several hundred (regular) reservoirs, bayous, stream beds and other infrastructure designed to collect the water of torrential rainfalls to prevent flooding.  The two dry reservoirs, being dry, do not help the city survive periods of drought, as the rest of the system does.  They are only to temporarily hold the waters of massive rainfalls.  One of these two dry reservoirs is Addicks Reservoir, within which is Harris County Bear Creek Park.  Normally, the land of this reservoir is used for recreation.  For example, park land.  Also, athletic fields.  The other dry reservoir is Barker Reservoir.  Within this reservoir is George Bush Park.  This park offers a mix of amenities similar to that offered by Bear Creek Park.  The two dry reservoirs and the rest of the water control system were put into place following the floods of 1935.  The system was supposed to contain the rush of water associated with massive downpours perhaps even the size of Hurricane Harvey.  But, over time, the city sold pieces of land constituting its reservoir system, reducing the capacity of the system and, of course, the city failed to maintain its (mere earthen) dams.  So, over time, the capacity of the system to absorb torrential rainfall was severely diminished.

Flashback — Admitted Occultist Sally Quinn Ridiculed Sarah Palin's Christian Faith.  Back in 2009, when journalist/socialite Sally Quinn used the pages of the leftwing Washington Post to blast former-Governor Sarah Palin's Christian faith, all we knew about Quinn was that she was a committed atheist (this is someone the Washington Post thought should run its religious section).  What we did not know about Quinn, because she did not want us to know, is that while The Queen of Pro-Science could not bring herself to believe in God, what she did believe in was the occult, the dark arts, voodoo, and the power of the hex.  Quinn believes so strongly in her own witch-like powers, she is certain that she is responsible for the deaths of three people, three innocent people who died after Quinn hit them with a hex.

The Real Reason the US Navy Keeps Hitting Merchant Vessels.  [Scroll down]  Our Navy should now be something like I described back in 2000 — lots of drones, surface, subsurface and air, being controlled by nodes which take the info back quickly to centralized areas for decisions on action.  The weapons can be delivered by drones as well.  Why we are still dropping iron bombs on top of targets before they are softened up is beyond me.  Iron bombs have their place, and so do manned aircraft, but they are truly expensive to lose.  We need to do better.

With Hurricane Irma, Private Volunteers — Not Gov't — Again Lead Way In Relief.  As with Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Hurricane Irma has severely tested Americans' generosity and willingness to help their fellow human beings in a time of need.  And they have once again passed the test with flying colors.

The Great Hate Flood of 2017.  [Scroll down]  Who knew?  Apparently not the legions of leftist fanatics who openly salivated at the idea that thousands of white redneck bigots would be drowning in Texas last week.  So eager were they to revel in the idea of a PMS-enraged Goddess punishing these inbred racists with a hurricane and flooding, they didn't check to see that the area getting walloped went solidly blue in the 2016 elections.  The blood-red parts of Texas — where all those foul-spirited subhuman Republican white rednecks live, the ones who put Trump over the top and gave him the nation's second-largest electoral prize, those morally retarded mutant throwbacks who live and breathe on pure fumes of hatred — were mostly untouched by Harvey's destruction.  Can you imagine these progressive sadists' bitter moral agony when informed that there would be no rainbows in Houston until the storms had taken a rainbow coalition of human lives?  Can you picture the tears that fell sadly to the ground when they realized that not only white people would be dying?

Stop Blaming Houston's Libertarian Zoning For Hurricane Harvey's Destruction.  The media is determined to blame Houston's urban developers for the hurricane's devastation.  That isn't a comprehensive, balanced understanding of the situation.

Did Joe Arpaio receive a fair hearing from an unbiased judge?  My position on the pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio is that it was a reasonable exercise of the president's pardon power.  Not pardoning the sheriff would also have been reasonable, in my opinion.  Indeed, as I said in my post on the subject, I don't like presidential pardons.  Absent overwhelming evidence that the person getting the pardon did not commit the offense for which he was convicted, my preference is no pardon.  The Arpaio pardon does not meet that standard.  However, Arpaio's offense arises from his efforts to combat a serious problem of lawlessness — illegal immigration — that the federal government refused to take seriously.  Arpaio was filling a void created by the feds, a void that inflicted hardship on the people Arpaio was elected to serve.  In addition, political animus by those who opposed Arpaio's efforts to fill the void left by the feds appears to have driven the legal case against him.

Warning: The Race War Is Being Engineered.  [T]he corporate media (which is owned by a handful of corporations) have the power to influence your thinking and, as a result, keep you afraid or angry.  The media (and the people behind it) are working together to create conflict.  To stir the pot.  To stoke the flames.  In reality, for the average American these issues truly represent a small slice of the issues which are of immediate threat to their freedoms and livelihood.  While I believe all people should oppose low-level, primitive thinking such as racism and bigotry, we should be hesitant to let these stories and pundits play on our fears and push us into violent action.  Also, we should remain skeptical and be aware there are infiltrators and provocateurs involved with promoting these fears.

Does the Left Know Something's Coming Involving Guns?  This sounds a little "out there," but we live in a time when what is going on beneath the surface dwarfs what we see as the end result of someone's planning.  So what if the discordant calls for gun control are because those politicians, anarchists, and activists (though I repeat myself) have foreknowledge of some kind of planned escalation of their brand of "protest" and are setting the stage for disingenuous "I told you sos'?  What if they have something of a timeline along which they either believe that things will happen or will make things happen, to escalate the blitzkrieg of media and hysteria by which they effect "change" — meaning a coup?  What if they and the media are in bed together on this, too, and have prepared their stories and narratives ahead of time? [...] Seeing the unprecedented dishonesty we have seen over the last nine years, practiced by unethical zealots who see their opportunity to gain full control over the wealth of an entire nation, is this too ridiculous to imagine?

The Insatiable Left.  Steve Bannon, the wily provocateur who helped push President Trump across the finish line in the bloody 2016 presidential contest, has resigned from his position as White House Chief Strategist. [...] Democrats are quicker to hop on opportunity than rats looking for scraps in a dumpster.  But even some Republicans couldn't help jumping on the "fire Bannon" band wagon.

The human cost of hate, and the high price of love.  If life were as simple as the mainstream media makes it out to be, then we would have the luxury of never having to think about anything.  We could all march in lockstep from birth to death, never disagreeing, never finding nuance, never having to worry about the other side — because there wouldn't be another side.  Of course, there are such simple societies, but come to think of it, they are simply horrible.  I'm talking about the nations, cultures and religions that don't tolerate diversity of opinion, ethnicity or religion.  I'm talking about Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Russia under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot, the Islamic State under al-Baghdadi, Korea under the Kims.  In each of those cases, the people have been told what to think — and variance from those instructions often has meant a death sentence.

Navy's Report on Fitzgerald Collision Is Evidence Of Corruption.  Two months after the USS Fitzgerald's June 18 collision with a freighter in the Sea Of Japan, the Navy announced that the ship's commanding officer, executive officer, and senior enlisted man were being relieved of their positions. [...] The Fitz's damage control fiasco may be a small reflection of the OOD's failure on the bridge.  What was that officer doing before the collision that so diverted his/her judgment, and after the collision that it took him/her 14 minutes to sound General Quarters?  Drugs?  Sex?  What kinds of people and policies are in at the controls in today's Navy?  Unfortunately, the Navy is giving us one more example of how America's ruling class deals with its failures:  indict formal scapegoats, issue long reports that sidestep the key issues, and close the matter by promising to "continue the investigation."  That is why serious persons assume that official reports are cover-ups.

Apple Funds Left-Wing Hate Group.  As has been documented many times, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a left-wing hate group that has blood on its hands.  I don't know whether [Apple CEO Tim] Cook shares SPLC's hateful agenda, or whether he is just a naive stooge.  Either way, Apple has aligned itself with some very bad actors.

The Left Is Doing Exactly What White Nationalists Want.  It wasn't long ago that Americans were being told repeatedly not to overreact to Islamic terrorism, because that would only serve as a terrorist recruiting tool.  That's worth remembering now, in the wake of the white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, Va. [...] Liberals and the press should know that wildly exaggerating the size and influence of these racist miscreants only serves as a powerful recruiting tool for more disaffected whites to join their ranks.  Ignoring these idiotic marches, in contrast, will starve these people of what they want more than anything else — attention.

One Easy Way Democrats Can Stop Neo-Nazis.  In Dallas, a black nationalist activist shot and killed 5 police officers at a Black Lives Matter anti-police rally.  Instead of condemning BLM, Barack Obama defended a racist hate group whose role model is Assata Shakur, a wanted black nationalist cop killer, at the funerals of the murdered officers.  The left killed civil rights and replaced it with black nationalism.  The racial supremacism of black nationalism that killed those officers is everywhere. [...] But racism is a two-way street.  So is violence.  Extremists feed into each other.  You can't legitimize one form of racism without legitimizing all of them.  The media may advance this hypocritical position.  Obama used the shameful "reverse racism" euphemism that distinguishes between black and white racism.  But propaganda and spin don't change the physics of human nature.  Either all racism is bad.  Or all racism is acceptable.

Trump Was Right to Condemn Violence on 'Many Sides' in Charlottesville.  President Donald Trump reacted to Saturday's [8/12/2017] violence in Charlottesville by condemning violence "on many sides."  His critics pounced, saying that he should have specifically condemned violence by white supremacists, and that by not doing so, he in fact condoned such violence.  The critics are guilty of a double standard, and of exploiting the violence for political gain, widening America's divisions at a time when national unity is the only proper course.

Is Charlottesville What's Really Going On in the USA?  [Scroll down]  [T]he Klan, although it's the most famous and features the ever-popular David Duke, is not the only organization of wretched white supremacist nut cases.  There are a number of others.  So for the sake of argument, let's say there are as many as 100,000 white supremacists in America today. (This is undoubtedly a vast exaggeration, but let's use it, as I said, for the sake of argument.)  Meanwhile, since the 1920s, our population has more than tripled to some 325 million.  Using the figure of 100,000 white supremacists (not many of whom made it to Charlottesville fortunately), this puts the percentage of white supremacists in the U.S. at a puny 0.03%.  Terrible people, yes, but no epidemic by any stretch of the imagination.

Skokie and Charlottesville:  Compare and Contrast Nazi marches.  Those who have followed the origins of the Charlottesville riot know that this same Supreme Court decision [National Socialist Party v. Skokie] was held to apply there, too, as the ACLU once again rode to rescue of the rights of Nazis to the same free speech protections as groups favored by public sentiment.  The two marches are linked in their DNA by a common ancestor, the ACLU.  So what was different this time?  Clearly, it was the fact that unlike 40 years ago, the Left is prepared to violently prevent the exercise of First Amendment rights.  Yes, the Nazis are repugnant.  They were repugnant forty years ago, too, and if anything, more so because they targeted a community that was home to many Holocaust survivors.

Celebrate the WWII Ending Atomic Bombs for the Millions of Lives Saved.  Like their soldiers on these islands [Saipan, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Guadalcanal], the 73 million Japanese prepared to defend to the last man, woman, and child their almost 146,000 square mile homeland.  Everyone who could fight was being trained and armed; even children were taught to fight with spears.  The death toll promised to be horrendous.  The American forces anticipated 1,000,000 casualties including at least 150,000 dead.  The atomic bombs convinced the Japanese to surrender saving American lives and avoiding the extinction, or near extinction of the Japanese people.  While the death toll from the atomic bombs was high, Hiroshima 80,000 and Nagasaki 40,000, they were not extreme in WWII.  The March 9-10, 1945 bombing raid on Tokyo took about 100,000 lives, the raids on Hamburg took about 42,000 lives, the raids on Dresden took 25,000 lives, raids on London took perhaps 50,000 lives.  Compared to the perhaps 60-70 million Japanese that might have died in the invasion of Japan, the death toll from the atomic bombs was low and a small price to pay for the lives saved.

Silencing ALL opposition voices:  Inside The Media Matters Playbook.  Even to casual observers, it has been obvious for months that the left is orchestrating a tightly-coordinated campaign to undermine and delegitimize the current presidential administration.  As an extension of the decades-long campaign to wrestle the narrative away from conservatives, independents and centrists, they're smearing right-leaning commentators with anything they can find. [...] So, what exactly do they want?  Nothing less than complete control over political discourse in America.

While Trashing Trump, Apple Is Selling Its Soul To Do Business In China.  Tech giant Apple Inc. is increasingly caving to the demands of communist China in order to stay in a market where it is losing ground and advancing authoritarian objectives in exchange for short-term profits and, potentially, long-term losses.  China is Apple's second-largest market and could eventually become the company's biggest market, but Apple's China sales are declining.  As the company struggles to maintain a share of the Chinese market, it has increasingly kowtowed to Beijing, delivering blow after blow to internet freedom, human rights causes, and fair-market practices.  At the same time, its leadership continuously criticizes the American president while harping on progressive causes at home.

Is America on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or Civil War?  [Scroll down]  Can the Deep State co-exist with an awakened populace, even a partially awakened one?  Increasingly, beneath all the leaks and counter-leaks, the missing emails and accusations, what we are looking at is a sclerotic system that has become increasingly built on self-preservation and not on the people's will, in fact is largely disinterested in and disconnected from that will.  Call [Michael] Savage an extremist or whatever you want, but the truth is we are clearly on the edge of something explosive.  The number of leaks is astronomical and they seem to come from everywhere, including our intelligence agencies, the FBI, and inside the White House.

Sanctions, Smoke and Mirrors from a Kindergarten on LSD.  The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations in the official media and the blogosphere — everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which appears to make no sense at all.  Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote?  Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions.  Why?!  This is even more baffling when you consider that the single biggest effect of these sanctions will be to trigger a rift, and possibly even counter-sanctions, between the US and the EU.  What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies.  And yet, every Senator except Paul and Sanders voted for this.  Does that make any sense to you?

Stop Calling Jesus a Socialist.  To make Jesus of Nazareth a socialist is to give credence to an alternative account in which he is useful only when he speaks of someone else's finances.  The socialist structure demands giving without first inspiring generosity and getting without gratitude, but as for the Kingdom of Heaven, the object of its judgment is the inner life, ignoring status, and calling to account the conduct of the slave as a slave and the master as a master.  It is her witness to this judgment that makes the church a body of grave opposition to those like Bernie Sanders.

We All Need to Admit that America Has a Tattoo Problem.  If America can be divided into those who don't have tattoos and those who do, the two groups seem to be rapidly approaching equilibrium.  About one in five Americans have tattoos, and among 18-29 year-olds the latest figures peg those with ink at 40 percent.  Speaking of percentages, the Air Force is so hard up for recruits that it recently eliminated its "25 percent rule."  Like all military regulations, the 25 percent rule is painfully exact, but loosely stated, it meant that you weren't eligible to serve, much less join a bomber crew ferrying around nuclear weapons, unless you were capable of exercising good enough judgment not to cover more than a quarter of your body in tattoos.  Back in the good old days, the problem was getting tattoos after you joined the military.

Why No Warning Label on Marijuana?  The federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires all drugs in the United States to be shown safe and effective before being marketed in the United States.  Now that the manufacture and sale of marijuana is legal in Colorado, California, and six other states, why hasn't the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required warning labels on marijuana?  The FDA has plenary powers, including the outright prohibition of the marketing of unsafe drugs.  It has similar statutory authority to issue an order recalling drugs, although recalls are normally done voluntarily by drug manufacturers.

Procter & Gamble's Identity-Politics Pandering.  Once upon a time, brothers-in-law William Procter and James Gamble sold candles and soap.  Their 19th-century family business grew into the largest consumer goods conglomerate in the world — launching the most recognizable brands on our grocery shelves, including Tide, Pampers, Crest, Nyquil and Old Spice.  Now, Procter & Gamble want to conquer a new market:  identity-politics pandering.  Industry marketers aren't satisfied with selling useful products people want and need.  They're hell-bent on transforming successful businesses into social justice busybodies.

That's Just Your Opinion:  Moral Relativism and the Death of Liberty.  The protection of individual liberty is the core purpose of American government, built into our nation's framework.  As I've aged, I've come to believe that this is the fundamental distinction that separates the American idea from the rest of the world.  And I've come to understand that to destroy our notion of individual liberty requires the institution of this silly notion of moral relativism, where your opinion and mine are equal simply because we have opinions and a vote.

Russian dossier operator Fusion GPS in business of doing dirty deeds for corrupt dictatorships.  The secretive Washington firm that commissioned the sensational anti-Trump campaign research dossier also advised corrupt Venezuelan officials accused of conducting a lucrative money laundering scheme, a respected international human rights group told lawmakers probing the Russian election-meddling scandal.  Thor Halvorssen, head of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in written testimony that Washington-based political intelligence firm Fusion GPS operated a campaign against journalists who threatened to expose a multibillion-dollar fraud involving faulty South American electric power plants, the laundering of its proceeds in U.S. banks and a kickback scheme to pay off Venezuelan officials.

Combat Veteran:  War Is No Place For The Gender Confused.  Combat veteran J.R. Salzman said Wednesday morning [7/26/2017] in the wake of President Donald Trump's military transgender ban that a war theater is no place for the gender confused.  In a tweet series, Salzman recounted his experiences in Iraq in 2006, when he was stationed at an isolated firebase in the blazing heat and experienced constant stress from the intense nature of his job.

The CBO's Cryptic Approach To Scoring Laws Undermines Public Confidence.  Efforts by Republican lawmakers to repeal the Affordable Care Act in recent months have repeatedly collapsed after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the various bills using a closely guarded analytic process done entirely behind closed doors.  As Republicans released proposed legislation, the CBO announced its views about its effect on the federal budget and how it would affect the number of people without health insurance but didn't provide a clear account of how those numbers were reached.

David Axelrod, son of communists, suddenly worried about Trump's meeting with Putin.  David Axelrod, President Obama's former political strategist, is stroking his chin about President Trump's supposed "second" conversation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, coming at the G-20 in Berlin a while back. [...] Would that be the same David Axelrod whose family was found by journalist Paul Kengor to be full-blown, card-carrying communists when young David was growing up in Stuyvesant Town on Manhattan's Lower East Side?  The same ones who were Soviet dupes, as Kengor found, and in tight with now revealed KGB agent I.F. Stone?  Communists so tight in the inner circle of communists that they were buddies with Obama's Communist Party mentor, Frank Marshall Davis?

Mueller's Investigation Must Be Limited and Accountable.  How much goalpost moving should be tolerable in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation? [...] The investigation is a moving target because of its slippery vocabulary.  It has been discussed and analyzed through the prism of "collusion" and "counterintelligence."  When we think of an "investigation," the connotation is a criminal proceeding — crimes, penal law, grand juries, subpoenas, warrants, arrests ... prosecution.  In that thicket, the terms "collusion" and "counterintelligence" are outliers.  The former is a vague term that blurs the legally salient lines between mere association and conspiracy — that is, the difference between innocence and guilt.

Philly Archbishop Decries Vatican Article Attacking U.S. Christians as 'Willfully Ignorant'.  In a hard-hitting essay, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput has joined the dozens of Christian leaders who have denounced the ignorant and insulting article published last week by the Vatican-vetted journal, La Civiltà Cattolica.  The essay by papal confidants Father Antonio Spadaro SJ and Rev. Marcelo Figueroa paints an offensive caricature of conservative Christians in the United States as politically ambitious racists who promote an "ecumenism of hate" and long to impose a theocratic state. [...] The Archbishop also makes the politically incorrect but undeniably accurate observation that the goal of much gay activism today goes beyond mere equality for the same-sex attracted and extends to a desire to "punish those who oppose the LGBT cultural agenda," something publicly acknowledged by gay activist Tim Gill last month.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Releases NAFTA Objectives.  It cannot be overstated how critical this is.  Please, please, understand.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.  All political opposition to President Donald Trump will increase in exponential severity as the dates of these renegotiated trade deals draws closer.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.  The entities outlined below will throw everything at the current administration in an effort to secure a better financial outcome for their interests.  Multinational Corporations, Wall Street interests and Multinational Financial stakeholders (mostly banks and foreign governments), have lobbied DC politicians for decades to create trade outcomes favorable to them.  It is, at its core, the financial and policy cancer that has distributed America's physical and financial wealth globally.  Additionally, multinational corporate media are part of this entire process and are stakeholders in the outcomes.

Trump-Hatred Is All About Islam.  One and a quarter billion people, roughly a fifth of the world's population, cannot make the leap from tribal society into the modern world.  Their anguish and rage is a source of continuous instability and an occasional threat to the security of Western countries.  Western leaders from George W. Bush to Pope Francis I struggled to avoid a clash of civilizations, praising Islam as a religion of peace.  Trump, by contrast, told Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia May 21 that the onus was on them to extirpate terrorists from their countries and mosques.  Trump isn't seeking civilizational war.  He's giving Muslim leaders fair warning and a chance to avoid it.  That is what the whole kerfuffle is about.

Fox News Takes a Sharp Left Turn.  If any doubts remained that the Fox News channel is continuing to swerve from its conservative roots, they were erased on July 16, 2017 when Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., a principal architect of Obamacare and a barely hinged spin doctor for the Democrat socialist left, appeared on the channel's signature weekly program Fox News Sunday in his new role as a paid contributor.  During the program, the ever arrogant Emanuel jumped on the Resist Trump bandwagon and suggested that President Trump is worthy of being impeached.  Hired last February primarily as a health policy analyst (he is a physician and professor, after all), Emanuel is now providing opinion not only on medical subjects but on political ones, as well.

Russia Didn't Interfere In U.S. Election To Help Trump, But To Destabilize America.  A still unidentified Democratic Party donor paid for the factually challenged dossier that almost sunk the Donald Trump campaign.  The dossier was created (and perhaps written) with the support and assistance of unregistered foreign agents of the Russian government, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The offer by an obscure music publicist to Donald Trump Jr. to share compromising information on the Clinton campaign was, as will be shown below, most likely a Russian operation.  I conclude that Russia's interference in the 2016 election was not to help Trump but to throw the American political system into chaos and threaten its foundations.  Russia boasts one of the most effective and ruthless political operations in Washington.  A flamboyant man-about-town ambassador sits at the top hobnobbing with the American political aristocracy.  Russia's diplomats, spies, and PR experts lobby Russian interests and recruit the powerhouses of American political influence to plead their cases and use hired guns to sling dirt and promote "disinformation" about opponents.

Were Democrats Working With The Russians?  Because of left-wing outrage and media obsession, the nation has focused on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to influence the American election.  In the hype and hysteria, we have been distracted from an obvious issue.  If, as the Obama Administration claimed, the Russians merely wanted to undermine American trust in the democratic process, would not they work both sides against each other?  It is looking more and more like that may be the case.

This isn't Watergate.  This isn't treason.  And there's still no smoking gun..  Russia did not swing the election to Trump.  He won because Americans, including hundreds of thousands who had voted for President Obama eight years previously, thought he was a more compelling candidate than Clinton.  Trump did a better job speaking the language of solidarity to the working class.  Get over it, and pick a better candidate next time.

The Next Right-Wing Populist Will Rise to Prominence by Attacking American Higher Education.  Republican voters may disagree on policy and principle, but they can agree on whom they don't like:  Radical professors, race-obsessed provocateurs, gender-studies grifters, anti-Israel fanatics, weak-kneed administrators, disgusting libertines, angry feminists, and illiberal student protesters.  Conservatives can get on board with this critique.  They have long railed against the liberal bias of colleges and its effect on America's young.

Thanks to the Constitution, the left's biggest problem is the American people.  In this country, voters and juries decide, not government officials.  Or media.  Or pundits.  That's by design.  The Founders' design.  Politics has always been a blood sport.  More than a few of the things in the Constitution (some more are most of the Bill of Rights, the prohibition on ex post facto laws, and the bar against bills of attainder and corruption of the blood) were expressly put in there specifically to prevent things from getting out of hand — such as when one faction got control of the executive branch of the government.

Global Warming Skepticism is Part of the Final Phase of the American Revolution.  [Scroll down]  Marshall McLuhan's global village was realized through the electronic village of the Internet.  The power of the Internet and thereby its threat to the power elite who want total government control.  The mainstream media and their political masters were end run by the people ignoring them and seeking facts evidence and information from fellow citizens.  Internet success and power were confirmed when the power elite and media tried to participate by creating websites. [...] For the first time in history, the people had access to and control of information.

How Did Trump Earn an Unprecedented Progressive Backlash?  It may not be traditionally presidential, but the Trump mode is to nuke those who first attacked him, in an effort to create a sort of deterrence.  CNN, to take one example, or Barack Obama to take another, at least knows that their smug, chic Trump putdowns will receive a reply in a manner that is neither smug nor chic.  Trump in Samson fashion is quite willing to pull the temple down on top of himself, if it means his enemies perish first.  Trump's agenda so far is an encapsulation of various conservative initiatives of prior presidents.  Remember, Trump did not promise to make "America great" but rather "American great again."

The Democrats' Latest Plan:  Commit Political Dissidents Like Trump to "Psychiatric" Disposal.  The former Soviet Union possessed many imaginative mechanisms to deal with the problem of enemies of the people who obstructed the path to socialist utopia — now known as "social justice."  One of those mechanisms was the practice of confining individuals who were thinking the wrong thoughts to insane asylums.  Indeed, if you caused any trouble for the commissars, a good inoculation of neuroleptics (powerful drugs used to "quiet" the symptoms of schizophrenia), forcibly administered through a tube in the nose, could do wonders in bringing your politically incorrect behavior to a halt.  Dissidents such as Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Pyotr Grigorenko, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin and Joseph Brodsky were all among the brave freedom-fighters who bore the brunt of the Soviet practice of institutionalizing dissidents in mental hospitals and force-feeding them mind-shattering drugs.

CNN Is Breeding a Post-Millennial Generation of MAGA-Loving Rebels.  It has become crystal clear that CNN still has no clue why Hillary and the establishment lost.  Much of the post-election reflection has focused on Trump's popularity with the white working class, with whom the president's populism and protectionism resonated.  Most, however, have ignored the reactionary post-Millennials who, despite holding liberal values on many issues, voted en masse for Trump.

Masterpiece Cakeshop Is Fighting for the First Amendment.  For one thing, no matter how many times people repeat it, the case isn't about discrimination or challenging gay marriage.  But when the news first broke, USA Today, for example, tweeted, "The Supreme Court has agreed to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage."  The headline (and story) on the website was worse; it read, "Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings."  Others similarly framed the case.  (And, don't worry, "religious liberty" is almost always solidly ensconced inside quotation marks to indicate that social conservatives are just using it as a facade.)  There is an impulse to frame every issue as a clash between the tolerant and the closed-minded.  But the Masterpiece case doesn't challenge, undermine or relitigate the issue of same-sex marriage in America.  Gay marriage wasn't even legal in Colorado when this incident occurred.

Making It Up As You Go Along.  Ten years ago one could predict what the official (and unofficial) story would be in any situation.  By contrast today's headlines are often absolutely contradictory, a situation that has made it hard for pundits to write anything intelligent about current events.  Some have given up or seemingly had a nervous breakdown.  This randomness is telling because it is indicative of a narrative in disarray.

Don't Read Too Much into the Drop in Refugee Arrivals Under President Trump.  A sharp decrease in FY 2017 refugee admissions under President Trump compared to those under the Obama administration has been reported recently.  The drop could easily be interpreted as a sign of policy change and tougher screening measures brought about by Obama's successor.  But the numbers are not quite as telling.

Trump Russia probe gets special counsel but not Hillary, not IRS? Time to investigate the investigators.  The American people want justice to be blind.  They want equal justice and equal protection for everyone.  But Mr. Comey's actions continue to call his impartiality, and the impartiality of the Holder and Lynch Justice departments, into question. [...] Throughout 2015 and 2016 there were calls from Congress for a special counsel in the Clinton email scandal.  Again the Justice Department refused, even after it was revealed that Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton less than a week before the FBI interviewed Hillary Clinton.  No special counsel was established, even after some unusual Justice Department immunity deals were revealed, including those designed to protect Secretary Clinton's chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Bryan Pagliano, who set up the email server in the first place.  This is the type of unequal justice that Americans despise.  No special counsel in the IRS targeting investigation.  No special counsel for the Clinton email investigation.  But if it's about protecting Mr. Comey's reputation and hurting President Trump, then of course there has to be a special counsel.

The Environmentalists' Human Shields.  What was it that took humanity out of a life that was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?"  It was cheap power.  It was the ability to heat your home AND cook your food, not having to choose between the two, on a modest income.  Not filling your lungs with smoke from burning wood or animal waste.  Not having to spend back-breaking hours chopping and carrying that wood.  Not losing days from your work and years off your life through those poisonous inhalations and hard labor.  Cheap power is what made modern life possible.  It made everybody's life better, but especially the poor (which is the case for so many other life-changing achievements of capitalism).  It is truly remarkable that "liberals" and "Progressives" champion the most regressive energy policies imaginable.  Higher energy prices generally and electricity prices specifically mean deprivation, hunger, suffering and even death.  And it means these things especially for the poor because the rich are, well, rich.

Whole Foods: America's Temple of Pseudoscience.  My own local Whole Foods is just a block away from the campus of Duke University.  Like almost everything else near downtown Durham, N.C., it's visited by a predominantly liberal clientele that skews academic, with more science PhDs per capita than a Mensa convention.  Still, there's a lot in your average Whole Foods that's resolutely pseudoscientific.  The homeopathy section has plenty of Latin words and mathematical terms, but many of its remedies are so diluted that, statistically speaking, they may not contain a single molecule of the substance they purport to deliver.

That Was Quick:  Reports Say Mueller Granted Comey Full Immunity Even Before Investigation Began.  Thus far, over the course of the utterly fraudulent "Russian Colusion" investigation, Democrats have accidentally uncovered crimes by Obama's attorney general Loretta Lynch and his FBI director James Comey.  And, as an added bonus, they may have also instigated brand new investigations of Hillary Clinton's suspicious activities.  So, by all means, let's continue this charade.

The Curse of Our Times.  The reign of electoral politics in our lives — the endless talk about things that aren't going to get done, and likely wouldn't get done right if they did get enacted through maneuvering and compromise — is the curse of the times.  The whole political system under which we live and obsess may have to crash for us to get the point.  And if that happens, we still may not understand, so inveterate are our habits of reaching out to the political fraternity for resolution of every grievance, the fulfillment of every hope.  We don't understand that politicians are people just like the rest of us:  no smarter as a class, no better tuned in to the realities of the day for having attended law school.

The Treasonous Secession of Climate Confederacy States.  After President Trump rejected the Paris Climate treaty, which had never been ratified by the Senate, the European Union announced that it would work with a climate confederacy of secessionist states.  Scotland and Norway's environmental ministers have mentioned a focus on individual American states.  And the secessionist governments of California, New York and Washington have announced that they will unilaterally and illegally enter into a foreign treaty rejected by the President of the United States.  The Constitution is very clear about this.  "No state shall enter into any treaty."

Russia's Last-Minute Hacking Was Meant to Burn President Hillary.  To the disappointment of Trump's biggest haters, the NSA leak provides no evidence that Russia changed any votes.  And that makes sense, as Russian altering of the tally in favor of their preferred candidate Donald Trump would be sufficient justification for war — one Russia would lose against the U.S.  The Kremlin sought instead to create the perception among Americans that the election may not be authentic in order to push their secondary election effort:  Undermine the mandate of Hillary Clinton to govern, should she win.

Should a liberal gun control activist have a Navy warship named after her?  Hillary Clinton plans to attend the launching ceremony of a warship.  And not just any warship, but the USS Gabrielle Giffords, named for the liberal congresswoman who was shot in the head.  For Hillary, every decision is still about wimmen and grrrls.  But her decision raises the larger question about whether it is appropriate to name a warship after Giffords.  After all, Giffords was viewed as a helpless victim.  That doesn't make for a very intimidating name for a warship.  Giffords is called a hero because she survived.  Does surviving make her a hero?  I think surviving makes her a survivor.  I think Giffords would have been a hero if she had been shot while doing something heroic.  But Giffords was just giving a liberal speech.

'Free' Government-Funded Health Care.  [W]hat should government-supplied healthcare target?  This is hardly hair-splitting if government must pay for curing "an illness."  What makes this question so timely is that "illness" has been expanding so that what was once a non-medical, purely personal infirmity is now a "sickness" that deserves medical attention.  Indeed, countless "sins" now warrant government-paid doctor treatments.  Examples of this expansive "medicalization" include obesity, sexual dysfunction, multiple addictions — gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual behavior such as exhibitionism and child molestation — and crimes such as shoplifting (kleptomania). Millions of youngsters once chastised for being fidgety are now diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and medicated with Ritalin or Adderall.  How about people who experience episodic but not debilitating depression?  Surely occasional "being blue" is common but does everyone now have an unalienable right to Prozac?  Even violent criminal behavior can be a genetic disorder and thus possibly reversed by brain surgery, not incarceration.  Innumerable mental conditions may be troublesome, but are they "illnesses" demanding treatment?

Thinking the Unthinkable Regarding Germany.  Without deploying a single division of panzers, today's Germany has succeeded in what no previous German regime has done: unifying Europe into a single economic and political entity; one, moreover, dominated by Germany.  In so doing she has extended her economic and social policies across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas.  With every incremental encroachment on their national sovereignty, other European nations have been compelled under threat of sanction to open their borders, to accept unprecedented and destabilizing refugee flows from the Middle East and to acquiesce to economic rules and restrictions dictated by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, under the increasing control of Berlin.  Today the United Kingdom is threatened with economic reprisals for daring to leave the European Union.  What will happen, once the EU has its own army, to European nations who wish to leave in the future?

Self-Government Not Climate at Issue in Paris Agreement.  For our purposes here, it is less interesting to debate whether or not climate change is natural or man-made, or whether the worst-case scenarios offered about its supposed effects are realistic.  Those are questions of judgment and they are not the issue at hand.  Instead, we want to focus on the legitimacy of these kinds of international agreements and how they are made under the United States Constitution.  In other words, who gets to make the judgments discussed above?  And who decides what the United States should do in response to potential climate change?

Ted Kennedy Created USSR Back Channel To Help Negotiate Against President Reagan.  While the MSM obsesses about Russia trying to set up a back channel through Jared Kushner in order for National Security Adviser-designate General Flynn to talk to Russian Generals about Syria.  This is not the first time a president-elect has opened a back channel. [...] President elect JFK sent his brother Robert Kennedy to establish a back channel with the Kremlin via a Russian spy operating out of the United States.  Even before he was elected Richard Nixon sent Robert Ellsworth, a longtime aide and personal friend, to relay Nixon's thoughts on non-profileration and geopolitical issues to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and Soviet Charge d'Affaires Yuri Cherniakov.

Something Is Deeply Wrong in the U.S. Intelligence Community.  Many high-profile Trump critics, irresponsibly in our view, have been giddily cheering the onslaught of leaks designed to damage the Trump administration.  Reasonable people can debate the merits of leaking in certain circumstances.  But the recent unauthorized release by U.S. intelligence services of sensitive information relating to the Manchester bombings has no imaginable justification.  As Leonid Bershidsky writes in Bloomberg, it can only be understood as the product of a dangerously arrogant and unaccountable intelligence community.

The Democrats' Second Secession & America's New Civil War.  The idea that creates the identity "American" is summarized in America's official motto:  e pluribus unum — out of many, one.  It took a Civil War and two hundred years of sacrifice and struggle to achieve a polity that approached this ideal.  If one political faction is now able to redefine the ideal to conform to its own sectarian beliefs, the country we have known will cease to exist.  But that is just what the current creed of the Democratic Party — "identity politics" — entails, and is why the current divisions in our political life seem so intractable.  Identity politics is, in fact, the antithesis of the American idea.  It is a reversion to tribal loyalties.  It regards diverse origins — colors, ethnicities, genders and classes — as primary, and proposes a hierarchy of privilege based on them, which it justifies as a reversal of past oppressions.

Strong Enough.  Trump voters are far greater in diversity of class, background, and concerns than the left believes.  Most Trump voters decided their vote for a host of reasons, but high among them was given to his being strong enough.  The one thing the Democratic/media collusion is misjudging is this: they aren't changing the minds of Trump voters.  Polls show this conclusively.  MSNBC just did a piece in North Carolina and were shocked to learn Trump voters haven't been swayed.  For all the breathless daily Trump gotchas, the ones where they think they have Trump in full retreat, they aren't changing the electorates' mind.  Trump voters are staying the course.

The Real Constitutional Crisis is the Appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  Rod Rosenstein's appointment of Robert Mueller to investigate wholly unsupported claims of "links and/or coordination between the Russian government and ... the campaign of President Donald Trump" poses the most serious threat to American constitutional government and domestic peace since the Civil War.  The only reason anyone is still talking about this subject, let alone investigating it pursuant to an order originating at the highest levels of the United States Justice Department, is that the media propaganda arm of the Democratic Party has refused to stop headlining it, despite a total lack of evidence of criminality after continuous investigation for over half a year by multiple agencies of the United States government.

Oops: Looks like Robert Mueller has a major conflict-of-interest issue as special counsel.  Jenna Greene, writing at Litigation Daily (subscription required), describes a significant hurdle faced by former FBI director Robert Mueller in serving as special counsel in the nonsensical "Russian collusion" investigation.

Not On Our Soil.  Video of the incident is jaw-dropping.  About a dozen people protested Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — arriving at the ambassador's residence after a White House visit — from across the street, separated by police from Erdogan's forces.  Then guards suddenly rushed en masse past the D.C. cops to beat up the demonstrators.  The neutral language of press accounts can obscure the truth of what happened.  The two sides didn't really "clash" or "engage in a violent confrontation," as is often reported.  There was an overwhelming aggressor — the thuggish security personnel of the head of state of, amazingly enough, a NATO country.  The guards repeatedly kick in the face a man who had been thrown to the ground.  They put a woman in a headlock.  Dressed in black suits, they behave like drunken British soccer hooligans or anti-fascist agitators.  Clearly, assaulting innocent people is a core competency.

Here's How Congress Can Fix the Way We Investigate Presidents.  The controversies over President Trump's firing of FBI director Jim Comey, and over the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation, are yet another reminder that our existing process for investigating political figures is broken.  To fix that process going forward, Congress should create a new cabinet-level inspector general charged with handling investigations and prosecutions of political cases, including those involving the president and other high executive-branch officials.  In general, the executive branch needs new cabinet departments like it needs a hole in the head, but this one would actually do some good without significantly expanding the federal government.  And unlike prior innovations in this area, it could be designed to work comfortably within the framework that the Constitution provides for the enforcement of the law.

10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories That Became Conspiracy Facts.  The internet has obviously had a profound effect on conspiracy theories, simultaneously helping and hurting the cause.  While a world of information is at people's fingertips, so too are alternate worlds of manufactured propaganda.  While the Internet may appear to be a democratized, unfiltered path toward facts and truth, it is easily manipulated.  Powerful corporations pay a lot of money to have their dirty laundry buried in the search results underneath contrived puff pieces.  With nearly the entire mainstream media apparatus at their disposal, the government is a maestro at this practice. [...] Unfortunately, there are those who seek to lie and invent fictions for monetary gain and fame.  Disinformation, propaganda, and dishonesty exist at all levels of society.  However, sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true.

Guess who is warning the Democrats' base to back off on Russia?  OK, gang, time to move along — other stuff is more important.  That's the logical strategy for the Democratic Party leadership to signal the base that the Russia conspiracy narrative has served its purpose and belongs in the Memory Hole.  You don't want to go farther out on the limb of an unfounded charge dreamed up to explain away the failure of Hillary and her campaign henchpeople to pull off the expected victory.

Huge Arms Sale to Saudis Makes Trump-Russia Collusion Ridiculous.  Why?  It should be obvious but I'll state it anyway.  Not very long ago Ronald Reagan built up U.S. armaments not to go to war with the Soviet Union, but to bankrupt it out of existence.  It worked.  The same thing is going on here, as anyone with the proverbial pulse should notice.  Selling three hundred and fifty billion in advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia is not just aimed at the obvious target — Iran.  It is also aimed at Iran's big brother Russia.  And there is no way that relatively impoverished oligarchy can possibly keep up, not in the long run anyway.  They don't have the rubles.

The malicious and dishonest media really are, as Trump says, 'enemies of the people'.  The whole point of the Trump campaign was the need for radical but centrist reform.  He was midway between the Sanders left and the Cruz right.  But he mobilized the angry and politically incorrect traditionalists, and much of the working and middle class, and attacked the deferences to both Wall Street and organized labour (especially the teachers' unions), as well as the appeasement of the societally self-hating and faddish academics and Hollywood.  At his heavily attended rallies, he singled out the national political media for its almost relentless disparagement of him and his followers, and for the soft ride it had given to the Obama regime, which — despite the great breakthrough of having a non-white president — was unsuccessful in almost every field.

Why Robert Mueller should resign as special counsel.  Robert Mueller has a serious conflict of interest that should disqualify him from serving as special counsel.  He has had a long and close relationship with someone who will surely become a pivotal witness — James Comey.  No one doubts Mueller's sterling credentials.  That is not the issue.  He is imminently qualified.  The problem arises in his duty to fairly and objectively evaluate the evidence he gathers.  How can Americans have confidence in the results if they know the special counsel may harbor a conspicuous bias?  They cannot.

If the President Is Not the Subject of a Criminal Investigation, Then Say So.  Well is he, or isn't he?  Almost everything in a counterintelligence investigation is classified.  And much of what goes on in a criminal investigation is secret, kept confidential by investigators and prosecutors.  But there is one thing that need be neither classified nor otherwise concealed from the American people:  the status of the president.  Is the president of the United States the subject of a criminal investigation?  If he is not, then the Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller owe it to the country to say so.  There is no reason to be coy about it.  In fact, because a president under criminal suspicion would be crippled, his inability to govern detrimental to the nation, it is imperative to be forthright about his status.

By What Right Do We Bear Arms?  The constitution is a covenant by which men have agreed to live together.  We derive our authority to bear arms from God, in whose image we are made, and who Himself made war when necessary, and thus we are to protect that image.  This is His immutable law.  If the covenant within which we live does not reflect God's laws, it is an abomination and dishonors God.  It is null and void.  Second, to the extent that it does, when we fail to live within the framework of that covenant it is null and void.  Therefore, if the government breaks covenant with the people, the government has declared itself null and void before God.

There's something wrong with President Macron.  The problem is this.  So you have an IOU, as it were signed jointly by the 27 members of the EU.  Where would you present it for payment?  Athens, Riga, Bucharest? or Berlin?  Not a difficult question.  The good Germans would pay you and it would then get added to the list of intra Eurozone liabilities, which is called Target 2 and is already out of control.  Italy already owes €400 billion under the Target 2 system, accounting for almost half Germany's creditor position.  If Italy defaulted, Germany would be liable for 33 percent of this figure, assuming it could get others to cough up.  That is €133 billion, before we have eurobonds.  Eurobonds mean borrowings by the unsuccessful countries of Europe guaranteed by Germany.

Protesters spell out 'RESIST' at Trump golf course.  A Facebook Group for the organization describes them as "a group of concerned citizens that realize the Trump administration's agenda will take America backwards, and must be stopped."

The Editor says...
Why yes, I would be delighted if President Trump could "take America backwards," to the years before a multi-trillion-dollar national debt; the era of currency based on the value of gold and silver rather than paper and politicians' promises, and coins were made of genuine silver; the era when construction projects had higher priority than endangered snails and bugs; the good old days when the DDT truck came down every residential street in the summertime and got rid of all the mosquitos; the years when lawyers and prescription drugs could not be advertised on television, and everything on TV was rated G and was broadcast in English; the pre-calculator days when clerks knew how to make change for a twenty; the days when nothing good would happen to you if you sneaked into this country; the days when homosexuals were not allowed in the military; the days when your privately-owned business could not be compelled by the state to participate in a homosexual wedding; the years when tattoos, marijuana, illiteracy, fatherlessness, homosexuality, atheism, food stamps, prostitution and abortion each carried an embarrassing stigma.  Yes, if the country is going off a cliff, let's take it backwards.

It's Time To Tone It Down On Health Care.  Fact #1:  Nothing has happened, nothing at all.  Despite the shock and awe, regardless of proclamations of "insurance for everybody" on the one hand or doomsday on the other, the AHCA has not impacted the health care of a single American in any way, shape, or form.  If you had insurance yesterday, you will still have it tomorrow, and the premiums won't change next month.  If you have a doctor now, that provider will still care for you next weekend.

People Who Don't Believe In The Constitution Think We're Facing A Constitutional Crisis.  If you are a Constitutionalist, and you believe in the original intent of the words written in the Constitution, the Left for the past few decades has been trying to tell you that the document is outdated and that it has to be interpreted as a living document to still be relevant.  It is an annoying argument because it makes something so simple as the meaning of words into an abstract interpretive dance where anything is possible.  So then it only makes sense that these very same people who, let's face it, have no regard for the Constitution or what it's stood for since the founding of our country would now say Donald Trump violates it at every turn.

Follow the Lies.  [Carl] Bernstein is saying that if you want to find the truth, first you've got to figure out who is lying to you.  This goes much deeper than simply calling out false claims in print, a practice I applaud even when it's done poorly, because it's always revealing.  Either a lie gets exposed or the biased reporter does.  You find the roadmap when you go a step further, and realize that one side of a dispute may be lying continually, as a strategy.  It might be a public safety union trying to snow the public about a failing pension.  It might be a prosecutor ruining an official's future with charges motivated by politics.  They're relying on the same thing — superficial news coverage.

Does Anyone In Washington Even Care That We Are 20 Trillion Dollars In Debt?  There has been a tremendous amount of talk about the spending deal that was just reached in Congress. [...] But what nobody is really talking about is that this deal actually increases spending at a time when our debt has been absolutely exploding.  We added more than a trillion dollars a year to the U.S. national debt during Obama's eight years in the White House, and our debt binge actually accelerated toward the end of his second term.  In fact, the national debt increased by more than 1.4 trillion dollars during fiscal 2016.

Trump's Executive Order on Religious Liberty Is Worse Than Useless.  Fresh on the heels of a budget deal that fully funds Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump has signed a religious-liberty executive order that — if reports are correct — is constitutionally dubious, dangerously misleading, and ultimately harmful to the very cause that it purports to protect.

The Myth of the Military-Industrial Complex.  The idea of a military-industrial complex originated with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned in his farewell address of the increasing coziness between the state and vendors of war: [...] Though I like Ike, his warning was way off the mark:  the Democratic-entitlement complex is the real Leviathan threatening the integrity and spirit of America.  In fact, while defense spending as a factor of GDP has steadily declined, welfare and entitlement spending has ballooned to nearly four times what it was when Ike began his second term.  Social Security and Medicare alone consumed nearly three times more money than defense last year.

The "UniParty" Congress Deserves No Quarter.  This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption.  I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening.  It may be that our task is impossible.  Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done?  And if we do not try, right now, it most certainly won't be done.  The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

With This Budget Deal, The Swamp Wins.  Shortly after announcing a $1.1 trillion — with a "t" — spending deal to fund the federal government's domestic and military programs for the next five months, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a "very good deal for the American people."  House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said it "reflects Democrats' values to protect health care, environment and education."  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that "we now have an agreement that both sides should support," praising the negotiations as "bipartisan and bicameral every step of the way."  The New York Times gushed that the bill "could serve as a template for putting together the next round of spending bills."  When you hear talk like that, grab on to your wallet, because it means big-spending business-as-usual reigns in Washington, which is precisely what voters sent Republicans and Donald Trump to Washington to end.

Is Marine Le Pen a 'Far-Right' Candidate?  [Scroll down]  In other words, those looking to cherry-pick easy comparisons to American politics have their work cut out for them.  Except in one regard.  For decades, critics of America's mass immigration have argued that the social upheaval such policies produce is dangerous and destabilizing.  But the topic became radioactive for reasonable politicians, creating an opening for unreasonable ones among the working-class constituencies most affected by immigration.  This is precisely what has happened in France.  Interviews with Le Pen voters tell this story over and over again.  They bemoan the great "replacement" of not only workers but also customs, traditions, and lifestyles brought by waves of immigrants.

Why We Have a Second Amendment:  Venezuela Plans to Give Firearms to Loyalists So They Can Purge Growing Resistance.  After enduring shortages of food and medicine for years, as well as a total collapse of their currency, the people of Venezuela have had enough.  Last week it was estimated that 2.5 million people marched against the Maduro regime, which had previously tried to strip away the powers of the opposition-led parliament.  It's estimated that as many as 6 million people may have taken to the streets to protest throughout the country.  In the lead-up to the protest, which had been planned for weeks by opposition political parties, President Maduro issued an alarming proclamation that didn't receive nearly enough press.  He promised to expand the nation's armed militia, and hand out firearms to as many as 400,000 loyalists.

The Rise Of Anti-Whiteness.  In his renowned dialogue, Sophist, Plato refers to a common trend in which philosophers intentionally distort the truth so that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle. [...] Liberals are promoting a similar kind of trend today.  Many liberals have even begun to claim that reality is subjective, going so far as to label species, gender and biologically masculine and feminine qualities as social constructs.  Unfortunately for these deluded escapists, reality is not subjective.  No matter what you believe, the mere fact that you believe it does not make it true.  On the contrary, the lens through which you are viewing the world is malformed.

Who Is Obama?  Ex-President Barack Obama is the mystery man of American politics.  Given the absence of a viable paper trail, nobody can say for sure who he is.  He manifests for us as a figure of multiple identities: a Christian, a Muslim, a secularist, a socialist, a humanist, an intellectual, a man of the people.  His lack of definable substance, his inner absence, has been an important political advantage.

Bulk Cash Pays for the Wall.  In the hyper-charged debate over the merits of building "the wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border and its funding impact on a possible government shutdown, I would like to propose a solution.  The focus has largely been on contraband and illegal immigrants going north.  We largely ignore the other side of the equation; i.e. illicit proceeds — mostly in the form of bulk cash — flowing south.  If we could recover just a few percentage points of the tens of billions of profits from the sale of drugs and other transnational crimes (TOC) that annually flow south across the border, we could pay for the wall.  Moreover, targeting the illicit proceeds should be palatable to both Mexico City and Washington DC, and may serve as a basis for enhanced U.S.-Mexican cooperation on illicit trafficking and related TOC.

How Progressives Cherry-Pick Science They Like.  It's hard to think of a better way to undermine the public's faith in science than to stage demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and around the country modeled on the Women's March in January.  The Women's March was an anti-Trump festival.  Fine.  I found it vulgar and demeaning to women, but it's a free country.  Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth.

Hold the celebrity enablers of Venezuela's hellhole accountable.  What holds Venezuela together these days?  According to the New York Times, this state is held together only by an encircling ring of death-squad gangs, who serve as its enforcers.  These are the community organizers known as 'colectivos' who ride and circle around menacingly on motorcycles, and shoot randomly into crowds to generate terror.  I saw them myself in Caracas in late 2005, and they were scary.  Now, they are engorged with drug cash and legitimized by the state.  Who could have imagined that this tontons macoute situation would be the logical conclusion of Chavista socialism?

A physicist's take on the March for Science.  Like wizards uttering a magical incantation, lobbyists routinely invoke the existence of a "scientific consensus" to lend an aura of infallibility to their political stands. [...] There is enormous room for improving science education in our nation's public schools, colleges, grad schools, media, and — yes — political institutions.  But the March for Science — lobbyists claiming that supporting the scientific method is equivalent to supporting their political agendas — is a very big, very public step in the wrong direction.

Before Demanding Donald Trump's, Let's Look Into Susan Rice's Tax Returns.  Show us the tax returns.  No.  Not Donald Trump's tax returns.  Geraldo Maddow already made a fool of herself with those on MSNBC.  Show us Susan Rice's tax returns. [...] Susan Rice is different.  From 2013 to 2017 her official salary was paid for by taxpayers.  That of course represents a very small portion of her net worth.  When she signed on as Obama's National Security Advisor her net worth was around $20 million.  When she left office somehow her net worth had doubled to nearly $50 million — a succession of pay raises that increased her government salary from $172,000 per year in 2014 to $176,000 certainly doesn't account for the extra $30 million she made as National Security Advisor.

Is America Really Ready for a Second Korean War?  North Korea is a place of tyrannical horror, ruled by a backward regime that oppresses its own people on a scale seen nowhere else in the world.  That regime sustains itself in part by maintaining a permanent war footing, putting its immense but antiquated forces on hair-trigger alert and promising ultimate devastation in the event of conflict.  While we can bomb, say, an al-Qaeda gathering in Yemen without risking immediate catastrophe, any assault on North Korea would represent a gigantic roll of the dice, with the fate of entire cities hanging in the balance.

Same Leftists Who Spent a Century Eroding the Constitution Suddenly Worried About Preserving the Constitution.  Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin wants you to be aware that the Left is starting to notice the headway conservatives are making toward an Article V Convention of States to amend the Constitution.  And liberals are fighting back with lies to block any chance of it.  Earlier this week, Levin addressed a Huffington Post article by Fred Wertheimer, titled "The Battle to Preserve the Constitution," that demagogues an Article V Convention of States as a "constitutional convention" where the Bill of Rights could be repealed ... or some other such nonsense.  The reality is the Left fears any changes to the Constitution that would rein in the massive federal government, and obstruct its agenda.  "We know the Left wants to leave things as they are because the Left wins," Levin said.  "The federal government represents their ideology."  But, as Levin discusses, there are some on the Right who are spreading misinformation about an Article V convention as well.

After Trump's Syrian Attack, China Suddenly Gets Very Concerned About North Korea's Nukes.  Keen observers have noted that the missile attacks on the Syrian air base were launched as President Trump sat down last week to dinner with China's President Xi Jinping.  No doubt Xi immediately recognized that this president, unlike the previous one, acts quickly to make sure bad situations don't get worse.  What does this have to do with North Korea?  Plenty.  Despite their at times rocky relationship, China is the totalitarian communist North Korean regime's main patron and protector, accounting for over half the North Korean nation's trade and much of its food and energy supplies.  Strive as it does for self-sufficiency, without aid from China, North Korea would soon starve.

The Legacy of George Soros Part 11.  Here in the United States, Soros is planning what can only be called sedition.  His plans, if they come to fruition will end in the violent overthrow of our way of government.  Harkening back to his days within the Nazi regime, Soros is financing his present day "brownshirts" — the black clad anitfa crowd.  Nothing more than ignorant thugs, the were created for only one purpose, they are the street animals who will create the violence, the looting, the burning to shut down any other voice.  They realize that law enforcement, academics in charge and others in position of authority will continue to be cowed and allow them to just destroy anything and anyone who gets in their way.  Obama was complicit in this, but it is Soros who is funding the various factions to work together.

The Legacy of George Soros Part 1.  [Scroll down]  Placed in charge of the entire Soros Foundation Network and the Open Society Network was Aryeh Neier.  Neier was one of the creators of the Students for a Democratic Society,(SDS) a large socialist radical group of the 1960's.  The main goal of the SDS was the overthrow of America, its democratic institutions, and the decimation of the culture that the United States was based on.  After leaving the SDS, Neier worked with the American Civil Liberties Union serving some time as the national executive director.  After his time at the ACLU, Neier founded Human Rights Watch in 1978. He spent a great deal of time at both the ACLU and the HRW promoting the idea that the Un9ited States is an oppressive nation, and one of the worst violators of human rights in the world.  The Open Society Institute has given over $100 million to the HRW alone, and over $8 million to the ACLU.  There are other monies that the Open Society Institute has given to those that follow the Soros idea of "open society" including such organizations as The American Prospect, Media Matters, Columbia School of Journalism, National Public Radio, Pacifica Foundation, Pro Publica.  And the Washington Post.  In all Soros has spent more than $48 million funding journalism schools, media outlets, and industry organization such as unions.

The Legacy of George Soros Part 8.  [Scroll down]  In 2004, Soros turned his attention to the United States.  He then made a profit of over $1 billion on the housing trade collapse through a series of bets on the market.  Funneling money through organizations such as the Tides Foundation, Center for American Progress, and The Democracy Alliance to bypass election laws in one way the Soros can fund a myriad of organizations that will give him political power.  Democrats go along with his agenda to continue to receive the assets that Soros provides.  Among the higher politicians that have received funding from Soros are Joe Biden, Barack Obama and the Clintons.

See also:
Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7

The Democrats' Weakest Trump Talking Point.  America's role as the world's only superpower does obligate it to act when the international order is threatened by atrocities.  The leader of the free world can and must send a message to rogue regimes that they can't use weapons of mass destruction with impunity.  But this doesn't mean that everyone affected by those governments automatically gets a ticket to enter the United States.

We should be cheering the likely end of the Senate filibuster, not mourning it.  The Senate filibuster is the modern descendant of the Senate's one-time tradition of unlimited debate.  Unlike in the far larger House of Representatives, where every speech is of limited duration, a senator who has the floor can keep it until overcome by exhaustion or an irresistible call of nature.

Winning the Civil War of Two Americas.  When John Edwards touted the "Two Americas" during his presidential campaigns before his political career ended in disgrace, it was still a metaphor.  It stopped being a metaphor at the end of last year.  If you doubt that, you can watch Tom Perez, the head of the Democratic National Committee, yelling that President Trump didn't win the election.  There is a huge difference between opposing the winner of an election and denying that he won it.  It's the difference between opposition and rebellion.  Democrats have not recognized a single Republican presidential victory this century.  There is no real reason to think that they will recognize a third one.  We can safely assume that the third or fourth Republican to win the White House, no matter who he is, will face the same treatment.  A two-party system can't function if one party denies the legitimacy of elections won by the other side.

The Nasty Truth About the CIA.  Why have a war in Central America?  Why invent Daniel Ortega, a liberal politician from Nicaragua as a dangerous dictator?  Could it be because arming "contras" used planes that accidentally came back loaded with cocaine?  When the CIA took over oil operation services in the Gulf of Mexico around that time, the boats that came into New Orleans and other ports, were "tasked" with carrying "medical supplies" to Honduras to support the covert was on Nicaragua.  They came back loaded with, wait for it... cocaine as well.  Every discussion was "cocaine" and how to use CIA technology to avoid police, jam radars, find missing bales of drugs or how to keep America's allies in Colombia from killing each other off and ruining business.  Miami became the center of the drug universe, where the warriors fighting communism sat in hotel lobby's with umbrella drinks, heading to the toilet every few minutes to stoke themselves up on cocaine.  Money moved in trash bags, too tiresome to count, some say they only weighed it.  That money bought Washington and was a key aspect of White House policy, and the cover operation to sell weapons to Iran through Israel and Saudi Arabia, then use this as a front to launder billions in cocaine cash in what became known as "Iran Contra."  There was no "Contra," only cocaine and the cash it brought and the American cities inundated with crack cocaine and a descent into addiction and crime that continues today.

The Sovietization of American Politics.  Strong arm rule, political surveillance and the show trial threatens to replace the orderly alternation at power which characterized elective government.  Watching the Beltway is now disturbingly like watching an unfolding power struggle at the Kremlin.  Richard Arenberg writing in the Hill asks:  "is there any hope of pulling out of the "nuclear option" death spiral before the Senate inflicts permanent damage upon itself and the Supreme Court?"  There's growing concern the acrimony will permanently poison the atmosphere by locking both parties into a cycle of retaliation.

The Watergate-sized scandals rocking the Trump and Obama administrations.  Did Donald Trump collude with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton?  Did Barack Obama politicize law enforcement and intelligence-gathering to spy on Trump and destroy his presidency?  Those are extraordinary questions, all the more so because the race to answer them is happening on parallel tracks.  The usual partisanship has become a winner-take-all war to paint the other side's president as guilty of un-American conduct.

Why We Must Abolish the U.S. Department of Education.  In this video, The New American's correspondent Alex Newman, an educator and the co-author of a book on education, explains why it is essential that the unconstitutional and highly damaging U.S. Department of Education be shut down.  [Video clip]

It's the Democrats who Collude with the Russians.  Vladimir Putin is shrewd, calculating, and fairly predictable.  If he were serious about influencing the outcome of the November 2016 U.S. presidential election, he would not have favored the relatively unknown and impulsive Donald Trump, who had no history of doing favors for Putin or Russia.  It is far more likely Putin would have chosen to help Hillary Clinton — the known, predictable, progressive candidate with a history of helping Russian interests.  By doubling down on drama rather than facts, leaders of the Democratic Party show disdain for nearly half the country who voted for Trump and a seditious inclination to destroy his presidency.

The Russian Farce.  In March 2012, in a meeting with President Dimitri Medvedev of Russia, President Barack Obama thought his microphone was either off or could not pick up the eerie assurances that he gave the Russian president:  "On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it's important for him [Vladimir Putin] to give me space."  Medvedev answered:  "Yeah, I understand.  I understand your message about space.  Space for you ..."  Obama agreed and elaborated, "This is my last election.  After my election, I have more flexibility."  Medvedev finished the hot-mic conversation with, "I understand.  I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you." [...] Barack Obama naturally wanted to continue a fourth year of his reset and outreach to Vladimir Putin, the same way that he was reaching out to other former American enemies such as the Iranians and the Cubans.  Yet Obama was uneasy that his opponent, Mitt Romney, might attack him during his reelection campaign as an appeaser of Putin.

Breast Cancer Trends:  Why Do Women in These 5 States Opt for Unneeded Mastectomies?  Doctors agree that too many U.S. women who are diagnosed with breast cancer opt to have both breasts removed.  Now a new study shows where they live has a strong effect on that decision.  Young women in five states — Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, and South Dakota — were much more likely than other women to have preventive mastectomies. [...] Just as other researchers have found, they saw a big increase in the number and proportion of women opting to have the other breast removed, even though there was no sign of cancer in the second breast.

The Editor says...
If you had cancer in one lung, would you have both lungs removed, just to be on the safe side?  Articles like this tell me one thing:  Some people watch too much television.  Especially the syndicated shows that are based on hypochondria.

The Election Wasn't Stolen by Moscow.  The notion that Russian efforts succeeded in stealing the presidential election from Hillary Clinton has no basis in fact.  As both Comey and Admiral Michael Rogers of the National Security Agency affirmed, there is no doubt that the Russians undertook activities designed to undermine faith in American democracy.  It is equally true that the Putin regime preferred to see Trump rather than Clinton elected president of the United States.  But the notion that these dots must somehow connect in a plot between Trump and Putin to steal the election requires faith in the sort of discredited claims (such as the Steele dossier) and conspiracy theories that Democrats laughed at when they were put forward by the far Right against Obama.

Levin: House Intel Committee Asked Comey None of the Important Questions.  "Pointless."  "Useless."  Those are the words Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin used to describe Monday's House Intelligence Committee hearing on investigations into the Trump campaign and its alleged ties to the Russian government.  The Committee neglected to ask the important questions, explained Levin.  He went back, through the media reports that suggest members of the Trump campaign were surveilled by the government, and demanded to know why FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers were not asked about these reports and the source of these leaks.

George Soros's Organizations Foment Political Violence And Use US Taxpayer Dollars To Do It.  [Scroll down]  While the letter is only concerned with USAID funding Soros's money-making ventures, Soros is involved in many areas of conflict.  He has kept the conflict in Ukraine going and has tried to bring down Hungary's government.  His organizations have been banned in Russia... something that doesn't look like a bad idea.  Under the Clinton and Kerry reigns at State, Soros's Open Society became the de facto face of American foreign policy in many places.  It did not serve us well.

Is George Soros On The Ropes?  Although multi-billionaire hedge fund tycoon and international political pot-stirrer George Soros lost big with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the victory of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, he stands to lose further ground, politically and financially, as the winds of political change sweep across the globe.  Soros, who fancies himself as the master of placing short put options on stocks, often cleaning up to the tune of billions of dollars in the process when the stock values collapse, has been dealt a few financial body blows.

Precedent: Right After 1992 Election Bill Clinton Fired U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions.  As liberals react in horror over Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to ask for the resignation of 46 Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys, an inconvenient fact has also surfaced.  Jeff Sessions himself was fired by a newly elected president in 1993 when Bill Clinton won his first term in office.  The Department of Justice announced on Friday that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked for the resignation of 46 U.S. Attorneys who were appointed during President Barack Obama's regime.

Steve King States the Obvious, Unleashes Fury.  Kudos to [Rep. Steve] King for standing up for Western Civilization.  Even if few have the spine to say it, everyone who has spent more than a minute thinking about it understands that a society cannot be sustained by importing massive numbers of foreigners from an alien civilization rather than having babies of its own.  This is especially obvious when that alien civilization has been vehemently hostile for 1,400 years, and the foreigners are ostentatiously uninterested in assimilation.  Just because David Duke agrees with him does not mean he is wrong.  King is in for a storm, and deserves every patriot's support.

Anne Patterson? What Could Possibly Make Secretary Mattis Think That's a Good Idea?  When we first saw the news reports that Defense Secretary Mattis was considering former Obama appointee Anne Patterson for undersecretary of policy we thought it was simply fake news.  However, apparently it is not.  Anne Patterson is a severely toxic entity and was considered the epicenter of dangerous political policy because she gave legitimacy to the extremists within the Muslim Brotherhood.  Specifically due to her role in supporting the Brotherhood's former candidate turned President, Mohammed Morsi in Egypt, Anne Patterson should forever be dispatched into the waste-bin of failed mid-east policy.

What is Going On (Part II)?  Closing the gold window in 1971 and allowing politicians to run up the national debt from $400 billion (34% of GDP) to $20 trillion (106% of GDP), while making $200 trillion of unfunded entitlement promises, has been the result.  Total credit market debt has risen from $2 trillion in 1971 to over $65 trillion today.  Total global debt has surpassed $217 trillion, or 325% of global GDP.  The only way to make these disastrously horrible decisions seem palatable has been to produce inflation at prodigious levels in order to make the debt appear payable.  It's not. [...] Of course, the pliable public has been convinced government debt doesn't matter because we owe it ourselves, or some such nonsense.

Obama Wiretapping?  Trump Colluding?  We Are Headed Down a Rabbit Hole.  When he was Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, George Shultz was once asked about the CIA's disavowal of involvement in a mysterious recent bombing in Lebanon.  Replied Shultz:  "If the CIA denies something, it's denied."  Has there ever been a more dry, more wry, more ironic verdict on the world of espionage?  Within it, there is admission and denial, smoke and mirrors, impenetrable fog and deliberate obfuscation.  Truth?  Ask the next guy.  Which is why my default view of espionage is to never believe anyone because everyone is trained in deception.  This is not a value judgment; it's a job description.

Senator Ted Cruz Wants to Revoke Citizenship of Americans Who Turn to Terrorism — Why Aren't We Already Doing This?  Cruz is talking about the soon to be introduced Expatriate Terrorist Act (ETA) of 2017, which would allow the U.S. government under certain circumstances to revoke the citizenship of Americans who knowingly join or provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations.  Of course, the idea isn't new.  Not only has such a bill been floating around Washington for some time, for over a year President Donald Trump has been talking about better vetting to prevent terrorists from getting into the country in the first place.  But the Texas Senator says that working to prevent Muslim terrorists from getting into the U.S. is only part of the equation of combating terrorism in at home.  The other half of the problem is composed of home-grown terrorists — those the media often erroneously call "lone wolf terrorists — who turn to terror right here inside our own borders.

Conspire With Russia to Swing Presidential Election?  It's Been Done.  The Democrats' allegations against Jeff Sessions, one of the most upright men in Washington, are ludicrous.  I don't understand how anyone can think they amount to anything.  But if the Democrats want to talk about collusion with the Russians, by all means let's have that conversation.  Chris Adams takes us on a walk down memory lane.  In 1983, Ted Kennedy — the "liberal lion of the Senate" — tried to enlist the Soviet Union, our most bitter enemy, in the Democrats' effort to defeat President Ronald Reagan's re-election. [...] If someone is going to investigate the executive branch's relationship with Russia, he should start with Barack Obama's pledge to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would sell out the United States in his second term.

The truth (and nothing but the truth) about leaks.  The leaks of confidential communications from within the White House may be a pain in the neck for the president, but they are not criminal.  And generally, a boss can look at an employee's cellphone, as long as the employer of the boss and the employee owns the phone — except when the employer is the government.  The Fourth Amendment insulates government employees from governmental reach into its employees' cellphones.  Absent an employee's waiving his Fourth Amendment rights, the government may not seize work-related (governmental) or personal phones without a search warrant.  Can the media publish these leaks?  In a word, yes.  The media may publish anything that is of material interest to the public, notwithstanding its level of secrecy or how it was acquired.

Why Should it be a Firing Offense to Talk with the Russians?  On the surface, the complaints against [Attorney General] Sessions are the work of an embittered Democrat establishment still desperate to pin something impeachable onto Trump and to punish Russia for what it deludes itself into thinking was a Russian hacking role that secured Hillary Clinton's defeat.  Never mind that Clinton was a bad candidate and that Trump got the votes in the critical swing states. [...] That's the situation we have in Washington as Democrats seek ever new ways to target Trump by hitting Sessions.  They aren't interested in national security, and they never have been.  If they were, they'd have halted the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, who was found to have committed the Mother of All Security Violations in illegally securing a private server to handle her State Department email.  They didn't.

An Endangered Species:  The Democrats Remain Seated.  Give the Democrats some credit.  They were nimble enough to choose someone who's not going to be running for office again to give the Democratic response to Trump's tour de force.  A truly unenviable assignment.  (The equivalent military assignment would be guarding a dog house in the Aleutians in January.)  I only listened to the first half of what former Kentucky governor Steve Beshear had to say.  It sounded like he had found a copy of a campaign speech Hillary Clinton had delivered in August and was reading it off the teleprompter.  Adding incoherence to irrelevance, at one point Beshear said, "I'm a proud Democrat, but first and foremost, I'm a proud Republican and Democrat, and mostly American."  The only sensible reaction to this is, "Huh?"

In Congress speech, Trump stood to unify while Democrats sat to divide.  The optics could not have been starker — President Donald Trump stood before America with an overarching message of unity.  Meanwhile, Democrats sat firmly planted in their chamber chairs, still seething from their electoral pummeling.  As Trump delivered promises of soaring optimism, Democrats almost appeared disappointed — for their aims of regaining electoral control sunk as hopes for America's future lifted.

Just in time for Trump, George W. Bush lifts embargo on criticizing successors.  George W. Bush broke his policy of not attacking a sitting president.  Bush did not criticize or attack Obama but has joined the Opposition Party (Democrats and mainstream media, aka Fake News Media)'s war against Trump.  Bush acted like a punching bag during his second term.  Obama blamed Bush for every problem, but Bush remained silent. [...] It is disappointing to see that Bush finally ends his silence not to criticize Obama or Bill Clinton, but to criticize Trump because Trump criticized the same media that attacked Bush mercilessly.

The Democrats Became The Party of Hate Tonight.  President Trump gave a good, presidential speech tonight.  It wasn't Reagan.  But it [surely] wasn't The Donald of June 2015 either.  He hit the right message, the right tone, and most importantly, exposed the Democrats as the party of hate.  Democrats behaved like petulant children by sitting and grimacing against public opinion, while Trump gave the most inclusive and bipartisan speech he's ever made.

The intelligence community vs.  Trump.  We're watching a low level coup, America.  Right now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that intelligence agents are withholding information from Donald Trump because they fear it will be given to the bad guys.  The New York Times is reporting Donald Trump is about to send in a friend to clean house.  The intelligence community is concerned.  This is all going to end badly.  Just about all of us were wrong about where 2016 would lead and now we can all see the worst case on the horizon.  The left is in a nonstop state of agitation calling for mass resistance.  Trump supporters are looking to settle scores.  Democrats have every incentive to play up unproven allegations that the Russians tampered with the election.  Republicans have every reason to play up the theory that the intelligence community is out to get the President.

Logan Act Is Too Vague to Prosecute Flynn.  Or Anyone.  The resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn grew out of Department of Justice concerns that he had violated the Logan Act, a law from 1799(!) that bars private citizens from engaging in international diplomacy.  The law as written applied to Flynn even though he was working for the president-elect when he engaged in a phone call with Russian ambassador to the U.S.  But there's a more serious problem, which should be kept in mind in case there's an investigation of whether Donald Trump violated the law:  It is probably unconstitutional.  Enacted by the Congress that brought you the Alien and Sedition acts, the law is too vague for enforcement. [...]If a criminal law doesn't clearly specify what actions would be criminal, it's unconstitutional to apply it.

Danger Signs: 5 Thoughts On NSA General Flynn's Ouster.  [#4] Democrats, As Always, Aren't Interested In Truth.  Democrats are mostly interested in pillorying Trump.  If this same thing had happened under Barack Obama, Democrats would have defended him with alacrity.  They didn't seem to care that UN ambassador Susan Rice lied to the American people, or that someone lied to her; they didn't seem to care that President Obama was happy to parlay with the Russians leading up to an election, and reached out to the Iranians before he took office in 2008.  They're just interested in targeting Trump.

The Oroville Dam in California.  Constructed in 1968, the Oroville Dam in California was built with an emergency spillway; should water levels on the reservoir side rise faster than could be released in controlled fashion, the lower walls of the spillway were designed to allow overflow to be shunted harmlessly to the side of the main waterway.  Until this winter, we have never had to wonder whether or not this spillway was going to work as advertised, because until this winter, the Oroville Dam has not once encountered enough rainfall to test the design.

Why is it okay to silence Betsy DeVos but not Elizabeth Warren?  Either the Left has suffered severe cognitive dissonance or there's an underlying double standard when it comes to sexism.  Judging from the treatment of Republican women in Trump's America, it seems the latter is more likely.

Government May Protect Our Unalienable Rights — It Doesn't Grant Them.  One of the most common misconceptions about the U.S. Constitution is that it grants rights to individuals.  This myth is perpetuated by those who fail to understand the Constitution in context, and by activist judges who proceed from the premise that if the government (through the Constitution) grants rights, then the government can likewise take them away.  This is precisely what the Bill of Rights expressly forbids.  There is a difference between rights and privileges.  Rights, as the Founders recognized in the Declaration of Independence, are those "unalienable" aspects of our humanity that set people apart from all other beings.  These are rights that cannot be sold, bought, abridged, or otherwise infringed at the government's whim — including life and liberty.  The Declaration specifically acknowledges that rights are endowed by our Creator, not our government.

Which is better: a president who criticizes the police or one who criticizes Nordstrom?  President Trump is being criticized for making critical comments of Nordstrom, which just dropped his daughter's product lines.  Nordstrom claims that it is dropping her products due to economic reasons, but it is a big coincidence that Nordstrom, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Neiman Marcus, and other retailers are dropping Trump products just as President Trump took office. [...] One wonders:  if President Obama had sold an Obama-branded marijuana cigarette, would stores in California and Colorado be as quick to drop his product line when he became president?  Probably not.

The Editor says...
That's a bit of a non sequitur, because department stores don't sell cigarettes.  But I believe privately-owned department stores have the right to sell whatever clothing they can, since they have an obligation to the stock-holders to make a profit.  The addition of political turmoil doesn't help sales.  Moreover, in my opinion, the Trump clothing line and all other avoidable exploitation of the Trump brand for profit should have been suspended when Donald Trump won the presidential election, just to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

The Challenge To Trump's Executive Order Limiting Visas is Motivated by "The Money".  President Trump is waging a multidimensional battle against all entities who stand in opposition to American interests.  In addition to the content of Trump's policy, pay close attention to the timing of delivery and the sequencing within the policy delivery.  With the outline of the visa suspension as lead-in toward a security policy, President Trump is also now entering economic policy phase 2.  It is all connected.

Senator Wyden Must Resign.  The shocking revelation:  Senator Wyden has been, for more than a decade, a willing accomplice to a plot to undermine the American political order and to overthrow the Constitution by infiltrating agents of radicalism into the highest reaches of the federal judiciary.  The nefariousness of this undertaking cannot be overstated.  The monsters advanced to positions of power with Senator Wyden's assistance include dangerous extremists whose ideology "represents a breathtaking retreat from the notion that Americans have fundamental Constitutional rights."

How to Create a Fascist Dictatorship.  Creating a fascist dictatorship is far easier than it may seem.  You are watching the rise of fascism in America, although the story the fake news media is telling you isn't the truth.

'Alternative facts': A common legal term.  It has been rather shocking to observe the recent tidal wave of derision hoisted upon President Trump's senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway — shocking not because the derision is the deserved blowback for a foolish, embarrassing utterance, but because the derision has been so spectacularly off base.  The phrase "alternative facts" is used in law and is known to most lawyers.  I presume that this includes Ms. Conway, who received her degree from George Washington University Law School.  It therefore seems eminently possible that Ms. Conway knew exactly what she was saying.  Before we move on to some nonlegal examples of alternative facts, here is but one of many ways the concept can be employed in an actual case.

My Vote for Waterboarding.  Along with President Trump, I too would like to see waterboarding return as a tool for getting information from captured enemies.  My support for this comes from my personal experience of being waterboarded while I was in the Marine Corps. [...] In my humble opinion, waterboarding is not torture.  It is an effective technique, albeit an extremely terrifying and dehumanizing technique, that will make anyone sing the truth like a canary.  Torture, to me is something permanent, like cutting off fingers or dislocating and relocating body joints over and over inducing extreme pain, giving one a disability for life.

Trump's Exclusion of Aliens from Specific Countries Is Legal.  [Scroll down]  Federal immigration law also includes Section 1182(f), which states:  "Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate" (emphasis added). Section 1182(f) plainly and sweepingly authorizes the president to issue temporary bans on the entry of classes of aliens for national-security purposes.  This is precisely what President Trump has done.

Mexico threatens to take your ball and go home.  Mexico is America's third largest trading partner.  The United States last year bought $60 billion more from Mexico than it sold.  On top of that, Mexicans in America — both legal and illegal — sent home $25 billion in what are called remittances.  How much of this is welfare money (which includes food stamps and other handouts) is unknown.  Between trade and remittances, doing business with the United States represents one-quarter of the Mexican economy.  Mexico represents 1.4% of the U.S. economy.

It's No Revelation That Intelligence Agencies Are Politicized.  Furor has arisen over President-elect Donald Trump's charges that our intelligence agencies are politicized.  Spare us the outrage.  For decades, directors of intelligence agencies have often quite inappropriately massaged their assessments to fit administration agendas.  Careerists at these agencies naturally want to continue working from one administration to the next in "the king is dead; long live the king!" style.  So they make the necessary political adjustments, which are sometimes quite at odds with their own agency's findings and to the detriment of national security.  The result is often confusion — and misinformation passed off as authoritative intelligence.

Mayor de Blasio budgets $1B to fix NYCHA roofs, but critics say it's not enough.  Mayor de Blasio will unveil a budget Tuesday [1/24/2017] that includes a promise to spend $1 billion over the next 10 years to fix leaky roofs in public housing across the city.  The preliminary budget also includes more money spent on new school classrooms and millions more to repave miles of beat-up city streets.  De Blasio will reveal his $84 billion budget plan along with a 10-year strategy for longer-term city building projects going forward, paid for by floating bonds.

The Editor says...
In other words, the city will borrow money from 15- or 20-year municipal bonds, to fix potholes and leaky roofs that may need repairs again next year.  This makes no sense.  Would you take out a 20-year loan to fix the leaky roof of your own house?

National unity is no longer possible.
America's Second Civil War.  Liberalism — which was anti-Left, pro-American, and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement, and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism — is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don't call themselves conservative.  The Left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism.  Like the Left in every other country, the Left in America sees America as essentially a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, war-mongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.  Just as in Western Europe, the Left in America seeks to erase America's Judeo-Christian foundations.

Inaugural shows 'The Resistance' is an attack on democracy.  At a time when the nation set out to celebrate the peaceful transfer of authority, activists on the left descended on the nation's capital to show just how fragile that can be.  They rioted from the night before the inauguration until well after Donald Trump's oath of office, all before Trump had a chance to implement even one of his policies.  Any exercise of American freedom must include the right to demonstrate.  Freedom of speech, and the freedom to petition for redress of grievances, come first in our Bill of Rights for a very good reason.  A self-governed nation must have ways to hold elected officials accountable, and the existence of peaceful, law-abiding demonstrations can assure us of the health of our liberty.

President-Elect Trump Should Never Release His Tax Returns.  Last week Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill that would require President-elect Trump and future presidential nominees to release their last 3 years of federal tax returns.  This bill is a partisan ploy — the only co-sponsors are Democrats — and it is clearly meant to shame President-elect Trump, who did not release his.  And there are demands for Trump Cabinet nominees to disclose their tax returns, which will inevitably be leaked.  But it is worth pointing out that the idea that releasing tax returns somehow promotes rational discourse in election campaigns or confirmation hearings is nonsense.  To begin with, the oft-repeated claim that presidential candidates have released their tax returns since Watergate is absolutely untrue.

Abolish The CIA.  Every American who looks at the CIA objectively or in a balanced way and judges it by any number of criteria, such as moral, legal and pragmatic, should reach the conclusion that the CIA should be abolished.  JFK wanted to break it into a million pieces.  Trump is right to dismiss its intelligence reports about DNC hacking.  The CIA war on Trump shows us immediately that the CIA is a rogue organization within the U.S. government and a severe threat to America.  The CIA is an internal threat to the rule of law and to the government that it supposedly serves.

Common Sense — 2017.  Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in Britain. [...] The same common sense Paine used to argue against a tyrannical, oppressive hereditary monarchy applies today when judging our corrupt, authoritarian, co-opted government.  His themes of society as a blessing, government as evil, and revolution as inevitable are as applicable today as they were 241 years ago.  As we approach Trump's inauguration it has become clear the ruling elite feel threatened and are using their control of the media, intelligence services, military, and financial system to try and undermine his presidency before it begins.  As their fake news propaganda falls on the deaf ears of disgusted Americans, their next ploy will be violence, war or assassination.  The vested interests have no intention of relinquishing their power and wealth, just as King George and his Parliament had no intention of allowing the colonies to form an independent republic.  If you thought voting Trump into the office of the president constituted a victory, you are badly misreading historical precedent and the inevitable paths of Fourth Turnings.  The fight is just beginning.

Taxicab Confessions.  The attention given to the opinions of people from the world of entertainment — essentially actors and pop stars — irritates me.  Actors strike me as unlikely gurus because those who spend their lives imitating others are unlikely to have firm principles or even personalities of their own.  In practice, moreover, the opinions of actors and pop stars are drearily uniform:  When it comes to bad things that might cause suffering, they are always against them.  I cannot imagine why anyone should take any notice of what such people say — except, of course, that being kept constantly entertained is the main purpose of many people's lives, and they naturally assume that those who entertain them are therefore of immense importance and authority.

Bogus Vietnam Charges against Nixon.  [Scroll down]  Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger saw that South Vietnam could defeat the Viet Cong if it were powerfully enough assisted by American air power against the North Vietnamese.  In April 1972, between Nixon's historic visits to China and to the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese made their supreme play and launched an all-out invasion of South Vietnam.  There were only 28,000 U.S. ground forces in-country, and they were used entirely to defend air bases.  But Nixon finally put an end to Johnson's insane bombing halt of March 1968 and launched 1,000 air strikes a day on North Vietnam, moving up to 1,200 a day during his visit to the Soviet Union, so there could be no doubt about his seriousness.  The North Vietnamese failed, decisively defeated by the South Vietnamese, assisted by heavy American air support — which it was always Nixon's intention to reapply when the North Vietnamese violated the Vietnam peace agreement of 1973, which the Soviets and Chinese twisted their arms to sign, so cunningly had Nixon and Kissinger triangulated that relationship.  This was why Nixon submitted the peace agreement as a treaty to the Senate: to secure Senate approval of its enforceability.

Jared Kushner, Beware of Jamie Gorelick.  Some recent highlights.  In 2014, it was revealed that the George Soros-funded Urban Institute had an officially sanctioned role in the vetting of non-profits that seek tax-exempt status through the IRS.  [Jamie] Gorelick was the vice-chairman of the Urban Institute board.  In 2011, she represented Duke University in its attempt to squash a suit by lacrosse team members whose lives had been turned upside down by false rape accusations that the university aided and abetted.  In 2010, Gorelick represented BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil mess.  It gets worse, much worse.  In 1993, as deputy attorney general under President Clinton, Gorelick served as "field commander" for the horrific government assault on a religious community in Waco, Texas, that left more than eighty dead, twenty of them children.  In 1995, she went on to pen the infamous "wall" memo that prevented the FBI and CIA from sharing information in the run-up to September 11.

The Four Key Truths of the WikiLeaks Mess.  [Scroll down]  Fourth, there is still no evidence that the Russians changed the outcome of the election.  It is true that Julian Assange is anti-American.  It's likely true that the Russians worked to disrupt and influence American public debate, and it's possibly true that they did so to elect Donald Trump.  But it's still wildly speculative to claim that Russian actions were decisive.  The Russians didn't hack voting machines.  They didn't change vote tallies.  Any "fake" news stories were lost like tears in the rain of news.  The WikiLeaks revelations were but one small part of an election cycle that sometimes seemed to feature not just a scandal per day, but a scandal per hour.

To the FBI, CIA and NSA: Where Were You When We Needed You?  While failing utterly to provide evidence (let alone persuasive evidence) that Russia intruded into the DNC's email system, today's intelligence report is not without interest.  The most notable sections of the report are those that tie Russia's government to a series of left-wing propaganda campaigns in the U.S.  No member of the Occupy movement, for instance, can read the report without squirming.  If true, it vindicates what we conservatives have been saying for decades, going back to the unilateral disarmament and nuclear freeze movements of the 1950s through 1980s.

Russia "Hacking" and the Intel Credibility Gap.  At a hearing today [1/5/2017], Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) today said it was "astounding" that anyone would question the credibility of our intelligence agencies.  That comment defies the factual record.  It's not that Americans don't appreciate our many honest, hardworking intelligence professionals.  But there are concrete examples of false information promulgated by some U.S.intelligence officials under Democrat and Republican administrations.  That's why it would be imprudent to blindly accept, without question, everything our intelligence officials say or, for that matter, everything any government claims.  In fact, one need look no farther than a lead witness at today's hearing on Russian election hacking:  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  In June 2013, Clapper provided false testimony to Congress denying existence of a National Security Agency (NSA) secret, massive data collection program.

Is Julian Assange Telling the Truth about the WikiLeaks Hack?  Imagine you are Julian Assange and ... [#1] You know for a fact that Moscow was not the source of the WikiLeaks e-mails.  What do you do?  In this case, it seems most likely that you would simply tell the truth, that Russian intelligence was not behind the leak.  [#2] You know for a fact that Moscow was the source of the WikiLeaks e-mails.  What do you do?  That is going to depend a great deal upon your personal commitment to the truth and your integrity. [...] [#3] You don't know whether Moscow was the source.  That does not seem to me implausible, either.

Election Interference? The U.S. Has Done It In 45 Countries Worldwide.  Russia's attempt to sway the 2016 election continues to consume American politics as the Obama administration struck back with a series of punishments targeting Russia's spy agencies and diplomats.  The White House on Thursday [12/29/2016] moved to expel 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the U.S. and impose sanctions on the Kremlin's two leading intelligence services in response for what the U.S. says were a series of cyberattacks conducted by Russia during the presidential campaign.  For the time being, Russian President Vladamir Putin has indicated that he won't immediately retaliate, though that could change.

The CIA's Dirty Tricks Against American Democracy.  There is an easy way to determine who is a faithful Democratic Party hack in the media and who on the left maintains at least some independence from the party line.  Long-time Democrat Bill Moyers thinks it's an open-and-shut case that Russia's Vladimir Putin intervened in the election to help Trump and that our democracy is in peril.  The Intercept thinks the evidence is weak, and that the CIA may have some other reason for "squaring off directly against Trump."  What could that possibly be?  Could it be that CIA Director John Brennan fears that Trump as president could order an investigation into what the CIA has been up to under President Obama?  What could that be?  Could the CIA have been interfering in foreign elections, and if so, could such efforts have provoked Russian retaliation?

I Guess 'Fake News' Only Comes on Facebook and Is Written in Macedonia.  Who did you hear more about in the past few weeks?  Texas elector Chris Suprun, who announced in the New York Times that he wouldn't vote for Donald Trump?  Or Robert Satiacum, the Washington state Democratic elector who announced months ago that he wouldn't support Hillary Clinton?  Did the coverage in the mainstream media leave you with the impression that there would be more faithless Republican electors or more faithless Democratic electors?  Call me crazy, but I think the mainstream media was much more interested in Suprun's preening and Larry Lessig's implausible claims of significant GOP defections than any reports of dissention in the ranks among Democrats.  They overhyped one side of the story and largely ignored another, because one story made them feel good and the other made them feel bad.

Does anybody else notice something odd about this pic?  Don't underestimate body language.

CIA and the Wizard of Oz.  An anonymous CIA official tells The Washington Post and The New York Times that Russia hacked to elect Donald Trump.  Gives zero details.  The CIA refuses to meet with the congressional intelligence committees.  After a week of media echoes that the voters were victims of "fake news" conspiracies including from the Russians, The Hill reports:  "Poll:  More than half of Americans bothered by Russian interference in election." Hence John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager, formerly President Obama's senior counselor, was on firm public relations grounds when he contended that the 2016 elections were not "free and fair."  Presto:  America's electoral repudiation of the ruling class is on the skids toward delegitimization.

Are Europe's 'Extreme Right' Parties Really So Extreme?  The European left — lost for so many years in a blind, virtue-signaling multiculturalism — now has to come to grips with the fact that maybe all cultures are NOT equal, that some cultures truly are racist, sexist, and homophobic and are governed by a religious ideology that seeks to rule the world with no separation of mosque and state and human rights virtually non-existent, the very things the left claims it abhors.  And those same leftists don't know how to handle this contradiction.  So they blame those who do and call them neo-Nazis.  Ironically, those called neo-Nazis and the like are often the most open-minded people, seeking to preserve Europe's gift to humanity, the Enlightenment.  Such a person is the extraordinary Geert Wilders, recently found guilty of "discrimination" by a Dutch court and now the odds-on favorite to be the next prime minister of that country.  The Dutch are in many ways the most honest people in Europe.  Wilders — no shrinking violet — has already tweeted out in no uncertain terms that Angela Merkel has blood on her hands for what transpired in Berlin.  She does.

America as Animal Farm — Again.  Since his days fighting for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing Orwell had become an increasingly outspoken enemy of Communism.  After the defeat of Nazi Germany, when Stalin renounced all his wartime assurances and steamrolled Eastern Europe, Orwell came to see state socialism under authoritarian auspices as the greatest threat to human freedom. [...] His 1945 novella Animal Farm — initially difficult for Orwell to publish and deeply hated by Western leftists — was an allegorical warning to liberals of the dangers of left-wing propaganda.  Words and phrases changed their meanings — again and again — to serve a tyrannical agenda.  The assorted creatures of Orwell's fictional barnyard frequently wake up to new commandments posted on the barn wall by their Stalinesque pig leaders, with yesterday's edicts crossed out or modified — and soon to be forgotten.

Of Course Russia Meddles in Our Elections — But the 'Hacking' Claim Is a Farce.  To begin with, it would be shocking if the Russians had not attempted to meddle in our election.  Historically, they've done it countless times (I assume, every time).  That's what hostiles do, they make mischief when and where they can.  Democrats, moreover, conveniently forget that they've historically welcomed such mischief-making — such as when Jimmy Carter pleaded with Leonid Brezhnev for Soviet help in the futile effort to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1980 and when Ted Kennedy pleaded with Yuri Andropov for Soviet help in the futile effort to defeat Reagan in 1984.  If the American intelligence community (IC), after considered chin stroking, had concluded that there had been no Russian attempts to meddle in the presidential election, I imagine most taxpayers would say we want our $50 billion per annum back — a reaction that may be warranted in any event given the IC's propensity to politicize its reports and to miss major developments from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, and from the rise of jihadist Iran to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Exclusive: What If the Convicted "Serial Rapist Cop" Is Innocent?  Today [12/10/2016] is the one-year anniversary of the verdict in the Daniel Holtzclaw case.  I'm reposting my feature op-ed from last week.  Several radio talk show hosts have given me time to make my case (Pat Campbell in Tulsa, Chris Morales in Enid, and Lee Matthews in OKC).  Oddly, local journalists in Oklahoma City have reported on our screening today in Enid — but none of them have reached out to speak with me directly about my findings.  Instead, they keep quoting the accusers' social justice advocates expressing their outrage — and police brass who have denigrated our work ad hominem as a "business project" without addressing a single exculpatory point of fact or evidence that we have introduced.

Street Cop reveals Positive attitude toward Armed Victims.  A Georgia police officer from Atlanta wrote an opinion piece in the Newnan Times-Herald.  The piece vigorously defends armed self defense.  It is clear that the officer is a street officer, and not one confined to his desk. [...] Police are individuals.  They tend to be more cynical than most, probably from dealing with the worst in society as a regular part of their job.  But most of them attempt to do the best they can at their job, most of the time.  Most of them do not see maximizing the number of people in prison as their job.  Most see their job as maintaining order and the rule of law.  Police and armed citizens are natural allies.  Both are pushing to maintain the rule of law.

25 Cities On the Brink of Disaster:  "Don't Be Here When Things Get Violent, Unsafe and Fragile".  Dallas, Texas just suspended pension payments for some of its civil servants, a sign that financial insolvency could create an epidemic during the next crisis.  Several states, like California, have over promised benefits to state employees in the pension programs, without ever planning to pay for them.  If people lose it, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and the whole of the surrounding areas could simply erupt.  Similar problems have left Detroit, Michigan and Puerto Rico, the commonwealth island, extremely vulnerable to bankruptcy and economic apocalypse that could contaminate the nation and global within hours.  If a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, hits the East or Gulf Coast, tens of millions of people could be caught up in traffic, locked in cities without food, and desperate to cling to order and survive.  Likewise, if a major earthquake hit the West Coast, millions could be displaced and left without many options.  That's when things turn ugly.

Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elections.  Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in 2017, once President Barack Obama's term ended.  You can read the full letter [elsew]here.  The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic constitutional facts about how treaties work.

Fake News Is Unreal.  Of course, social media didn't win the election for Trump, information did.  Social media was just the vessel, and if your entire foundation is built on lies, information is your enemy.  The phony capitalists at Bloomberg had hoped the free market might correct this horrible problem but now realize "There might be a need for the state to step in."  The president himself has claimed we need a "curating function" to handle this "wild-wild-west-of-information flow."  Later he complained to Rolling Stone that we are getting information from "completely different sources." [...] Barack is ultimately calling for the abolition of facts and suggesting America take up some kind of state-run media the way Britain and Canada have.  "If you're looking for fake news, you might want to check in on the people trying to shut it down."  I've lived in both those countries.  The scariest thing about state-run propaganda is how well it works.

Scientists Should Stop Mixing Their Work with Politics.  [Scroll down]  Leading up to the election, and particularly after Election Day, this tension was exposed in an ugly way, and not one that reflects favorably on the scientific community.  It isn't their political opinions that are objectionable, it is how they abandon the very evidentiary principles that should guide not only their professional conduct but also their political commentary, particularly if they are a taxpayer-funded scientists opining on social media for the world to see.  They make accusations without proof, sweeping conclusions they cannot support, and predictions for a dystopian future that do not reflect reality.

Workers beware:  Here come state-based retirement plans.  Under the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans lost the health insurance they liked.  Now, the same could happen with their retirement savings.  In August, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a little-known rule that allows states to set up retirement plans for private sector workers.  States that do so must also require employers — typically those with five or more employees — that don't offer their own retirement plan to offer the state-based option. [...] But a shift to state-based retirement plans will be bad news for workers and taxpayers.

"Before political correctness, our soldiers were free to fight back."
How American Soldiers Used Pig's Blood and Corpses to Fight Muslim Terrorism.  A century before American soldiers fought Muslim terrorism in the Middle East, they fought it in the Philippines.  Their attackers were Moro Muslims whose savage fanaticism appeared inexplicable.  A formerly friendly Muslim might suddenly attack American soldiers, local Muslim rulers promised friendship while secretly aiding the terrorists and the yellow left-wing press at home seized on every report of an atrocity to denounce American soldiers as murderers whose honor was forever soiled.  Much of what went on in that conflict, including the sacrifices of our soldiers, has been forgotten.  The erasure has been so thorough that the media casually claims that the American forces did not use pig corpses and pig's blood to deter Muslim terrorists.  Media fact checks have deemed it a "legend".  It's not a legend.  It's history.

Force the Media to Win Back Our Respect.  Reforming the media would require more imagination and mostly be a matter of style and protocol.  For reasons of symbolism, Trump should skip the White House Correspondents' dinner.  It has descended into a strange Neroian feast, where left-wing Hollywood celebs and the denizens of WikiLeaks fame meet to treat, and in turn hear, the president as if he were a fellow Las Vegas carnival barker.  It is a relic whose time came and went a long time ago There is no reason in this rapidly changing digitalized world to follow antediluvian customs of rewarding the New York Times or the Washington Post, or NPR, or PBS with blue-chip perks at press conferences or first claims on interviews.  They have not proved disinterested or competent in their reporting and should have to re-earn the esteem that they customarily take for granted.  WikiLeaks reminds us that CNN, the Washington Post, and Politico offer no more disinterested opinion journalism than do Rush Limbaugh or the Drudge Report — though the legacy media do spend far more to reach far fewer.

The States' Trump Card against the Fed.  It's hard, and it's never been done in the 229 years we've had the Constitution — not until now.  By using their Article V power, in 2017, the states, and the people, will, for the very first time, exercise their sovereignty.  And it is full sovereignty, plenary, unlimited. [...] The federal courts do not have jurisdiction over the states when they are exercising their Article V powers, and the president has no involvement whatsoever.  The third branch, Congress, has only a ministerial role to play.  The only discretion Congress has is in selecting the time and place of the Amendment Convention, and of choosing the method of ratification — by the state legislatures or by state conventions.  In order to organize a two-thirds supermajority, the States may choose to meet in a preliminary Convention of States.  This was last done in 1861, in Washington.  State delegations assembled to try to avert the Civil War, but they didn't have enough time, and they failed.

Opposing viewpoint:
Here Be Dragons:  Dangers Of A Constitutional Convention.  [Scroll down]  Article Five [of the US Constitution] has no instructions about the workings of a constitutional convention.  It sets forth requirements for calling a convention (two-thirds of the states must ask the Congress for a convention) and how proposed amendments arising from a convention are to be ratified, but that's all.  Article Five's silence practically guarantees lawsuits on every aspect of a convention's operation.  Some say their state legislatures have passed bills that would limit the convention to consideration of certain issues.  However, it's possible that these issues would vary from state to state, plus Congress may choose to add or delete issues in its call for a convention.  And once the delegates are seated and the doors to the convention hall are closed, no-one can predict what will happen on the floor.

Is Pope Francis Resurrecting the Nefarious Liberation Theology?  Instead of finding inspiration in Pope Francis's latest pronunciations, Catholics should be worried.  His latest political and economic ideas are a throwback to the 1970s, when Latin America was in full swing with "liberation theology," a brand of Catholicism inspired by Marxist doctrine.  This school of thought claims that theology must be grounded on more than just philosophy and scripture in order to defend the poor here on Earth, according to Juan Carlos Scannone, an Argentinean priest who greatly influenced the Pope's thinking.

WaPo: Say, maybe Hillary was the boat anchor rather than Trump.  During this past election cycle, the media did their best to Akinize Donald Trump in Senate and House races across the country.  Every time Trump said something outrageous or offensive — and Trump did provide plenty of that material — media outlets would challenge Republicans to repudiate Trump.  The assumption was that, as happened in 2012 with Todd Akin in Missouri, Trump would become a boat anchor for the GOP and lead to massive down-ballot losses.  How'd that work out in 2016?

Awards show?  The AMAs were a political hit job on President-elect Trump.  The music industry suffered a melt down on national television during the American Music Awards — launching into unhinged, profane tirades directed at President-elect Donald Trump and his wife, Melania.  Do not be fooled, folks.  This was not an awards show.  It was a political hit job on the president-elect.

America's real hate-crime epidemic is killing cops.  For all the hysteria on the left about a supposed outbreak of hate-filled violence in the wake of Donald Trump's election, a truly deadly series of hate crimes has prompted precious little outrage.  One police officer was murdered and three others wounded Sunday in four separate ambush attacks in three different US cities.  These weren't violent confrontations that spun out of control:  All but one were shot while sitting in their patrol cars.  The other was gunned down and killed in an ambush outside police headquarters.  As William McManus, chief of police in San Antonio — where Detective Benjamin Marconi, a father of three, was killed in cold blood — said:  "The uniform was targeted."

Here's How the 'Hamilton' Cast Reacted When Hillary Clinton Attended their Show.  The conservative and liberal worlds lit up in a firestorm when Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a performance of "Hamilton"' on Broadway this past week. [...] No matter where you fall on the topic of the "Hamilton" cast being right or wrong for their actions, it's clear that Democrats received a very different reception from the Broadway cast when they visited during the election.

Some stars of Hamilton haven't voted in years despite clash with vice president-elect Mike Pence.  Some members of the cast of Hamilton, who delivered a message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence about their fears of the new administration, have abstained from voting for years, records show.  There are no records available for this year, so it's unclear if the cast members voted in 2016, but years prior show many were absent on Election Day.

'Hamilton' and the implosion of the American left.  The Democratic Party's alienation from the rest of America was on full display at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Friday night.  And the left seems completely oblivious to how ridiculous it looks to the rest of the United States.  Professors at Yale and Columbia universities and other elite schools postpone exams and cancel classes for students who could not deal with the election results.  Kids in Washington schools cut class with tacit approval from administrators to march in protest of the results of a free and fair election.  School officials in Montgomery County offer grief counselors to "help students process any concerns or feelings they have about the election."  (Funny, I don't recall anyone canceling exams or offering my kids grief counselors when Barack Obama was elected).

Judge Jeanine Scorches Cast of Hamilton:  "Out and Out Reverse Racism and Teed Up Hate".  Judge Jeanine Pirro did not stay silent about how ridiculous the cast of Hamilton acted and treated Mike Pence.  She ripped into them and she held nothing back.  [Video clip]

Tolerance is easier to preach than practice.  The reactions to a couple of news stories last week provided ample evidence of just how divided we are as a nation, and how unforgiving we have become.  Example No. 1 was the front-page story on Wednesday [11/16/2016] about the resignation of Gil Jordan as executive director of the Northwest Montana Historical Society.  Gil had served admirably in that capacity for 12 years, and helped to convert the Museum at Central School from merely a historic building into a building full of history.  Gil and his wife, Kimberly Pinter, who had been office manager for the historical society, announced last week that, following the election of Donald Trump, they had decided to resign and "focus on other priorities."  In a letter they wrote to "friends and family," Gil said that, "I am unwilling to carry on with business as usual as if nothing catastrophic has occurred."  Say what you will about Jordan's politics, it is certainly a rare and thus newsworthy occurrence when someone in the public eye takes such a serious course of action over a national election.  And unlike those national celebrities who said they were going to move to Canada if Trump won, Jordan actually acted on his principles.  Kudos to him for having a core belief system.

The left attacks Jeff Sessions on his past, but excuses Keith Ellison.  President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general.  Expect the left to use Mr. Sessions' past statements on race as ammunition against him, while ignoring his record since then.  Also expect those same people to make the argument that Rep. Keith Ellison's controversial past statements are a non-sequitur in his bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.  Indeed, it's already happening.  The Nation tweeted of Mr. Sessions' AG pick:  "Jeff Sessions was too racist to be confirmed by Republicans in 1985," speaking of his failed confirmation hearings to be a federal judge that year.

The Editor says...
Former Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, who was once an officer in the Ku Klux Klan, was unavailable for comment.

One more product to boycott:
Massive Stewardship Fail — PepsiCo CEO Tells Trump Supporters to Take Their Business Elsewhere.  This will not end well for shareholders of stocks in PepsiCo.  Macy's business model collapsed after they took a similarly adversarial position toward candidate Donald Trump in 2015.  Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, PepsiCo is following the same path as Macy's.  Business organizations, and various boards of directorship, who hire these insufferable political activists within their corporations, are fools for allowing their shareholders to be put at risk by their Chief Executive Officers.

Why celebrity endorsements didn't help Hillary at all.  Donald Trump had Scott Baio and a "Duck Dynasty" star.  Hillary Clinton had Jay-Z and Beyonce, Katy Perry and Bruce Springsteen, Clooney and Leo, Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, among many, many other A-listers who hosted glittering fundraisers, who raised hundreds of millions of dollars for her.  One takeaway:  celebrity endorsements in presidential politics don't matter anymore.  Another, more likely and long-term:  They hurt.

Panic Amid The Department of Richard Windsor.  99.99% of the American electorate have yet to fully grasp of the scope of the 2016 election.  99.99% of Americans have sparse comprehension toward the meaning of 8 years without a federal budget — when contrast with a reality of a $986 billion (that's billion with a "B"), "stimulus" bill that has been re-spent (used as an executive slush fund), and intentionally hidden behind the curtain of the UniParty.  99.99% of Americans have no cognitive concept of what is possible, because the water-carrying media never discussed the ramifications of an absent federal budget.

5 Ways Trump Shows How To Win Elections.  [#2] Media and Celebrities Don't Matter:  The first rule of Republican politics is to look in the mirror and ask, "Are we trying to be Democrats?"  Twice Obama's big glittering machine of celebrities, media and memes rolled over hapless Republicans.  Republican operatives desperately wondered how they could run against Oprah, Beyonce and BuzzFeed.  How were they supposed to survive being mocked by Saturday Night Live and attacked by the media?  The answer was to find voters who weren't making their decisions based on any of those things. [...] The mediasphere matters most when you care about it.  When you don't and when you focus on voters who don't either, then it ends up as weak and impotent as it did in this election.

Roll Up Your Sleeves, Deplorables.  We do not have time to sit on our hands in our basket and bask in the thrill of victory.  We must begin right now to crystalize and articulate what we will demand of our newly elected Republican government — from the White House to the Congress — and be prepared to hold all of their feet to the fire.  Come January, it will be time for them to deliver.  A Supreme Court justice like Scalia?  The end of Roe and judicial games with marriage, "gender," and toilets?  Abolishing the Department of Education?  A patriotic, non-interventionist foreign policy?  A border?  Gun-owner rights?  An attorney general who doesn't persecute state and local law enforcement?  Trade deals that benefit Americans?

Celebrities, Have the Grace to Fulfill Your Promises.  Before any election, some celebrities threaten to leave the country if a Republican is elected.  Barbara Streisand, Whoopi and Cher are perennials, but they always weasel out.  Cher threatened to move to Jupiter — more dramatic, but easier to gainsay.  Miley Cyrus, whose fame results from being the example usually cited when someone speaks of the decay of society and examples of bad taste and no manners.  Samuel L. Jackson is famous for being in every movie ever made.  Other than that, there were some comedians I've never heard of, actors in dramas I have never seen.  All are welcome to depart, they will not be missed, and if they would refrain from giving their political opinions publicly, it would be deeply appreciated.  We really don't care what you think.

Trump's huge election night changes US politics forever.  Of course, we're seeing desperate and pathetic efforts to declare the results illegitimate.  For example, Paul Krugman of The New York Times said last night that Hillary Clinton's loss was due to conscious efforts to suppress the African-American vote.  That idea is beyond preposterous and intellectually deranged.  What we saw was a national wave that turned blue states red, not a case in which voter ID laws and efforts to restrict early voting changed the balance of a state or two. [...] The other facile explanation is that James Comey is at fault for making public his examination of the new e-mails two weeks ago.  If true, the fault goes back to March 2015, when Hillary Clinton's illicit homebrew server became a matter of public knowledge and she began a Nixonian effort to lie and cover up and hide the evidence of her reckless behavior.

The Blackmail State.  This presidential campaign appears at times to be a race to the gutter.  Both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have been accused of having sexual relations with minors.  These allegations of sexual impropriety have raised some disturbing questions about the level of corruption in our society.  Perhaps more serious than the possible sexual perversion is the undermining or our judicial system.  The case of Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire financier and convicted pedophile, illustrates this point.

If Hillary wins, we'll have chosen our leaders for the rest of our lives.  I don't know who will win, but let's say it's Hillary.  In that case we'll have elected the head of America's natural governing party.  We'll have chosen our leaders not only for the next four years but for the rest of our lives.  It won't matter if from time to time the Republicans hold one branch of Congress, given the way in which Obama has shown how a Democratic president can rule as an autocrat.  And why will the Democrats keep the White House?  Because the Republican Party of the NeverTrumpers, the party of a narrow right-wing ideology, will have died.  It had a good run for 160 years but everything has to come to an end, and the GOP is no exception.  But it's not Hillary that will have killed it, nor Trump either.  Instead, its last gasp was the Romney debacle of 2012.

Columbia Journalism Review's Truth Problem.  While Trump is being criticized for saying he would keep the media and the nation in suspense as to whether he would accept the results of the election, the hard fact is that Al Gore spent two months not accepting the election results.  Florida law provides for an automatic recount.  Gore got that.  It did not go in his favor.  He requested a hand recount in several Democratic counties.  The fight in the courts thus began when Gore resisted obeying the results of the automatic recount.  The Secretary of State certified Bush the winner on November 26th.  The very next day Gore contested the certification in a Tallahassee circuit court.  In other words, ignoring the certification from the duly authorized Secretary of State Harris, Gore did exactly what Trump's critics find so appalling:  he simply refused to accept the election results.

It's official:  Venezuela is a dictatorship.  All this year, as they trudged through an unprecedented economic implosion, Venezuelans have been gearing up for what was meant to be the defining political event of the year:  a referendum on whether to recall our increasingly loathed authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.  The tense buildup suddenly ended Thursday as five separate (and supposedly independent, but c'mon now) lower courts approved injunctions to suspend the recall, closing down Venezuela's last best hope for a peaceful solution to its long-running political crisis.  Even for battle-hardened Venezuelans, it all came as quite a shock.

None of the above for president.  Oh, there is a basket of deplorables out there, all right — to borrow a phrase from one of the presidential contenders.  But it's not among the voters.  It's the deplorable presidential choices voters have been handed this election year.  Our political system has over the years been skewed by a host of rules and timetables designed to kowtow to regional sensibilities (Hello Iowa!) and partisan needs (welcome to Super Tuesday).  This year we are paying the price for all of that.  With all the great talent this nation has produced, the voters are left with a choice between two of the most distrusted presidential candidates ever to share space on one political ballot.  Fully two-thirds of American voters have said they distrust both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican counterpart Donald Trump.  And frankly we can't blame them.

The Editor says...
This year, the voters' two choices are worse than ever.  We can select either an incompetent centrist bloviating "loose cannon," or a lying corrupt left-wing radical baby killer with more accumulated baggage than JFK Airport.  The voters have an important decision to make.  The Boston Herald's noncommittal editorial isn't helpful.

James O'Keefe Says Donna Brazile's Head May Be Next to Roll.  Having already gotten Democrat operatives Scott Foval and Robert Creamer (Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's husband) to "resign" after the release of the first two parts of his recent sting, James O'Keefe just hinted that he's got bigger fish to fry: [...] The MSM has been dismissing the videos that sunk Foval and Creamer with weak nonsense about them being "low-level" and "unknown," despite the fact that Creamer is married to a member of Congress.  If Brazile is forced to go, look for a lot of unfounded attacks on O'Keefe designed to distract.  Brazile has her current job because her predecessor was forced to step down under scandalous circumstances.

Revolt Against the American Aristocracy.  The current aristocracy in America came to power in the 1960's.  It was a major shift in the power elite, away from the military, captains of industry, and religious leaders.  It became heavily concentrated in media elites, educators, bureaucrats and lawyers.  It was a deliberate infiltration of institutions and the seizure of power from the people and the states; concentrating it in unelected and unaccountable institutions.  The rise of network TV, the fairness doctrine imposed by the FCC, and the takeover of virtually all national media by doctrinaire "progressives" meant that the "progressive" gatekeepers in the media decided who could be nominated, who could win elections, what issues were important and what were not.  The "progressives" decided what candidates were acceptable for the Supreme Court.  The aristocracy had shifted from a limited government with a "military industrial complex" to an unlimited "government/media/bureaucracy" complex.  The new grouping held the military in contempt.  The core of its ideology disdained Christianity, limited government, "consent of the governed", honor, truth, and accountability.  The most desirable things in its value system were celebrity, unaccountable and unlimited sex, wealth and political power.

Blue Lives Matter Is Asking All Americans To Boycott Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream.  Ben & Jerry's went beyond making a statement in support of civil rights when they actively accused law enforcement of widespread racism.  By spreading these false and misleading statements, Ben & Jerry's lends an appearance of legitimacy to the baseless claims that police officers are killing men based on the color of their skin.  This message has inspired the assassination and attempted assassination of police officers, and it costs officers their lives.  Black Lives Matter is made up of political organizations with political goals that most of Ben & Jerry's customers would disagree with, including disrupting the "nuclear family" structure (see Black Villages), taxpayer-funded reparations for black people (see Reparations), and the elimination of charter schools (see Invest-Divest.)  If you are unfamiliar with the Movement 4 Black Lives website we linked to, that's the coalition of over 50 Black Lives Matter organizations which is receiving $100 million in donations to push their political goals.

Blue Lives Matter encourages nationwide boycott of Ben & Jerry's.  A week ago, ice-cream makers Ben & Jerry's endorsed the "Black Lives Matter" movement.  On its website, a letter written to their customers, Ben & Jerry's spelled out their support.  In response, "Blue Lives Matter" said they are calling on all Americans to send a message — boycott Ben & Jerry's.

16 Times Democrats Tried To Prosecute Their Opponents.  [#5] Gov. Rick Perry:  In 2013, Rosemary Lehmberg, a Texas district attorney for Travis County and a Democrat, was arrested for drunk driving.  A video of her booking, in which she's visibly under the influence and slurring her words, went viral.  Former Gov. Rick Perry tried to remove her from office by threatening to "veto funding for a statewide public corruption unit that she headed unless she resigned."  Democrats tried to get him prosecuted in retaliation.

Acts of War Cannot Go Ignored.  On Sunday night [10/9/2016], as Americans were transfixed by the spectacle of the second presidential debate, events occurred off the coast of Yemen that remind us of the kind of challenges with which a president must contend.  Two ballistic missiles were fired at a U.S. destroyer in international waters from the part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, an Iranian-back militia.  The missiles did not hit the USS Mason, although it's unclear if they had some internal defect or whether the ship defended itself with its suite of missile-defense systems.

Columbus Day and what Native Americans really need.  The two million Indians in this country are the poorest racial group.  They have higher rates of gang violence than blacks or Hispanics.  Indian women are raped at 2.5 times the national average.  Indian children are abused at twice the national average.  And suicide is the leading cause of death for American Indian boys aged 10-14. [... But] the reason that American Indians are where they are today is not because of events that occurred 500 years ago or even a century ago.  It is because of policies perpetrated in Washington today.  American Indians are poor because people who live on reservation don't have property rights.  Their land is held in trust by the federal government — which means they cannot buy it or sell it or develop it as they wish.  They can't even get a mortgage to buy a home, which is why reservations that have hundreds of millions of acres also have housing shortages and why people are stuffed into overcrowded trailers.  Indian reservations contain almost 30 percent of the nation's coal reserves west of the Mississippi, 50 percent of potential uranium reserves, and 20 percent of known oil and gas reserves.  Those resources are estimated to be worth nearly $1.5 trillion.  But the vast majority of Indian lands with natural resources remain undeveloped because of federal regulations.  In fact, just about every aspect of the lives of people on reservations is micromanaged by the 9,000 employees at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

About Last Night.  My favorite line of the night came from Megyn Kelly when among the many sins she accused Donald Trump of was "Rating women by her looks."  But isn't that what she does every time she looks into her makeup mirror?  Runner-up was delivered by longtime Clinton operative Paul Begala, when he dutifully played up the Dems' talking point in calling Trump's boorish talk proof of his having committed "sexual assault."  Yet not a word from Begala about the presence of Juanita Broaddrick in the debate hall last night.

Obama Lets Putin Get Away With Anything Except Attacking Democrats.  Here is what the Democratic establishment seems to think:  This time Vladimir Putin has gone too far.  He has dared to publish secrets from the Democratic Party's inner sanctum that are designed to put a Republican in the White House.  Judging from the administration's swift reaction, Obama thinks that Putin's affront is worse than all others.  It cannot go unrecognized and unpunished.  Vladimir Putin has invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and redrawn European boundaries by force, caused 10,000 war deaths in eastern Ukraine, shot down MH17, pumped secret money into right and left-wing parties in Europe, and bombed relief convoys in Aleppo.  He has suffered few consequences for his international outlawry because the West plays along with his game of plausible deniability.

Clintons playing prude [is] the height of hypocrisy.  Just imagine if every American's private conversations were secretly taped over the course of their lives — without their knowledge or consent — and then they were released to the public in a political smear campaign just weeks before the election.  No one would be able to run for public office.

The Sun Is Setting on America as Founded.  The United States has evolved into a Euro-socialist democracy.  It now has the following in common with the failing states of Europe:  1) socialist and socialist-lite political parties, 2) no checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches, 3) uncontrolled immigration, legal and illegal, with the vast majority of immigrants refusing to assimilate, 4) overwhelming national debt and insolvent cradle to grave social programs, 5) escalating limitations on speech, religion, gun rights and assembly, and most significantly, 6) increasingly secular and agnostic societies.  The republic the founders bequeathed future generations is no more.  But that is what the American populace has chosen.

He should know.
Obama: Trump would do 'lasting damage' to the nation.  President Obama is waxing nostalgic for the Republican Party that nominated presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain, and told Democrats in a new fundraising email that Republicans in the old days wouldn't have sought to reverse as much of his work as Donald Trump.

The Editor says...
Republicans in the old days wouldn't have had so much to repair.

Better internet access won't pull people out of poverty.  A recent report from the Brookings Institution looked at data from the American Time Use survey and concluded that less-educated Americans were spending more time on screens and less time on "active leisure" than their better-educated counterparts. [...] The authors run down a quick litany of the problems associated with screen time:  "Prolonged time spent watching television is associated with poorer health, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Playing computer games, browsing the Internet and other forms of sedentary leisure may contribute to obesity.  Such screen time is also associated with lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment among youth."  The researchers acknowledge that "many of these impacts may not be due to the screen time itself, but to the lack of the activity that it displaces.  More time spent in front of a screen inherently means less time doing other things."

Why No Self-Respecting Woman Can Vote for Hillary.  Hillary Clinton is the very opposite of the smart, independent female role model once hoped-for as the first woman president.  For nearly five decades she has defended her serial predator and accused rapist husband whose despicable behavior she denied while behind the scenes she viciously trashed his victims and often ruined their lives.  Hillary conducted her own personal war on women against the very same women her own husband had already savaged.  And now she wants us to believe her whole life has been about helping women and children.

Clarence Thomas Is Conspicuously Absent In The New Black History Smithsonian.  Justice Clarence Thomas, the second black man to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, is practically absent from the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Anita Hill, the woman who accused Thomas of sexual harassment, however, is given prominent billing in the museum.

Follow The Money, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Payoff.  Of the 262 Companies that lobbied feds on TPP, 82 gave to [the] Clinton Foundation:  The Combined Giving of these companies was between $21,382,082 [and] $67,615,000.

Heather Mac Donald Fact-Checks Hillary Clinton on Systemic Bias and Stop-and-Frisk.  [Scroll down]  [C]avalier claims are being made about stop-and-frisk — an investigative method in which police, upon observing suspicious behavior, stop a person to ask questions and pat the person down to check for weapons.  While Trump endorses the practice, both Clinton and Lester Holt suggested that it has conclusively been found unconstitutional by the courts; and Clinton insists that it is also ineffective.  The claims are based on a ruling by a single, agenda-driven judge (who was actually removed from the case, as Ed Whelan explained at the time).  But, as Heather relates, the Supreme Court sanctioned stop-and-frisk in the 1960s, so "[n]o federal judge would have the power to declare pedestrian stops unconstitutional."  Moreover, Stop-and-frisk remains a lawful and essential police tactic.  Criminologist David Weisburd examined the practice in New York City and found that it reduced crime in shooting hot spots.

Nailing the networks.  Political cartoonists are in a tough, very competitive business, having to be many more things than just gifted artistically.  They must be politically intuitive in an absolutely up to the minute manner so that their creative gifts can evoke at least a chuckle and more hopefully a gleeful belly laugh from a far more sophisticated audience than those artists who draw for the funny papers.  One of the best of the current lot is Antonio Branco, who has an uncanny ability to come up with imagery that conveys more truth and insight into our current political state than the wisest of political pundits could impart in several paragraphs of sage observations.

It's time to send Muslim terrorists a message:  Deport the Rahami Family.  The Rahami family came to America from Afghanistan as refugees.  They made life miserable for their neighbors.  When the police tried to bring some order, they cried Islamophobia.  Two of the Rahamis have posted in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups on social media.  The third actually built and planted bombs to kill Americans.  He terrorized two states, tried to kill and maim countless Americans and then shot it out with police.  Ahmad Khan Rahami, the central figure in the terror case, brought his wife here from Pakistan and she departed days before his attack.  His mother left for Pakistan a few weeks before his bombing spree.  The media, eager for a story of redemption, has widely broadcast the claim that Mohammed Rahami, Ahmad's father, told the FBI that he was a terrorist.  But that was years ago.  And Mohammed didn't turn in his son because there was a terror plot, but because he attacked family members.

Prepare For a Massive Racial Onslaught From The Professional Left.  Hillary Clinton is in a complete state of electoral collapse.  Her polling is far worse than what the media is capable of propping up.  Once the professional left cross a particular desperation threshold, what follows becomes predictable; this will be similar to Brexit's "Operation Fear" only with a traditional American-left-wing twist, the use of race to drive the needed division.  Before laying out substance for this tripwire prediction, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to grasp the scope of what they are going to attempt to pull off.

The Federal Reserve and Its Murky Role in the US Election.  First of all, the financial picture in America today and throughout the world looks much as it did in 2007, just as the global financial crisis was about to hit.  A careless statement by the Fed chair could spark a new crisis.  Second, the US is just about to elect a new president.  Again, a careless word from Yellen could hurt the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.  Although chairs of the Federal Reserve are supposed to remain above the political fray, everyone knows that Yellen is a Democrat and knows how to toe the party line.  Many Americans are troubled by this prolonged lull before the promised hike in the Fed's benchmark rate.

The Two Clinton Nuclear Bombs.  North Korea has let it be known that this test has allowed it to produce standardized nuclear warheads "able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets" so that it can "produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."  Kim doesn't just want a nuke.  He wants a lot of nukes.  And at the rate he's going, he will have them.  And the man to thank for all that is Bill Clinton.

Cashing in on presidential prestige.  The president, as he prepared to leave office, was dead broke.  So broke, in fact, that he had to take out a loan to get him through the transition.  Bill Clinton in 2001?  No, Harry Truman in 1953 — and the resemblance ends there.  Back then, although Truman had only a monthly Army pension of $112.56, he was adamant about not employing his presidential service to cash in.  As biographer David McCullough relates, Truman turned down a new Toyota; a Miami real estate development company's offer of "not less than $100,000" to come on board; an array of consulting gigs.  "I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency," Truman later wrote.

The Sinister Side of a Cashless Society.  Some on the left are proposing the elimination of currency bills larger than $10.  This may seem like an insignificant matter, but if adopted, the proposal would be a giant step in the direction of totalitarianism.  By forcing Americans to use an electronic means of payment, government would gain the power to monitor and manipulate every aspect of one's finances.  Washington would know what you buy, where and when you buy it, where you travel and eat, and whom you associate with.  Granting government this kind of power is madness unless you're one of the political elite.  They seem to be lining up in favor of a cashless society.

China's Insult and Obama's Climate Kowtow.  Obama downplayed the insult, telling reporters "not to over-crank the significance."  Maybe that makes sense in the bubble-world of the Ben-Rhodes-foreign-policy narrative, where the tide of war is forever receding, the arc of history bends toward justice, the oceans rise and fall at the command of Obama's pen and phone, and the echo chamber, on cue, applauds.  But China's reception was an insult, pure and simple.  No one need study the tea leaves to understand that this was a gesture of gross disrespect, seen around the world, putting the American president in his place — especially as compared with the warm reception for Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

The Day The Lights Go Out And The Trucks Stop Running.  At some point a major national emergency will strike, and when that day arrives we could suddenly be facing major power grid and transportation disruptions.  Are you prepared for that?

Is the impeachment of the next president an inevitability?  Bizarre and increasingly troubling as this political year has been, the worst may lie ahead:  2016 could come to be known as America's inevitable impeachment election.  Based on their prior and present conduct, there is a high likelihood that either a President Donald Trump or a President Hillary Clinton could end up being impeached and possibly convicted and removed from office.  The country is rushing headlong toward an almost certain constitutional crisis next year.

A Candidate's Death Could Delay or Eliminate the Presidential Election.  The presidential election could be delayed or scrapped altogether if conspiracy theories become predictive and a candidate dies or drops out before Nov. 8.  The perhaps equally startling alternative, if there's enough time:  Small groups of people hand-picking a replacement pursuant to obscure party rules.  The scenarios have been seriously considered by few outside of the legal community and likely are too morbid for polite discussion in politically mixed company.  But prominent law professors have pondered the effects and possible ways to address a late-date vacancy.

How the Clintons Gave American Foreign Policy its Muslim Tilt.  The Clinton role in the rise of Islamic irredentism has now come full circle.  Bill Clinton might get the credit for the original Muslim tilt.  Bosnia (1992-95) set the table for a series of interventions that gave birth to the so-called Arab Spring and any subsequent triumphs of Islamofascism.  Ironically, Bill Clinton could be both righteous about civil wars in the Balkans and oblivious to genocide in Rwanda simultaneously.  Muslim lives matter, Black Africans, not so much. [...] When Donald Trump claims that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton created ISIS, his rhetoric might be figurative, but the underlying truth is literal.

Maybe borders aren't the worst invention ever.  "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians."  Those were the words of Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Union's European Commission, at the Alspach Media Academy in Austria last Monday [8/22/2016].  Nonsense, most readers will surely think.  But it's worth thinking a bit more about where Juncker is coming from, and the implications of his statement in what is, in Europe as well as America, a fraught political year.  Juncker comes from Luxembourg, a 998-square mile country wedged between France, Germany and Belgium, where he served as prime minister from 1995-2013.  If you look up Luxembourg in lists of world economic statistics, you'll find it rated No. 2 in gross domestic product per capita.  That's thanks to what Juncker called politicians' worst invention ever, borders.

Why Would Russians Hack Democrats?  It seems dubious that the Russians had anything to do with leaks about Democrats, and we have well-founded hypotheses for the real perpetrators.

The Coming Free Speech Apocalypse.  In America you can say just about any offensive thing imaginable, directed at just about any group or person imaginable, and you'll be okay.  Add to that the strong protections for political speech that statute and Supreme Court precedent have established, and America is almost unique among the nations of the world in terms of freedom of expression.  We have it good.  But that might not always be the case.  In fact in the very near future American free speech may be sharply curtailed.

The Left Refuses to Learn.  People increasingly tend to believe what they see, hear and read in the media without scrupling to perform any fact-checking on their own initiative, in this way contributing to a culture perhaps best described as an amalgam of frivolity and delirium. [...] This sort of thing is going to keep happening and, what is worse, will become customary, if not universal.  It is made possible by the plague of ignorance and intellectual torpidity that has descended like a cloud of locusts on the mental horizon of a once privileged but now vassal culture that no longer wants to think for itself or to work for the truth.  Who wants to work when you can get free stuff, whether cell phones or gratuitous pseudo-knowledge?

Who Got Us Into These Endless Wars?  [Scroll down]  To the CFR, America's role in the world is to corral Russia, defend Europe, contain China, isolate Iran, deter North Korea, and battle al-Qaida and ISIS wherever they may be, bleeding our country's military.  Nor is that all.  We are also to convert Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan into pro-Western preferably democratic countries, and embrace "free trade," accepting the imported merchandise of all mankind, even if that means endless $800 billion trade deficits, bleeding our country's economy.  Otherwise, you are just an isolationist.

Gary Johnson's Campaign to Make Hillary President.  This is the summer of Gary Johnson.  The former New Mexico governor who has been steadily drifting left over his career is now doing his best to make Hillary Clinton into President Hillary Clinton.  Back in 1999, Johnson rejected overtures from the Libertarian Party for a presidential run.  "I'm a Republican, and I'm not going to run for President.'"  Both parts of that statement proved to be lies.  Libertarian and non-libertarian supporters see a principled politician in Gary Johnson.  But Johnson has always been a political chameleon, shifting his colors to win elections.  Gary Johnson is now desperately courting Bernie Sanders voters.

Sorry, Tim Kaine Is No Centrist.  Yes, he's reportedly a nice guy who, in interviews, describes himself as "boring." But to call him a centrist is a stretch.  He supports curbs on the Second Amendment.  He likes ObamaCare.  He wants more federal government involvement in education and is OK with income redistribution through the tax code.  He backs the government's unscientific war against "climate change."  And, with Obama, opposed the job-creating Keystone XL pipeline.  These are not centrist stances.

Venezuela Reaches the End of the Road to Serfdom.  A lefty correspondent who believes that I have been unfair to Senator Bernie Sanders — specifically, that I have given insufficient attention to the "democratic" part of his so-called democratic socialism — writes:  "You should write about those millions of souls trapped in the Canadian, Icelandic, Danish, and other democratic-socialist gulags."  But, of course, there are no Canadian and Danish gulags.  Then again, Canada and Denmark are not socialist countries.  This is a truth the Left, and some of the Right, insists on refusing to learn.

We'll Survive.  It's not great to be living through the worst presidential matchup ever.  And it's not a cheerful thought that one of these two horrendous candidates is very likely to be our next president. [...] Trump has shown he has nary a clue as to how to make America great.  Clinton has produced not a whit of evidence that she has ever brought about significant beneficial change.  It is likely to be a rough four years.  But we can and will survive.

Let's Roll:  Why Standing Up to a Terrorist Is Your Best Self-Defense.  After the carnage like we've witnessed in American cities such as San Bernardino and Orlando, and more recently in Europe, the national conversation tends to shift temporarily back toward gun control legislation and how to best protect ourselves in the homeland from future terrorist attacks. [...] This change includes an overdue re-examination of how unarmed civilians should respond during these events, including how federal, state, and local authorities tell the public to respond.

Political elite:  Self-interest disguised as principles, public service for personal profit.  Up until recently, our permanent, professional political class was largely content spending their entire careers living off of taxpayer revenues, while, at the same time, finding new ways of squandering our hard-earned cash on projects and services meant more to ensure their reelection than providing any tangible benefits to their constituents.  Concomitantly, they expanded the reach of the federal government, further limiting our liberty with laws designed to consolidate their power and justify their useless existence.  Apparently, life as public parasites was simply not enough.  The new paradigm for the permanent, professional political class is public service for private profit.

Not Knowing.  [Scroll down]  By striking at Hillary's aura, the Russians may be attempting the same thing.  Democratic voters looked up to her to protect and defend the nation because that's what presidents do.  By hacking Hillary and humiliating her, Putin has sent the message that she cannot even defend herself — and what's the use of a president who can't defend herself?  This is why the Taliban target the chiefs of police and the district heads to show the populace that their leaders are vulnerable, that no protection can be expected from them.  The same threat logic is being applied by Putin.

Democrats admit they have no evidence of Putin link to disastrous leak.  [Scroll down]  Thousands of emails were leaked to Wikileaks Friday [7/22/2016], likely courtesy of a hacker who refers to himself as 'Guccifer 2.0,' who says he's not Russian and is a solo actor.  However, Crowdstrike, the DNC's cybersecurity firm, noted back on June 14 that analysts had discovered that two separate Russian intelligence groups had gained access to the DNC's networks.

The Editor says...
It is entirely possible that one or more entities gained access to these emails, in addition to "Guccifer 2.0" and the Russians.  It is also possible that "Guccifer 2.0" is a Russian or a team of Russians, but even so, hackers are not mutually exclusive.

Lion Ted.  While I have at times been critical of Cruz, in general I am a fan.  I endorsed him in the 2016 election, and nothing from last night causes me to reconsider that endorsement (quite the opposite).  What's more, Cruz's decision shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone paying attention to the post-election statements from either the senator or his team.  In various conversations with people close to the campaign in recent weeks, they were unanimous that they did not expect Senator Cruz to ever endorse Donald Trump, and certainly not at the convention.  And Senator Cruz's team went out of its way when they were given a speaking slot to indicate that an endorsement was not required of them in exchange for it.  Frankly, it was gross political malpractice by the Trump team to allow Cruz to deliver his speech essentially unvetted, yet, given other gaffes made at the convention, it's hardly surprising.

The Long Fall of Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  As Debbie Wasserman Schultz made her unceremonious exit as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, what was most remarkable was what you didn't hear:  practically anybody coming to her defense. [...] Few Democrats will miss Wasserman Schultz, who was widely seen as an ineffective leader.  She was a poor communicator whose gaffes often caused the party headaches; a mediocre fundraiser; and a terrible diplomat more apt to alienate party factions than bring them together.

Florida Woman Causes Disaster.  [Debbie] Wasserman Schultz is very bright, in the sense that the very bottom of Carlsbad Caverns is bright, and very sharp, in the sense that a brass doorknob or a stick of warm butter is sharp.  Her greatest hits are the stuff of legend:  Chris Matthews asked her to explain the difference between being a Democrat and a socialist (such as Bernie Sanders) and she was lost as last year's Easter eggs.  She has suggested that Republicans want to deport all women from the United States.  She tried to use House rules to keep members of Congress from calling Obamacare "Obamacare."  Like Joe Biden, she literally does not know what "literally" means.  She complains that if Republicans who opposed the GM bailout had their way "we would be driving foreign cars."  Her Infiniti SUV was made in Tochigi, Japan.

Flag should not bend to terrorists.  Back on the Fourth of July, the Daily Inter Lake published an Associated Press story about how flying the U.S. flag at half-staff had become a common occurrence.  As the story said, "some have questioned whether the country has lowered the bar on the lowering of the flag."  That got us to thinking about how often we have lowered the flag outside our office over the past six weeks — multiple days for the terror attack in Orlando, again for the ambush and murder of police officers in Dallas, then once again for the terror attack in Nice, and most recently for the police murdered in Baton Rouge.  While all of those instances provided more than enough reason to show mourning and respect for the dead, it has started to seem to us as though lowering the flag every few days is tantamount to a form of surrender to terrorism — both domestic and foreign.  Should we really be acknowledging the sick work of inhuman murderers and terrorists?  Or should we vow to stand tall and unbowed before the threat of bad men?

Why Trump is right about NATO.  As is always the case, NATO is a euphemism for American combat resources, troops and funding.  The 28 countries that comprise NATO are all committed to common strategic goals and safeguarding freedom, but for too long these countries have relied on America's military power and force projection without meeting their own obligations.  NATO imposes a goal on member nations that at least 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) goes to support defense — a direct benefit the alliance.  Only five of the 28 countries are meeting that obligation and the United States assumes the disproportionate share of the funding burden at 3.6 percent of GDP.

Engineered Chaos And Fear The New Norm In America As Many Assume The "Reality" Of Staged Events.  There was a time when there was actually a sense of normality all around us and there was a sense of justice and accountability at the government level even if it was mostly the perception of it. [...] There was even a time when you could comfortably plan on traveling pretty much anywhere in the world, especially here in the United States for business or pleasure without having to deal with the prospect of "terrorism" or another psyop mass shooting, terror truck drivers, snipers or lockdowns.  You also didn't have to worry about a violent police state, checkpoints, surveillance cameras, killer robots, government spying and 24/7 fear, death and destruction being put out by the mainstream media news.  There was a sense of order, in other words, that many of us still remember and we remember exactly what it felt like.  Obviously you can't miss something or yearn for the days you've never experienced.  This disconnect that the younger generation has to what some may refer to the good old days is important in the grand scheme of things because this chaos is all they know and it is a grand example of learned helplessness.  For the first time in modern American history we have a generation that doesn't know what order, calmness and peace looks like.

I'm Writing in Ted Cruz's Name for President.  Like many of my fellow constitutional conservatives, I oppose both Hillary Clinton and her old donor Donald Trump.  I oppose a catastrophically corrupt, race-baiting, plutocratic socialist who serially undermined American national security and lied to the faces of the families of Benghazi victims, and I also oppose a borderline-deranged, Kremlin-tainted, quasi-fascistic, fraudulent orange cult leader.  As between Ebola and HIV, I choose neither.  I am firmly both #NeverHillary and #NeverTrump.  In May, I posted a "#NeverTrump Cheat Sheet," which I thought best represented the options available for those of us committed to opposing both of these Big Government jokesters.  It is time to revisit those options.

The War On Cops.  There is no more important book to read right now than Heather Mac Donald's clear-eyed, riveting new work The War on Cops:  How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. [...] [The book] begins by noting that crime is skyrocketing in cities across the United States as "the most anti-law-enforcement administration in memory draws to a close."  This isn't, however, "the greatest danger in today's war on cops.  The greatest danger lies, rather, in the delegitimization of law and order itself."  If we don't begin to counter the present lies about law enforcement propagated by the Black Lives Matter movement and facilitated by a complicit media and by the "academic victimology industry," Mac Donald concludes, civilized urban life will break down — which we are already beginning to witness.

20 Examples of What It Would Look Like if White Privilege Really Existed.  [#1] We'd see frequent discussions on whether bumbling white dads or negative portrayals of southerners on TV and in movies were unfair to white people. [...] [#5] There wouldn't be an option to press 2 for Spanish. [...] [#8] Every year we would celebrate White History Month and on the final day, we would hold a Miss White America pageant on White Entertainment TV.

New York City needs a leader like Dallas police chief David Brown.  Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton could learn a thing or two from Dallas Police Chief David Brown.  The man is a bona fide leader, someone who has the respect of his officers, his city — and now the entire nation.

Dallas: The Target Is Order.  Dallas was not just another attack by a lone shooter against defenseless civilians.  Rather, it was a highly symbolic act against those who defend order.  The target was order.  The target was the uniforms and badges the officers were wearing.  Those who died were merely representatives of order.  They were the defenders of the principles and institutions around which society agrees to be organized.  Defending this order is made more difficult by the fact that the Dallas massacre was directed against an order of things that is decaying.  As society unravels, the order that once united us as a people is also coming apart.  Our political leadership no longer strongly defends society's core principles.

Obama's Agenda of Anarchy.  To understand what we are witnessing, it must be first made clear that the murderous attacks on the police have little to do with the questionable deaths of black men by police.  Their deaths are being conveniently exploited by individuals and groups whose plans were set in motion decades ago under different pretexts.  We must remember that we've seen this type of "orchestrated chaos" before, specifically in the late 1960s during the radicalization of students and young people across college campuses.  Protests, sit-ins, and armed takeovers of campus offices by the radical left were increasing and blamed, in part, on the Vietnam War.  Other reasons existed as well, including many of the same anti-Capitalist, anti-American sentiments we are seeing today.

What's a Reasonable Number of Blacks to Shoot?  Barack Obama's position on police shootings seems to be that more blacks get shot by police than their percentage of the population tells us is reasonable.  In other words, about 45 a year is okay, any more is racist. [...] This is how insane this discussion has gotten.  Obviously blacks get shot at a higher rate than whites because their crime rate is higher, and not just by a smidgen.  But the liberal elite can never say that, can they?  Because they cannot believe how the police (working class, generally white, maybe college educated maybe not at state schools, often sons of police themselves, military veterans in large measure and frequently seen kneeling on a black guy's head in order to get a pair of cuffs on) cannot be bigoted.  So therefore they must be.  This is called a Divine Fallacy — I cannot imagine how something may be true therefore it's false.

The working classes vs. the smirking classes.  Put it all together and what do people see?  Politicians who send boys into battle mendaciously; who flood the country with immigrants because they want cheap gardeners and nannies; and who force low-income people to rescue wealthy bankers and bondholders from the consequences of their own errors.  Don't get me wrong, I haven't softened in my attitude to Trump.  He remains a vainglorious, dishonest boor, whose policies would do the most damage to the people he promises to help.

American Socialists Are Trying To Start A Race War So They Can Shut Down The Government And Declare Martial Law — Don't Take The Bait.  For the past several weeks there has been a lot of talk about the so-called "Black Lives Matter" protests, and how the protests seems to be growing in violence and less and less being done to deal with them.  President Obama, as expected, appears useless to stop the violence and even siding with the violence by his same refusal.  There is a lot of talk about "racism," "discrimination," and the usual language.  There are even calls for black to take over southern states and create their own country and "kill all the white people." [...] This brings to mind something I learned a long time ago from the Russian communist literature.  That is, the issue is never the issue, but the issue always is the revolution.

It's Déjà vu All Over Again.  The pace of recent events, from the outré presidential election, the "exoneration" of career criminal Hillary Clinton by the FBI, and the shooting of multiple police officers in Dallas during a "Black Lives Matter" protest, is reminiscent of '68; the country barely had time to process one enormity when the next once occurred.

The American Left Has Won.  The Democrats in the House of Representatives recently staged a theatrical sit-in ostensibly demanding that they, as an oppressed and victimized minority, be allowed to vote on additional gun control measures.  This childish attempt to mimic the demonstrations attendant to the union organization drives of the early 20th Century and the civil rights movement of 1960's was produced by myopic fools who do not seem to understand that they have won.  They now control virtually all levers of power in the federal government, dominate one major political party and fully intimidate the other, and are successfully altering society as a whole.  They have defeated "the man."

Our Eternal War For Independence.  There are two visions of how men are meant to live today, just as there were in 1776.  Revolutions and wars may occasionally clarify these visions, but they do not permanently resolve them.  New governments are quick to adopt old tyrannies.  Freedom is a popular rallying cry for rebels.  But few rebels wish to be rebelled against.  That is what made America unique.  That is what still does.  We were not meant to be a society of sinecures for public servants.  We did not come into being to be ruled by bureaucrats.  Our birth of freedom was not meant to give way to the repression of a vast incomprehensible body of regulations administered by an elite political class in Washington D.C.

After "Brexit," Can We Exit a Few Things Too?  Is Brexit the first victory in a larger freedom movement?  Can we get out of a system that creates money out of thin air to benefit the ruling class while impoverishing the middle class?  Can we get out of a central bank that finances the wars that make us less safe?  Can we exit Executive Orders?  Can we exit the surveillance state?  The PATRIOT Act?  Can we exit NDAA and indefinite detention?  Can we exit the US worldwide drone program, that kills innocents overseas and makes us ever-more hated?  Getting out of NATO would be a good first move.  This Cold War relic survives only by stirring up conflict and then selling itself as the only option to confront the conflict it churned up.  Wouldn't it be better to not go looking for a fight in the first place?

Why Our Leaders Won't Name The Enemy.  [Scroll down]  The real reason that our leaders won't name the enemy is that they don't like us and they don't trust us.  Running through their heads are nightmare scenarios like Brexit and Trump.  They see their job as shepherding us away from our "worst impulses" toward a proper role within the global community.  They are quite capable of recognizing Islamic terrorism for what it is.  They may not be terribly bright, but people in their positions have more than enough access to information for the conclusions to be inescapable.  But they are determined not to allow Islamic terrorism to disrupt their larger plans for us.  It isn't another 9/11 or 7/7 that worries them, but a resurgence of nationalism in response to it.  That is why they will lie, mislead and even criminalize any dissent.  Their response to every Islamic terrorist attack is to make us feel responsible, ashamed and helpless by transforming Muslims into the victims.  For these same reasons they will push mass Muslim migration no matter what the terror risks are.  They will champion the hijab, even though they know it harms Muslim women.  Why?  Because these policies undermine our values and transform our countries.  And that is their overriding agenda above all else.  That is what we are up against.

What's really behind the ongoing push for gun control?  All modern governments are organized crime legitimized by the police power of the state.  There is illegal crime and there is legal crime.  We tend to accept government crime because it has made itself politically legal and politically palatable with such propaganda myths as "democracy."  All economic power, political power and religious power are vested in the state.  The state manages the system backed by police power.  Police power is civil and military.  The German state under Adolf Hitler was organized crime protected by visible military power, whereas American so-called democracy is a police state without the jack boots and the swastika.  Police power in a modern "democracy" appears more benevolent because it is more subtle or more invisible.  But police power is ever present.  It normally isolates and prosecutes enemies of the state, radiating its presence through the controlled media for public obedience.  This type of police state is accurately described as benevolent totalitarianism.  Sometimes, however, it misfires and rears its despotic head in actions like Waco and Ruby Ridge.  All national states have one thing in common.  They want all uncontrolled arms of the people confiscated.

That's it.  I've had it.  The United States of America is not a democracy; it is a Constitutional Republic.  However, when we don't teach our history, instead choosing to revise it; when we don't teach civics, instead choosing to create a generation of subjects, mindless drones, and not citizens — we cannot keep the Republic.  The reason is we don't even know what a Republic entails, and as Franklin once quipped, we then get the government we deserve.  We live in a representative Democracy, and our representatives in political office are selected to represent and be accountable to us — that is a Constitutional Republic.  But what happens when we're too ignorant to know the difference between that which we were created to be, and that which we are becoming — a Constitutional Monarchy?  We find ourselves not being governed, but rather being ruled, by a class of political elites enabled by a complicit media and entertainment elites.

Johnson's Rise and Imminent Fall.  After a contentious convention fight, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson has emerged the presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party.  As a successful two-term governor, he is far and away the most qualified LP candidate in decades.  Johnson's vice president, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, shares the gravitas.  With two able governors on the ticket, it feels like the stars are aligning for libertarians.  They've ditched the nerdy book clubs, begun taking hygiene seriously, and attracted two accomplished executives to lead the party.  In a year when both major nominees are loathed, the LP is poised for major gains.  So could this be the year when the duopoly that controls Washington's welfare-warfare apparatus is finally busted?  Don't count on it.

America Needs Nuclear Weapons — and the World Needs Us to Have Them.  Since the end of World War II, it has been axiomatic that nuclear weapons are a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy, enabling America to resist not only far-flung threats to its security but to advance its interests globally.  Upon entering office and throughout his presidency, President Barack Obama in various pronouncements made clear his intention to overturn this link between foreign and military policy.  During a visit to Hiroshima, Japan in May, the president intoned that there needed to be a "moral revolution" to rid the world of nuclear weapons.  Obama's perspective coincides with an era in which the United States is fighting "small wars" against adversaries incapable of inflicting the type of catastrophic damage against the United States or its allies that guided U.S. nuclear policy in the Cold War era.

Libertarian ticket has nothing but good things to say about Obama and Hillary.  [Matt] Welch thinks the error here was in Johnson and Weld straining to seem "nice," which isn't a terrible strategy when you remember that the two major-party candidates this year are widely viewed as dirtbags.  But I don't know.  Johnson has winked at anti-Trump conservatives periodically during the campaign but he seems to be betting bigger on Bernie Sanders's large idealistic progressive minority, emphasizing in interviews how very much he and Bernie have in common.

The Persistence Of Washington Delusion.  Jonathan Rauch has a cover story in The Atlantic — "How American Politics Went Insane" — which is getting positive links from a lot of otherwise intelligent people. [...] The steady decline of confidence in institutions that began with Watergate and Vietnam is due to real failures of the elite leadership class.  These failures undermined confidence not just in capacity to do good but in capability to represent interests.  The list is familiar to you by now:  Impeachment.  9/11.  Iraq.  Katrina.  Congressional corruption.  Financial meltdown.  Failed stimulus.  Obamacare.  Stagnant wages.  Diminished hopes.  But oh, the party establishment was doing good?  These middlemen Rauch puts on a pedestal — they were responding and managing and running things well?  No.  They were looking out for the interests of people other than those they were elected to serve.  They were responding to the donor class and to the party leadership — the very people Rauch views as responsible balances against the populist tendencies of the electorate.  Let's be clear:  Rauch's argument requires you to believe elites were doing just fine running the country until about 2010.  Rauch's darkest day comes in 2011, when earmarking was banned.  But there's no data to support the contention that removing earmarking contributed to any level of American political insanity.

The War on Stupid People.  Few will be surprised to hear that, according to the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a long-running federal study, IQ correlates with chances of landing a financially rewarding job.  Other analyses suggest that each IQ point is worth hundreds of dollars in annual income — surely a painful formula for the 80 million Americans with an IQ of 90 or below.  When the less smart are identified by lack of educational achievement (which in contemporary America is closely correlated with lower IQ), the contrast only sharpens.  From 1979 to 2012, the median-income gap between a family headed by two earners with college degrees and two earners with high-school degrees grew by $30,000, in constant dollars.  Studies have furthermore found that, compared with the intelligent, less intelligent people are more likely to suffer from some types of mental illness, become obese, develop heart disease, experience permanent brain damage from a traumatic injury, and end up in prison, where they are more likely than other inmates to be drawn to violence.  They're also likely to die sooner.

National security profiling is a no-brainer.  While everyone's undies are in a bunch over Donald Trump's proposal for a Muslim immigration moratorium, it is undeniable in a time of "heightened alert" — when violent jihadists have no problem targeting their enemies here and around the world — that national security profiling is imperative to our survival.  Yes, that means taking politically incorrect criteria such as ethnicity, nationality and religion into account when battling radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on airplanes traveling to Disneyland, plant bombs in their shoes, underwear, soda bottles and belts, and shoot up concert halls, restaurants, malls, Army bases and social services centers.  Yes, that means unapologetic government tracking of Arab and Muslim foreign students, high-risk Muslim refugees, Muslim chaplains serving in the military and in prisons, and Arab and Muslim pilots and flight students.  Yes, that means taking immigration status into account to apply increased, common-sense scrutiny of temporary visa holders from jihadist breeding grounds.

Is the era of big infrastructure over?  One issue where the leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates seem to agree is the need for improved US infrastructure.  And many economists think that the combination of need and cheap financing makes a big round of new investment a no brainer.  But what kind of infrastructure investment?  Fixing roads, improving an airport here or there, upgrading schools — that kind of thing?  Or is it time for a megaproject ... or two or three?

The Wages of Non-Judgmentalism.  There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of daily American life.  It's one that undermines the role that citizen sentinels are obliged to serve in the collective effort to combat low-tech aspiring terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign or domestic extremist network.  At once, Americans are supposed to be vigilant and unafraid to express to authorities their fears when they believe someone is behaving abnormally and may represent a threat.  At the same time, however, society frowns on those who are perceived as judgmental.  Since social pressures to avoid being seen as hypercritical, paranoid, or — worst of all — bigoted are acute, and the rewards for keeping an eye out for the next terrorist plot are virtually non-existent, the vigilant are often inclined to keep their concerns to themselves.

Hillary Born a Female, but What Difference, at This Point, Does It Make?  Could it be possible that an increasing number of voters are tiring of liberals stuffing identity politics down our throats? [...] The left's preoccupation with race, gender, income level and other pet causes necessarily compromises the nation's best interests.  But that's nothing new, from its environmental activism to opposing voter identification laws.  You would think the electorate would be waking up to the dangerous seduction of identity politics as the presidency of the first black president of the United States approaches its long-awaited end.  Americans might want to ask themselves whether it was really worth it.  Did this obsession with skin color justify electing an untested, stunningly divisive ideologue to the highest office in the land?  Wouldn't it have been wiser to elect someone not hellbent on fundamentally transforming America?

Clinton vs.  Trump:  The Best Argument For Limited Government Yet.  Unless something earth shattering happens between now and November, the public's choice for president will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.  Has there ever been a better case for cutting back the size and scope of the federal government?

No, not Trump or Clinton.  Voters really do have another choice.  The Libertarian Party nominated two socially tolerant but fiscally conservative former governors, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.  Weld?  Isn't the former Massachusetts governor just another Republican? [...] Johnson added that his running mate was "pro-gay, pro-choice and pro-medical marijuana at a time nobody else was talking about this stuff."  But Weld also supported the Iraq War, saying that George W. Bush had "grown in office."  As Massachusetts' governor, he backed the drug war and restrictions on gun ownership.

The Editor says...
I watched some of the Libertarian Party's national convention on a satellite feed, and it appears to me that the Libertarians are essentially a two-issue party:  They want to legitimize homosexuality and legalize marijuana.  As much as I abhor Hillary Clinton and reject Donald Trump, I still won't vote Libertarian.  The Libertarians don't appear to understand what it takes to maintain liberty.

The existential despair of Hillary Clinton vs.  Donald Trump.  Millions of Americans detest the idea of choosing between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps you're among them.  You may think that both presumptive nominees are unfit for office.  You may loathe the way their candidacies are warping the personalities of your friends and family, particularly on social media.  Perhaps you simply feel that each of these candidates is somehow undeserving of the time and energy that is required to vote.  You might also feel some pressure to suck it up and vote for "the lesser of two evils."  Well, I have a simple message for you:  Don't.

The False Comparison of Trump to Hillary.  [Scroll down]  Most obviously, Donald Trump is a private citizen who has never held public office.  He is a businessman in a world where decorum and class often aren't as important as sharp elbows and tough negotiating skills, where making a profit is more important than consistency or sparing people's feelings. [...] Hillary Clinton is in a very different line of work from Trump's.  Her whole life has been spent as what we laughably call a public servant.  In other words, she is supposed to be working not for profit or her own status and enrichment, but for the public weal. [...] But while Trump's character flaws have been assets in his profession, Hillary's arrogant sense of entitlement, relentless money-grubbing, chronic mendacity, and obvious dislike of people other than her minions all undercut her claims to be a public servant, and help explain why she has serially failed at that role.

Muhammad Ali, Tool of Hucksters.  The idea that a professional fighter or a football player is a victim is only true to the extent that many are immature, uneducated, and thus exploitable by schools, coaches, promoters, managers, corner men, fight doctors, and arena entrepreneurs that could care less about a jock's health, especially after the athlete ceases to be a cash cow.  Knowing when to quit required a maturity and wisdom that Mohammed Ali never achieved. [...] Ali could have used his last years to illuminate the hazards of head trauma in sports like hockey, football, and especially boxing where "knockout" is literally the harbinger of senior years as a diminished soul, if not a vegetable.  Ali might also have used his celebrity to condemn the "knockout game" (aka "polar bear hunting"), a popular punk pastime where gangs of black teens punch random white elders to render them unconscious.  Ali did neither, but he did have time for magic tricks and overpriced autographs.

Reflections on Muhammad Ali.  [Scroll down]  Right after winning the title, Ali did something that set his life on a controversial trajectory from which it would never deviate:  [Cassius] Clay announced to the world that he had become a follower of the Nation of Islam religion and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali, rejecting forever, as he put it, "my slave name."  The great majority of people in America had never even heard of Islam or the Muslim religion.  Many were confused by his actions and put off by his angry denouncements of "white" American culture and society. [...] Muhammad Ali was indeed a fascinating and charismatic figure, and perhaps the "Greatest" boxer of all time, as he was only too quick to point out.  But he was a multi-dimensional figure, not all of it good by any means.

PC police are running amok.  The good news is that 58 members of the Mass.  House were willing to go on record last week and publicly declare that it's probably not the wisest idea to allow convicted male sex offenders open access to female toilets and shower rooms.  The bad news is that there are 160 members of the Mass.  House — and 92 of them don't want to prohibit Level 2 and 3 sex offenders from exercising their God-given civil rights to take a bubble bath with your teenage daughter.

Gary Johnson:  I Agree With 73% of What Bernie Sanders Says.  Gov.  Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, said that he agrees with 73 percent of what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) says, citing that libertarians agree with socialism as long as it's voluntary.  On Tuesday [5/31/2016], a caller from Arkansas on CSPAN's Washington Journal questioned Johnson about Sanders, saying that people she knows want Sanders to win the nomination.  She suggested that Johnson and Sanders could sit down together.  This was after she called Johnson a Republican, and Johnson said he wanted to "draw a line of distinction" between being a Republican and being a Libertarian.

10 Reasons Why You Should Oppose TPP and TTIP.  [#1]  Sovereignty will be lost.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership constitute an all-out assault on, and an existential threat to, America's sovereignty and independence.  Even if all of the glowing economic predictions and rosy job promises of the TPP/TTIP promoters were true — and as we show below, there are many good reasons to disbelieve this prosperity propaganda — would it really be worth sacrificing our national sovereignty and independence for these purported benefits?  Would it be worth sacrificing our liberty and our Constitution?  Would it be worth subjecting ourselves and our posterity to the rule of international bureaucrats and judges?  Those are not idle, speculative questions; they go to the core of what the TPP and TTIP are all about.

Leftist Lies on the Decision to Bomb Hiroshima.  The President recently visited Hiroshima Japan, site of the first atomic bomb ever used in combat.  The bombing took place on August 6, 1945.  It was followed three days later by a second bomb on Nagasaki.  Although he was very careful not to explicitly "apologize" for our use of atomic weapons — mindful of the harsh backlash that awaited him should his trip be perceived as yet another "Obama apology tour" — the tenor of President Obama's remarks left little doubt as to where he stands on the issue. [...] The March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo resulted in far greater casualties than either atomic strike in August 1945, yet the modern anti-nuclear war faction has let that one pass completely.

A Leader Without a Moral Compass.  The moral equivalence movement, with its moral relativism, and the fatuous history taught in our institutions of post-secondary (no longer higher) education have come to a head in the obscenity committed by President Obama in Hiroshima.  The atomic bomb was not some kind of "evil" as the president consciously chose to portray it, but the source of victory that brought Japan's barbaric aggression to an end.  Even so, it required two bombs to accomplish this and the putting down of a potential revolt by Japan's young officers who chose to fight on to the death.  Those in their sinecured warrens burrowed in the groves of academe who teach that the bomb was evil have never taken an instant to read the Japanese order of battle on the eve of the atomic attacks.  Our intelligence totally underestimated the strength of the Japanese army in Manchuria or Japan's navy.  An invasion of the islands would have resulted in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of casualties of military and civilians.

Signals Intelligence Indicates Wall Street Dropping Hillary Clinton.  [Scroll down]  Who the alternate candidate doesn't really matter.  The reasoning we have continually evidenced within expanded explanations about the Congressional Legislative Agenda being dictated by Wall Street interests.
  •   The influences who control the legislative agenda have already put in place, convinced and paid for, the politicians needed to advance their interests (the legislative priorities).
  •   Those interests don't care about who occupies the White House so long as that occupant is incapable of derailing their objectives.
  •   There is only one current candidate who is a risk to that Wall Street goal, Donald Trump.  The second candidate, be it Hillary or Bernie, does not represent the same risk.
  •   Bernie cannot disrupt the legislative agenda because he is external to the party structure who currently control the construct (Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan).
  •   Only Donald Trump can disrupt the agenda because he would also carry an electoral mandate and allegiance with elements inside structure of the party apparatus.

If You Don't Want To Get Nuked Don't Bomb Pearl Harbor.  President Obama has kowtowed to the Japanese and Western liberals by promising at the site of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb "we shall not repeat the evil."  People who agree with this sentiment ought to do two things.  First they should read the essay — Thank God for the Atom Bomb — war historian Paul Fussell wrote on how he felt when, as a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the US army, he and his comrades heard the news that Japan had been nuclear bombed into surrender.

Thank God for the Atom Bomb.  [Scroll down]  The Japanese plan to deploy the undefeated bulk of their ground forces, over two million men, plus 10,000 kamikaze planes, plus the elderly and all the women and children with sharpened spears they could muster in a suicidal defense makes it absurd, says Alsop, to "hold the common view, by now hardly challenged by anyone, that the decision to drop the two bombs on Japan was wicked in itself, and that President Truman and all others who joined in making or who [like Robert Oppenheimer] assented to this decision shared in the wickedness."  And in explanation of "the two bombs," Alsop adds:  "The true, climactic, and successful effort of the Japanese peace advocates ... did not begin in deadly earnest until after the second bomb had destroyed Nagasaki.  The Nagasaki bomb was thus the trigger to all the developments that led to peace."

The Shift To A Cashless Society Is Snowballing.  Love it or hate it, cash is playing an increasingly less important role in society.  In some ways this is great news for consumers.  The rise of mobile and electronic payments means faster, convenient, and more efficient purchases in most instances.  New technologies are being built and improved to facilitate these transactions, and improving security is also a priority for many payment providers.  However, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, there is also a darker side in the shift to a cashless society.  Governments and central banks have a different rationale behind the elimination of cash transactions, and as a result, the so-called "war on cash" is on.

I'm Here Because We Bombed Hiroshima.  All-out war is often a choice between something horrific and something even more horrific.  Making these decisions surely weighs upon the consciousness of wartime leaders.  Harry Truman struggled with the decision but ultimately believed he had made the correct call.  Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the weapon design lab at Los Alamos during the war, was a staunch leftist who later became a peace activist.  Yet, he too went to his grave supporting the creation of the bomb.

Yes, Dropping Atomic Bombs On Japan Was A Good Thing.  Last week, President Obama announced that he would be visiting Hiroshima.  It would be the first time a sitting president has done so.  Of course, we've entered another arena of liberal debate:  were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ethical/justified/moral?  The answer is yes to all three.

My uncle leveled Hiroshima.  We're not sorry.  Millions of Americans have a personal or family connection to World War II.  One is Salon columnist Camille Paglia who, in answering a letter from a reader in her April 21 column, mentioned her father's service during the war, explaining how he and his Army unit, which was slated for an invasion of Japan, were "spared from certain decimation by the two atomic bombs and Japan's surrender."  Paglia's father was among many thousands spared because of President Harry Truman's decision to launch a nuclear strike against Imperial Japan.  His order to attack Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was carried out in no small part by my uncle, Maj.  Tom Ferebee.  He was the bombardier aboard the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb, and that in doing so, ushered in the nuclear age.

This nation does not need the draft.  After 23 years of military service, it is clear to me that a universal draft is not essential, and indeed would be harmful to our national security.  Asking everyone to serve would be a disaster. [...] What are you going to do when 40 thousand people [refuse to serve?]  Are you ready to put thousands in prison if they refuse?  How much will that cost?  What if they run off to Canada again?  What are you going to do?

Researchers believe two mega tsunamis wiped out ancient shorelines on Mars.  According to a new published paper in Nature Scientific Reports by Planetary Science Institute, senior scientist J. Alexis Palmero Rodriguez said some kind of bolide impact triggered the enormous waves and completely wipeout any kind of shoreline features which scientists have been struggling to identify.  "For more than a quarter century, failure to identify shoreline features consistently distributed along a constant elevation has been regarded as inconsistent with the hypothesis that a vast ocean existed on Mars approximately 3.4 billion years ago," Rodriguez said.

The Editor says...
Set aside what the "experts" say for a moment and use your head.  A tsunami involves the sudden movement of a lot of water.  In this case, they say the tsunamis were triggered by "some kind of bolide impact."  What's a bolide?  Google says it's "a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere."  (What atmosphere?)  And this meteor was so big that it caused two tsunamis.  There was so much water involved that it destroyed every trace of the shoreline.  Then the water disappeared.  It's all gone.  All of it.  So where did all the water go?  Here's my answer, and my answer is every bit as plausible as the article above:  Mars today is exactly the way God made it.  Just accept it, and stop trying to concoct these elaborate, implausible and incredible (i.e., not credible) alternative explanations.

Why Don't Republicans Name the Enemy?  In The Wall Street Journal last week, two influential billionaires — former New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a very moderate Republican, and Charles G. Koch, the libertarian chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. — wrote an op-ed piece decrying the suppression of free speech taking place at universities across America.  You have to salute their good intentions.  But as well-intentioned and accurate as their critique is, the Bloomberg-Koch column is largely useless.  Why?  Because they assiduously avoid identifying who or what acts are causing our universities to mimic fascist institutions, namely: ruining dissenters' careers; penalizing dissenting students; not hiring dissenting professors; disinviting the few invited speakers with whom the majority differs; shouting down dissenting speakers; students and faculty occupying and taking over college administrators' offices, etc. [...] Why don't Bloomberg and Koch mention the words "left" or "progressive" or "liberal" even once?

Underestimating Missile Defense.  It is exactly things like the ballistic missile defense program that are needed to expose how empty Putin's aggressive rhetoric really is while reassuring out allies in Eastern Europe of American support.  For the reality is that Russia, bellicose threats and all, is increasingly a paper tiger militarily.  With its science and industry in a precipitous decline presently, Russia is forced to import between 80% and 100% of its computer equipment, 95% of industrial robots and 100% of advanced metal-cutting machines and tools.  According to a defense ministry report from the end of 2015, the percentages of Russian forces equipped with 'modern' weapons are as follows:  land forces — 35%, navy — 39%, air force — 51%.  And the situation is hardly better with Russia's nuclear arsenal.  There have been numerous reports by Russian nuclear specialists casting doubts on its very functionality, because the plutonium in their warheads has not been replaced in over twenty years.

Three Problems With the Big Bang.  [Scroll down]  The first is the Horizon Problem.  If we look far out into space, billions of light years away, we see photons with the same temperature — roughly 2.725 degrees Kelvin.  If we look in another direction, we find the same thing.  What a coincidence!  In fact, when astronomers look in all directions, no matter how distant, they find that all regions have the same temperature.  This is incredibly puzzling, Siegel says, "since these regions are separated by distances that are greater than any signal, even light, could have traveled in the time since the Universe was born."  The Big Bang offers no explanation for this fascinating quirk.  Yet another quirk unexplained by the Big Bang is the Flatness Problem.  Almost all the evidence collected by cosmologists indicates that the Universe is flat.  Like a sheet of paper on a desk, spacetime shows almost no curvature whatsoever.  Within the context of the Big Bang, this seems extremely unlikely.

The Editor says...
Seemingly well-educated scientists have gone to great lengths to concoct an explanation for Creation, but even the latest and most refined version of their story has deal-breaking holes in it:  Most obviously, who created the Big Bang?

The Pentagon's Medal Inflation.  [Scroll down]  There has been a jarring addition to U.S. military uniforms since the end of World War II.  Seventy years ago, high-ranking officers wore relatively few ribbons or medals — and awards for valor were rare.  Go back farther to the Civil War, and it was common for officers to not wear military decorations at all.  But for the modern officer, it's now possible to perform one's duties without being a hero and still have a chest full of ribbons that are indecipherable to all but the most dedicated students of phaleristics.  Most of all, the typical Twenty-first Century American general is a walking wall of multi-colored "great job" ribbons, none of which are awards for valor.

Ten Reasons Moderates Should Vote for Ted Cruz.  [#2] Only Ted Cruz Can Stop Donald Trump.  So, GOP voters need to rally around their best candidate remaining, and not surrender to despair.  That means first stopping Trump.  In order to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican convention, you need 1,237 pledged or committed delegates.  Only Trump still has a chance to get that — and only Cruz can beat him in the places needed to stop Trump.

The Federal Debt Violates the Constitution.  President Obama has doubled the national debt and added an additional $4.2 trillion to debt through the Quantitative Easing program.  Both of these actions are unprecedented.  The issue that needs to be discussed is the extent to which Federal debt, at any level, is allowed by the Constitution.

Hiroshima and 'Unwarrantable Self-Abasement'.  Next month, Obama will be in Japan for the G-7 Summit.  There are rumors that he will visit Hiroshima and formally apologize for the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on that city and Nagasaki in August 1945.  Maybe that's why John Kerry didn't apologize during a recent visit to the Hiroshima memorial, but merely set the stage for Obama by lamenting the suffering and calling for a "world free from nuclear weapons.  The debate over whether or not Truman should have authorized dropping the bombs is an old one.  And any objective evaluation of the decision shows that it was correct, for it shortened the war and saved millions of Japanese and American lives.  More interesting than rehashing what should be a settled debate is the ideological prejudices and moral incoherence of those who continue to want the U.S. to express regret for swiftly ending a war it didn't start and paid for with nearly 112,000 lives.

The horrors of Hiroshima in context.  [Scroll down]  Tens of thousands of Americans had already died in taking the Pacific islands as a way to get close enough to bomb Japan.  On March 9 and 10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.  Over the next three months, American attacks leveled huge swaths of urban Japan.  U.S. planes dropped about 60 million leaflets on Japanese cities, telling citizens to evacuate and to call upon their leaders to cease the war.  Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes.  By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific.  Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm.  The atomic bombings prevented such a nightmarish incendiary storm.

Everything That HBO Isn't Telling You About the Anita Hill Story.  Mark Paoletta was a lawyer in the Bush White House working on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. [...] "Confirmation" portrays Hill as a reluctant witness who the Senate just finds and contacts out of nowhere.  "Anita is the person, in my opinion, who set this rumor in motion," Paoletta said.  "We know, based on an independent investigation, that she called a friend in Washington who was a well-connected lawyer... and released her to spread this rumor.  It seems that the timing of this movie aligns well with the war on women narrative that many presidential candidates have been campaigning on.  "In my view, it was 'let's drop [the movie] into the middle the 2016 presidential election year and help Hillary Clinton'," he said.

Call it Fascism.  In a few words, fascism is crony capitalism with a suppression of civil liberties.  Labor and proletarian elements are suppressed, but a sop of social legislation is enacted to keep the lower classes from outright revolt.  The degree to which social concessions are made determines whether the fascism is leftist or rightist.  Mussolini was more to the right.  The Peróns ended up being leftist.  In all cases, the philosophy is statist.  Fascism is not the free market capitalism of Adam Smith by any means.  Smith opposed government interference.  Fascism can be viewed as much a form of leftism as rightism — depending on one's point of view.  This is a statist envelope where all groups:  rich, poor, unions, capitalists are brought under state control.

GOP-Passed Solyndra Subsidies Use Enron-Style Accounting to Fuel Federal Housing.  What happens when you mix green energy social engineering with the affordable housing agenda?  You get the worst elements of venture socialism that led to our economic collapse.  You also get a bill from your GOP Senate pushing this very left-wing ideal of central planning.  To begin with, the Republican-led Senate is pushing a dubious energy efficiency bill at a time when they should be focusing on bold and popular conservative legislation, especially pertaining to homeland and national security.

More than just removing the W keys from all the keyboards:
Obama is leaving IEDs for the next President, just as Clinton did to Bush.  When Bill Clinton left office, he left a burgeoning recession on George W. Bush's doorstep.  That wasn't the only thing he left Bush.  He left Bush Osama Bin Laden.  Clinton has openly boasted that he could have killed Bin Laden and chose not to try.  In fact, Clinton had numerous opportunities to kill Bin Laden.  But there's more.  Under Bush Bill Clinton buried an IED.  The IED was a house of cards built upon lousy mortgages and trash securities sold as high value.  And it was all legal, thanks to Bill Clinton.  Clinton pushed Fannie to 51% subprimes, made predatory lending legal and coerced bankers to make bad loans.  Worst of all, bowing to Wall St. he opted not to regulate derivatives on the advice from his Wall St. pal Robert Rubin.  That house of cards finally fell in 2007 when the economy slowed and people began to default on their mortgages.  People still blame Bush, but it was Clinton buried the IED in 1998.

Why There Is No Reason to Believe Facebook's Promise Not to Influence Voters Against Trump.  Gizmodo has revealed what everyone knew already:  that Facebook's employees are biased against presidential contender Donald Trump.  In response, the social network has hurriedly insisted that it's a "neutral" platform and won't use its considerable power to influence the election.  But who really believes them?

Is NATO worth preserving?  NATO is certainly no longer aimed at keeping a huge Soviet land army out of democratic Western Europe, as was envisioned in 1949.  The alliance has been unwisely expanded from its original 12-nation membership to include 28 countries, absorbing many of the old communist Warsaw Pact nations and some former Soviet republics.  NATO may have meant well to offer security to these vulnerable new alliance members.  Yet it is hard to imagine Belgians and Italians dying on the battlefield to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces out of Lithuania or Estonia.  Today's NATO pledges to many of its newer participants are about as believable as British and French rhetorical guarantees in August 1939 to protect a far-away Poland from its Nazi and Soviet neighbors.

Anti-Encryption Bill is an Affront to Privacy, Technological Security.  In recent months, the government has regularly been unable to underscore technological security and privacy in the digital sphere, as more and more tech companies turn to encrypting their data.  From the Apple case to the recent WhatsApp encryption overhaul, individuals have witnessed a glimmer of hope that their privacy may once again be protected from government interference.  However, this consumer privacy is in danger once more as Congress seeks to nullify the system of encryption.

Cruz Isn't Cheating Trump, He's Outwitting and Outworking Trump.  There's something else about these delegate fights that have taken place over the weekend where Cruz has just skunked Trump.  It isn't even a contest.  It is fascinating to watch.  And, of course, the Trump people think that games are being played and that tricks are being pulled.  But that's not happening.  This is just somebody who understands the system using it. [...] Now, what happened in Colorado is, I'm sorry to say, it's not a trick.  What happened in Colorado is right out in the open.  Everybody's known how Colorado runs its affairs.  Everybody has known.  Nobody just chose to look at it.  It's no secret that Colorado was gonna have a convention and they're gonna choose their delegates before the primary.  It's not a secret.  It's just nobody leaked it.  Nobody talked about it.  Nobody bragged about it.  So it was left to be discovered by people who didn't know.  And it turns out that people on the Trump campaign didn't know.

The sugar conspiracy.  Robert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specialises in the treatment of childhood obesity.  A 90-minute talk he gave in 2009, titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has now been viewed more than six million times on YouTube.  In it, Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in modern diets, is a "poison" culpable for America's obesity epidemic.  A year or so before the video was posted, Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia.  Afterwards, a scientist in the audience approached him.  Surely, the man said, you've read Yudkin.  Lustig shook his head.  John Yudkin, said the scientist, was a British professor of nutrition who had sounded the alarm on sugar back in 1972, in a book called Pure, White, and Deadly.

Nullifying the Republican Primaries.  Certain turbo-charged words have been used, such as "steal," as in stealing the nomination from the frontrunner.  But isn't the nomination something that is awarded or conferred, not something that is seized?  Should a nominee think that he "owns" the nomination?  As far as I'm concerned, a party should be able to replace a nominee at any time if he/she proves unfit or unelectable.  Some have said that if convention delegates choose someone other than one of the candidates who ran in the primaries, that the voters would be "disenfranchised."  But the voters exercise their franchise in the general election.  Some have opined that bringing in some "savior" who hasn't run in the primaries would subvert the "democratic" process.  But there's little that is "democratic" in the primaries.  Is it "democratic" to have primaries and caucuses spread out over months?

Americans Aren't The World's Rent-A-Cops.  As Americans have sacrificed blood and treasure to safeguard ourselves against our enemies and defend our interests, we also have protected any number of other nations and served their interests.  Not unfairly, we have looked upon these as "free riders" and thought of ourselves as fostering in them a kind of international welfare dependency.  From time to time, Americans have called for these people to make greater efforts on behalf of common goals and, if they do not, for us either to stop protecting them or to "make them pay" for the protection we provide.

Ted Cruz Thinks Islamic Terrorists Are Actually Responsible For Islamic Terrorism.  There are many factors we can blame for the rise in Islamic terrorism in recent years:  Racism.  Income inequality.  White people.  Offensive editorial cartoons.  Racists.  South Park.  America.  Christians.  Did I say racism already?  Well, that's the main one:  racism.  One thing that is not a factor in Islamic terrorism is the ancient and beautiful religion of Islam.  That has nothing to do with any of this, because #NotAllMuslims run around stabbing and bombing and otherwise inconveniencing non-Muslims.  I blame myself, and you should blame yourself too.  Unless, of course, you're a Muslim.

The War Against Cash, Part III.  Although it doesn't get nearly as much attention as it warrants, one of the greatest threats to liberty and prosperity is the potential curtailment and elimination of cash.  As I've previously noted, there are two reasons why statists don't like cash and instead would prefer all of us to use digital money. [...] In general, they don't talk about taxing our savings with government-imposed negative interest rates.  Instead, they make it seem like their goal is to fight crime.

German Banks Told To Start Hoarding Cash.  German newspaper Der Spiegel reported yesterday [3/3/2016] that the Bavarian Banking Association has recommended that its member banks start stockpiling physical cash.  Europe, of course, has been battling with negative interest rates for quite some time.  What this means is that commercial banks are being charged interest for holding wholesale deposits at the European Central Bank.  In order to generate artificial economic growth, the ECB wants banks to make as many loans as possible, no matter how stupid or idiotic.  They believe that economic growth is simply a function of loans.  The more money that's loaned out, the more the economy will grow.  This is the sort of theory that works really well in an economic textbook.  But it doesn't work so well in a history textbook.

Sweden Begins 5 Year Countdown Until It Eliminates Cash.  How much louder can the "ban cash" calls get?  Recall it was just last year when we catalogued the growing cacophony of crazies for whom banning physical currency is the only way to ensure that depositors can't simply reassert their economic autonomy under a low or zero rate regime. [...] Now, the excuse given for banning big bills is that it combats crime.  And maybe it does.  But in the end the rationale is simple:  if there are no more physical banknotes, people have no economic autonomy.

Suggestions for [the next] Presidency: Issue $500 Bills.  When I graduated high school, in 1969, a $20 bill had about as much value as a $100 bill today.  Inflation has taken a toll.  In 1969, $500 and $1,000 bills were still in reasonably common circulation.  They had been issued up until 1945.  With the turn toward ever increasing government snooping and tracking of financial transactions, the bills were taken out of circulation with an executive order by President Richard Nixon.  It is long past due to bring the $500 bill back into common use.  The European Union issues 500 Euro bills.  Cash is useful for preserving privacy and transportation of value to those who wish to avoid the electronic trail that follows digital transactions everywhere.  All it took to remove the bills from circulation was a simple executive order.  That is all it would take to bring them back.  But more should be done.  The insane tracking of every one's financial transactions should be scaled back.  The forfeiture laws that allow legal theft of property need to be revised or repealed.

An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement.  [Scroll down]  I cannot for the life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced themselves that the solution to the 9-11 attacks was to forcibly create democracy in the Islamic world.  I have even less explanations for how — 15 years and 10,000 plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed and die over there to save the Iraqis who are clearly too slovenly and corrupt to save themselves.

For Democrats, Immigration Is About Winning Elections.  We have all witnessed the waves of illegal immigrants this administration invites with its brazen defiance of already-on-the-books immigration laws and its abject refusal to secure borders in the name of national security.  To the left, it seems immigration is nothing more than a game and illegal immigrants are the pawns they use to manipulate the system to win elections.  No wonder they vehemently oppose requiring proof of citizenship or even photo IDs to ensure voting integrity.  Even still, here in America there is this thing called the rule of law whereby only citizens get to vote.  Despite what Democrats say, that is not discriminatory nor is it disenfranchising.

Media vs. Democracy: The Case of Poland.  Why is America the cornucopia of invention?  Why did America give birth to modern industry?  Why was it Americans, and no others, that gave the world controlled flight?  Why did an American dream up the assembly line?  What inspired our geniuses to invent electric power and electric lighting, atomic energy, the telegraph, the telephone, electronics, motion pictures, television, transistors, the microchip, cell phones, robots, GPS, weather satellites, and the internet?  Masterpieces of creative art, all.  Who was it that discovered new ways of marketing and of rapidly delivering products anywhere across the continent and across the world?  What took us so rapidly to the moon when we decided it was necessary?  Why do we have overwhelming dominance in science and in Nobel Prizes? [...] One answer to this puzzle lies in a unique combination of peoples and circumstances.  In this nation there has long been a collision of cultures, ideas and genetic stock and a subsequent melding together of these human riches.  All our people were drawn to this nation by the simple idea of liberty.

Why I am Supporting Ted Cruz for President.  I managed to sneak into a Ted Cruz rally Wednesday night [3/2/2016] in suburban Kansas City.  Upon leaving, I no longer counted myself among the uncommitted.  I and thousands of others in this overflow crowd had to be thinking the same thought, "Why would a conservative vote for anyone else?"  That is not to take anything away from the other candidates.  This is easily the best Republican crop in anyone's memory.  Even the remaining go-along, get-along candidate, John Kasich, would make for a better president than the five go-along, get-alongs the Republicans have nominated since 1988.

The Road to Autocracy.  Autocracy is the most natural form of government, and historically the most dominant form of political organization.  There are more democracies in the world today than ever before, but most are autocracies or so-called hybrid governments that cannot objectively be called democratic.  Perhaps the most obvious way that America is exceptional is that there is no real autocratic domestic antecedent to our republican form of government.  The American Revolution took place mostly because the British king had not exerted his authority on the colonies, and we revolted when he did.  America has never truly been under the thumb of an autocratic regime, except for the brief period between the end of the Seven Years War (1763) and the Revolution (1776).

Cash is the currency of freedom.  Former Treasury secretary Larry Summers wants to get rid of the $100 bill.  But I think he has it exactly backward.  I think we need to restore the $500 and $1000 bills.  And the reason is that people like Larry Summers have done a horrible job.  Summers wrote recently in The Washington Post that the $100 bill needs to go.  The reason, he says, is that it's a favorite of criminals, along with the 500 euro note, which is likely to be discontinued.  The New York Times editorialized in agreement, writing:  "Getting rid of big bills will make it harder for criminals to do business and make it easier for law enforcement to detect illicit activity. ... There is no need for large-denomination currency. Britain's top bill is the 50-pound note ($72), which has been perfectly sufficient.  The United States stopped distributing $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills in 1969.  There are now so many ways to pay for things, and eliminating big bills should create few problems."  Reading this got me to thinking:  What is a $100 bill worth now, compared to 1969?

Robert Reich: Ted Cruz is even more dangerous than Donald Trump.  Cruz is more fanatical.  Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn't hew to any sharp ideological line.  Cruz is a fierce ideologue:  He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a right to guns.  He doesn't believe in a constitutional divide between church and state, favors the death penalty, rejects immigration reform, demands the repeal of Obamacare, and takes a strict "originalist" view of the meaning of the Constitution.  [#2] Cruz is a true believer.  Trump has no firm principles except making money, getting attention, and gaining power.  But Cruz has spent much of his life embracing radical right economic and political views.

The Editor says...
Thank you, Mr. Reich, for reminding me of several good reasons to vote for Ted Cruz.  Maybe the reason Ted Cruz "doesn't believe in a constitutional divide between church and state" is because that's not in the Constitution!  Perhaps Senator Cruz "believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a right to guns" because that's exactly what it says!  Senator Cruz isn't an extremist, Mr. Reich.  If you like the IRS and you support homosexual marriage, you are out of step with the American mainstream.

Countering Sanders's College Scheme.  Instead of transferring wealth from taxpayers to colleges, which are top-heavy with administration and overpaid, underworked professors, why not pay any American of any age before retirement for passing proficiency tests equivalent to college degrees in useful areas like science, math, computer science, and languages?  This stipend could be very attractive, even if it were significantly less than what a college degree in that subject might cost.  All Americans, whether working or at home, could have a strong incentive to actually learn, and the education process could be by whatever means is most effective.  This would also encourage lifelong learning, which is really what our nation needs to be competitive in global commerce.

Our Once and Future Caudillos.  History demonstrates that once caudillos come to power, their most likely successors are other caudillos.  Obama is a caudillo.  And so would be Clinton, Sanders, or Trump as president.  It is easy to mock caudillos, whether they hail from Latin America (where the term originates) or other backwaters of the underdeveloped world.  But on balance, this is the model that has dominated international governance since nationalist revolutions between the 18th and 20th Centuries superseded monarchal dynasties.

1924 Newspaper Article Outlines Six Goals of the Illuminati.  Of course, these days the concept of the Illuminati is much less a shadowy secret society bent on world domination than a cruel inside joke MTV has played out with borrowed symbolism.  But back in 1924, people were very worried about the Illuminati's plans to take over the world by destroying it.  [An] article in the June 21, 1924 edition of the Joplin Globe laid bare the six "principles" or goals of the Illuminati:  First, the abolition of government.  Second, the abolition of patriotism.  Third, the abolition of private property rights.  Fourth, the abolition of all rights of inheritance.  Fifth, the abolition of religion.  Sixth, the abolition of the family relations.

Republicans Can Get More Black Votes.  Blacks still do not appear to be buying what the Republican Party is selling.  And the key point is they should be.  Any company selling a product that blacks clearly should be buying, but are not, would make major-league efforts to try and understand what is going on.  This is how Republicans must handle this.  For instance, 26 percent of blacks say that the Democratic Party favors the rich and 65 percent say Democrats favor the middle class and the poor.  In contrast, 80 percent of blacks say the Republican Party favors the rich and 15 percent say Republicans favor the middle class and the poor.  I think the truth is just the opposite.  It is Republicans who are promoting the kinds of ideas and policies needed to help low-income Americans move up the ladder.  Republicans don't favor the rich.  They favor those who want to get rich.  Why is this not getting through?

Yesterday Men.  America is long overdue for an overhaul of its political system.  The yesterday men of both parties are like guests who won't leave.  Eventually, they have to be made to leave.  That's what we're seeing today.  The wrecking ball is swinging, preparing the way for what comes next.  If Trump and Sanders are a clue, the future of American politics may look more like the 19th century than the 20th.

Deranged Central Bankers are Blowing Up the World.  It is now self-evident to any sentient being (excludes CNBC shills, Wall Street shyster economists, and Keynesian loving politicians) the mountainous level of unpayable global debt is about to crash down like an avalanche upon hundreds of millions of willfully ignorant citizens who trusted their politician leaders and the central bankers who created the debt out of thin air.  McKinsey produced a report last year showing the world had added $57 trillion of debt between 2008 and the 2nd quarter of 2014, with global debt to GDP reaching 286%.

Capitalism Is Freedom; Socialism Is Slavery.  Socialism requires the intervention and control of the marketplace by an overwhelmingly powerful centralized government.  It penalizes high achievers, rewards laziness and stifles choice.  Socialism is a government regulation that stops you from creating a successful business.  It's the Bureau of Land Management or the EPA making arbitrary decisions about what you can do with your own land.  It's the IRS taking the money you busted your butt to earn and giving it to people who didn't work as hard as you did.  Almost every socialist policy requires taking resources from someone who's earned them and giving them to someone who hasn't.  Even programs that are supposed to be self-funding rarely are because the juice is never quite worth the squeeze.

Do customers still want landlines? Telecom industry doesn't want anyone to hear the answer.  The deregulation lobby operates on faith — the faith that government regulation is unnecessary because the magic of competition is all that's needed to keep consumer prices under control.  But is it so?  California has been running a sort of laboratory test of this theory since 2006, when the state Public Utilities Commission deregulated telephone landline prices.  The PUC's rationale was that competition from wireless, cable phone service, and voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) carriers such as Vonage had become strong enough to keep landline rates in check.

Trump and Sanders: The Founders' Worst Nightmare.  As many European and American intellectuals have lamented, no serious socialist or communist party has ever succeeded in the United States.  There is a reason why Bernie Sanders comes from a tiny state and represents a caucus of one.  Our Constitution's separation of powers and federalism raises too many barriers for any movement to take over all of the levers of government and impose an ideology on the United States.  Even if they get too carried away by the latest intellectual fad or passionate anger, the American people have the handbrake of the Constitution to stop them from making a catastrophic mistake.

Ever Looked at Ted Cruz's Resume?  Say what you will about Ted Cruz, but the Senator from Texas is the only man in the current presidential field who has spent his entire life defending the United States Constitution.  He went to the Senate promising he wasn't going there to make friends, but instead pledged to rattle the cages of the establishment.

America is a Nation Headed For a Fall.  [W]hen was the last time America decisively WON a war and achieved all of our objectives?  If we don't count small excursions like Grenada, that would be WWII.  We may have the best military in the world, but our ridiculous rules of engagement and meddling politicians have become more of a problem for our troops than the enemy.  Additionally, the rule of law no longer exists in America in a meaningful way.  Well-connected Democrats like Hillary Clinton can break the law with impunity while Republicans like Scott Walker and Rick Perry have to face politically motivated prosecutions.  Meanwhile, our government openly encourages illegal aliens to laugh at our laws while liberal judges ignore the Constitution and base every ruling solely on their ideology.  Justice is supposed to be blind, not just politics by another means.

Time for Chelsea Clinton's Easy Ride to End.  When precisely did Chelsea Clinton complete her transition from a White House kid whom journalists agreed to treat as off-limits to a public figure deserving of the full scrutiny of the press corps?  The unsettling answer to the question appears to be, "Not yet."  The soon-to-be 36-year-old occupies the status of an American princess — Diana on the Potomac, if you will.  The press covers her, of course, attempting to ask her substantive questions, but mostly she exists to grace the covers of magazines — Fast Company and Elle most recently — and be treated to lighter-than-air puff pieces.

The Peace of Submission.  During the Cold War, the Soviet Union funded "peace movements" throughout the west — because for the Soviets "peace" meant "the absence of opposition".  In our time the new peace movement is Islam.  And so we are told today, from the podium of a mosque with "extremist" "links", that the very word Islam means "peace".  Actually, it means "submission" — ie, the absence of opposition.  The only difference between then and now is that instead of being chanted by scrofulous hippies protesting outside a Nato air base the old line's being peddled to us by the President of the United States.

Sanders has "no social skills, no sense of humor".  "Bernie has no social skills, no sense of humor and he's quick to boil over," said Chris Graff, who covered Sanders for 25 years as Vermont's AP bureau chief.  So he's pretty much the same angry leftist you keep seeing yelling at the screen.

The Conservative Case for Ted Cruz.  Prior to winning that senate seat with conservative grassroots and TEA Party support and becoming the first Hispanic to serve as a senator from Texas, Cruz was also the first Hispanic — and the longest-serving person in Texas history — to hold the office of Solicitor General of Texas.  Cruz joined the George W. Bush campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser and advised then-candidate and Governor Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform.  During the Bush administration, Cruz served as associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ and as a policy adviser on the Federal Trade Commission.

Cruz the Moderate.  Here is an outline of Cruz's positions, in the order that the website presents them:
  •   Restore the Constitution and roll back the federal government to the functions the Constitution sets out and return power to the states and the people
  •   Defend the Second Amendment
  •   Secure the border, enforce the immigration laws, prevent any increase in legal immigration while unemployment remains high, and restore state authority to cope with immigration problems
  •   Rebuild our military and defend our national interests, and exert leadership on the international stage
  •   Stand with Israel
  •   Defend religious liberty and resist the pressure to make to non-religion into a compulsory national faith (and, in indirect language, oppose gay marriage and abortion)
  •   On the economic front:  adopt a flat tax, embrace regulatory reform (including reining in EPA power grabs), repeal ObamaCare, use all our energy resources, support a stable dollar and a rules-based monetary regime, and protect Internet freedom
  •   Eliminate large swathes of the Federal government, including the IRS and the Departments of Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD, along with other special-interest-based governmental units, and undertake a broad program of governmental reforms

The Case for Ted Cruz.  Since Ted Cruz walked onto the national stage, he has been consistent in leading the attack against the corrupt Washington Establishments of both parties.  Redolent of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  He has done that with a level of articulate intelligence and perception virtually unprecedented in Washington.  I served President Reagan in the White House Office of Policy Development, and I have studied his speeches and writings for years.  Cruz embraces the same three dimensional political and policy framework as Reagan — fearless, consistent, free market economics, Peace through Strength National Defense, and Traditional Values Cultural Conservatism.  On issue after issue, I can see no difference between Reagan and Cruz in any of these dimensions.

Next President Must Flush Out Administrative State.  Picture your dream scenario for 2016:  your favorite Republican candidate becomes president and the more conservative candidates win Senate seats.  For good measure, let's continue dreaming and toss in the resignation of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan as a viable political outcome for 2016.  We are all set and ready to restore our republic, right?  Not so fast.  First, as we've noted before, the courts will continue to illegally grab power from the other two branches and invalidate many of our priorities, especially as it relates to immigration.  But more fundamentally, the next president will immediately be confronted by the "fourth branch of government" — the administrative state.  Even when Republicans win the White House, the various departments and agencies that actually run government serve as a collective fourth branch and a fifth column countermanding any semblance of the conservative agenda.

Natural Born Citizens and the Presidency.  The recent controversy over the eligibility of Ted Cruz for the office of the Presidency is one of those conundrums embedded in the U.S. Constitution.  That august document is full of ambiguous words and phrases that challenge even the strictest and most principled interpreters.  The phrase "natural born citizen" could mean any number of things.

You Do Not Understand Sarah Palin.  In fact, Sarah Palin's endorsement of Trump makes sense, and fits both her politics and her personality.  Yes, she has been the iconic symbol of conservatism and the Tea Party, whereas Trump seemed perfectly happy to go along with Obama and the Clintons until a few years ago.  But just as Palin has never let herself be defined by the Republican Party, she has never felt bound by ideological checklists, either.  She is a conservative, but she is anti-establishment first.  Palin became the governor of Alaska in 2005 by running against the establishment of both parties.

Sarah Palin Just Threw Away Years of Goodwill as a Principled Conservative.  Much of Palin's popularity with tea partiers and conservative activists comes from her willingness to be a strong voice for conservative principles, and sadly, today's endorsement stands in direct contradiction to many of Palin's own words over the years.

The 'will of the people' means us — this time we must enforce it.  I confess that I haven't watched the most recent GOP debates.  I prefer reading the transcripts online and determine from the responses who impresses me the most.  I loathe the nitpicking and snarky remarks made by both the candidates and the moderators but what depresses me the most is the audience reaction to them.  The hoopla, cheering and booing indicates to me that there is an unserious tenor to the entire process.  Does anybody realize what is at stake if we again choose an even worse president than the one in office now?

Ted Cruz is Natural Born under Originalism.  The people who question whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be president under the Natural Born Citizen clause fall into two categories: the sincere and the opportunists.  This essay is for the sincere.  Those who sincerely believe Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen may be fed up with the Constitution being violated by the political class.  Fed-up Americans may share my view that the Constitution is America's supreme, paramount and fundamental law governing government, i.e., the law over government itself.  Like me, they may see government as America's biggest lawbreaker — with no close second.

Phyllis Schlafly Makes the Case for President Trump.  In an exclusive hour-long sit down interview with Breitbart News, 91-year-old conservative icon and living legend Phyllis Schlafly declared that Donald Trump "is the only hope to defeat the Kingmakers," and detailed why she believes Trump alone will return the government to the people.  She warned that if immigration is not stopped:  "we're not going to be America anymore."

'Father Of Conservative Activism' Endorses Ted Cruz.  Countering 91-year-old Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly's surprise support for Donald Trump, very much connected to her concerns about the long-term effects of immigration on the American electorate, Leadership Institute founder and president Morton Blackwell has now enthusiastically endorsed Iowa frontrunner Ted Cruz.  In November, Blackwell wrote an article on the influential Red State website contending that "Several candidates now running appear to be more conservative than anyone Republicans have nominated for president since Reagan," yet conservatives "haven't yet come close to uniting."

Every Muslim Will Bow Before Jesus.  It is, indeed, our great hope and prayer that every Muslim — every human being — might surrender self and come to the saving knowledge and grace of Christ Jesus, who, alone, is "the way and the truth and the life."  For, "No one comes to the Father except through [Him]" (see John 14:6).  To be sure, it is the express desire of both God the Father and Christ His Son that each and every Muslim on earth should abandon Muhammad's broad path to perdition, turnabout and move toward Christ's narrow path to eternal life.

The Bitter Clinger Party.  Ask yourself this:  Which side do you want to be on?  The proactive self-defense bitter clingers, or the side that is so delusional it thinks the government can actually protect and care for them?  Yes, it's an easy choice for sane people, for only crazy folks put their faith and trust in the current leadership of the United States.  When you take the liberal media (most all of television, movies, news outlets, and internet influence), the Executive Branch, liberal judges, the recent actions of the Supreme Court, EPA, DOJ, IRS, and other rogue agencies out of the picture — the majority of America is held together by Bitter Clingers!  And while they cling to their guns and religion (and the constitution) they also comprise a force of millions and millions who are near the breaking point of a revolution aimed at not just voting the liars and scoundrels out of office — but ignoring the many unconstitutional directives that have been vomited out of the White House, the SUPCO, and the aforementioned agencies.