Tag Archives: The Washington Times

Were Lives Lost Because Of Politics And Greed?

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I think it’s time to ask if the political games the media played during the Trump administration and the conflict of interest in some members of the National Institute of Health resulted in the deaths of Americans. Hot Air posted an article today about s recent study on the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid patients.

The article reports:

For most of us, the whole controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients seemed mostly political in nature and less so about the drug’s effectiveness. Once Donald Trump came out in support of it, the gloves came off. At least half of the country decided that HCQ was not a scientific treatment for the coronavirus because the bad Orange Man was an anti-science president. Never mind that it was Trump who expedited the vaccine process to historic speed with Operation Warp Speed. He put together a White House coronavirus task force before many people (especially on the left) were willing to acknowledge the pandemic that originated in China. When Trump announced that he was taking HCQ himself, he was roundly mocked. Nevertheless, others in the medical community studied the use of the drug during the pandemic and found some positive results.

The article notes that hydroxychloroquine costs under $10 for the course of a COVID-19 treatment and the drug being promoted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) during the Trump administration, remdesivir, costs about $3,500 per treatment. Hydroxychloroquine has been used for years with known side effects. The side effects of remdesivir are unknown.

The article suggests we follow the money and continues with the following excerpt from The Washington Times:

Although, many doctors around the world were finding success with HCQ, in February 2020 NIH started enrolling patients for a remdesivir COVID-19 trial, with Dr. Fauci overseeing its progress. He had the final say on all the press releases, and presumably was working closely with Gilead. On April 16 something funny happened with the trial — the endpoints of it were quietly changed and updated on the clinicaltrials.gov website. Instead of evaluating remdesivir’s ability to prevent death from COVID-19, the study was redesigned to evaluate how fast a patient recovered from remdesivir.

…On May 1, the NIH’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel members granted emergency use of remdesivir and stated HCQ could only be used in hospitals or in studies. Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson found 11 members of that panel had financial ties to Gilead. Two were on Gilead’s advisory board, others were paid consultants or received research support and honoraria. None of the members, however, had ties to HCQ, which is made by numerous generic manufacturers, and “is so cheap, analysts say even a spike in sales would not be a financial driver for the companies,” Ms. Attkisson reported.

Ms. Attkisson also found one of the authors of a small Veterans Administration trial that claimed HCQ caused increased deaths received a $247,000 grant from Gilead in 2018.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

You may remember that when Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19, he was treated with remdesivir and did, indeed, experience a speedy recovery. By the way, Gilead spent $2.45 million in the first quarter of 2020 lobbying the federal government.

The results of the latest study showing success with HCQ in patient recovery time for those on a ventilator is very encouraging. Perhaps the Follow the Science people should practice what they preach. How many lives were lost because of tunnel vision?

This is disgusting. All of the members of the NIH who had ties to Gilead should be fired. Lives were lost because they were greedy.

An Upside Down Department Of Justice

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about the priorities of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The article reports:

Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged Wednesday that the Justice Department is prioritizing prosecuting those who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol over those who rioted and looted during last summer’s social justice demonstrations.

“I think it’s fair to say in my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol,” Mr. Garland said in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “There was an attempt to interfere with the fundamental element of our democracy — the peaceful transfer of power.

“If there has to be a hierarchy of things that we prioritize, this would be the one we would prioritize because it is the most dangerous threat to our democracy,” he continued.

It should be noted that on April 15th, MSN reported:

Federal prosecutors in Portland, Ore., have moved to dismiss almost half the cases they charged in connection with violence accompanying last year’s protests over racial injustice, as authorities grapple with how to tamp down politically motivated unrest that has arisen since then.

Of 96 cases the U.S. attorney’s office in Portland filed last year charging protesters with federal crimes, including assaulting federal officers, civil disorder, and failing to obey, prosecutors have dropped 47 of them, government documents show. Ten people have pleaded guilty to related charges and two were ordered detained pending trial. None have gone to trial.

The penalties levied so far against any federal defendants, most of whom were arrested in clashes around federal buildings in Portland including the courthouse, have largely consisted of community service, such as working in a food bank or encouraging people to vote.

On January 3rd, The Daily Caller reported:

  • At least $4 million in physical damage was done to businesses downtown during the first month of protests, according to the Portland Business Alliance.
  • The riots cost downtown Portland another $18 million in revenue, according to the PBA.

I think it’s time for the Attorney General to re-examine his priorities. Those who participated in the riot at the Capitol deserve to be punished, but none of the rioters had weapons and the only person killed was killed by the Capitol Police. The destruction and threats to human life in Portland were far more serious. The only reason for the priorities the Attorney General is stating is political bias. No wonder many Americans have lost faith in the legal system in our country.

Violating The Civil Rights Of Americans

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Red State Observer is reporting that during the impeachment trial of President Trump in late 2019, the FBI was spying on his Apple iCloud account.

The article reports:

Mr. Giuliani said the U. S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan on Thursday informed his attorney, Robert Costello, that covert wiretapping took place.

“He asked [the prosecutor] to repeat it because he couldn’t believe it was true,” Mr. Giuliani said this week on the “Rita Cosby Show” on WABC radio in New York. “To me they just trashed the president of the United States.”

Mr. Giuliani, once the mob-fighting top prosecutor in New York and then the city’s mayor, said an assistant U. S. attorney made the disclosure because the operation will have to be detailed in court. The penetration happened under the Trump administration and then-Attorney General William P. Barr and was carried out by the U.S. Southern District of New York. It prosecuted former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on tax charges.

The article quotes The Washington Times:

“I can’t fathom that would be done to an ordinary citizen,” he said. “The president doesn’t have any more rights than anybody else, but he doesn’t have any less. To me, they just trashed the president of the United States like he has no constitutional rights.”

Mr. Giuliani said he conducted many conversations with the president that presumably could be retrieved off of iCloud — a backup cyber storage system for emails, texts, documents, photos — just about anything contained on personal devices such as cellphones and computers.

“Unless these people have no ethics or any sense of what it means to be a lawyer, what you do when you do that, people who listen to this now say how can I trust talking to my lawyer,” he said. “The government may come in and start listening to it or might try to see text of memoranda.”

Mr. Giuliani said that after he learned of the iCloud penetration, he notified two Trump attorneys.

“I let them know his rights once again have been trashed by what now has to be described as the department of injustice,” Mr. Giuliani said. “If they can do this to us they can do this to anyone they want to do it to.”

If we have learned nothing else during the past five years, we have learned that the Washington swamp is deep and wide. It is unfortunate that President Trump was not able to drain more of it than he did. Hopefully he will get another chance in the future. Meanwhile we have a politicized justice department that is willing to turn its head when laws are broken by its political allies and to violate the civil rights of those who hold different political beliefs.

Not Surprising To Anyone Paying Attention

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Obviously there is a lot of money that floats around in politics. Much of that money comes from Political Action Committees (PAC’s). PAC’s are funded by corporations, unions, and groups of people uniting behind a cause. Unfortunately, many PAC’s are indirectly funded by the federal government–organizations that take federal money then have extra money that they can put into PAC’s. Planned Parenthood, American Association for Retired Persons ( AARP), and unions are all examples of this. It is simply glorified money laundering. Most of the money from the groups mentioned above goes into Democrat campaign coffers. Therefore it should not surprise anyone that our current President is working hard to increase union membership and make unions stronger. That is one of many ways to strengthen Democrat political majorities.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about a new task force President Biden is forming:

President Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday to lead a White House task force aimed at the unprecedented goal of unionizing more workers in the U.S. with the broad support of the federal government.

Mr. Biden signed an executive order creating the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to mobilize Cabinet agencies and other federal offices to help workers “organize and successfully bargain with their employers,” the White House said.

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix called Mr. Biden’s task force “a blatant payoff to the union politicos who backed his campaign” in 2020.

I suspect the Vice-President will be devoting more time to this than she has to the border crisis.

The article notes:

It was another sign of organized labor’s grip on the Democratic Party and its influence with Mr. Biden. Unions gave more than $27 million to Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign and groups that supported him, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The initiative was announced less than a month after online retail giant Amazon defeated a move to unionize workers at its huge warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. It also follows a series of pro-union steps that Mr. Biden has taken, including a shake-up of the leadership at the National Labor Relations Board and an endorsement of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, broad legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a close Biden ally, said the president “is acting to remove the structural impediments to the power and promise of unions so workers can join together for a better life.”

“Workers finally have a champion in Washington,” she said.

Conservatives and pro-growth groups slammed the executive order as an effort to put Mr. Biden’s thumb on the scale of the labor market.

Sean Higgins, a research fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, said Mr. Biden “seems to believe joining a union is an obligation that the federal government must prod workers to do.”

“This executive order is a harbinger of further aggressive sales tactics from this administration on behalf of its union allies,” Mr. Higgins said.

Mr. Mix said the move will result in “another attempt to rig the law against workers who want nothing to do with union officials’ so-called representation.”

This is not good news for workers who choose not to be part of a union.

That’s A Big Change In The Numbers

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about the Biden administration’s revised estimate of how many jobs the infrastructure bill would create. The numbers have changed dramatically.

The article reports:

The White House clarified Tuesday that one study projects that President Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure package will create roughly 2.7 million jobs — not the 19 million jobs administration officials had touted over the weekend.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki cited a study from Moody’s that projects the U.S. economy will add 19 million jobs over the next decade if Congress passes Mr. Biden’s plan and about 16.3 million jobs if Congress doesn’t pass it.

“So that is what the impact would be of the American Jobs Plan — 2.7 million, to be totally clear,” Ms. Psaki said. “It is important to be clear and to be specific about jobs numbers — to provide clarity to the American people.”

Frankly, considering the cost of the proposed infrastructure bill, I’d prefer the 16.3 million jobs.

The article concludes:

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both cited the study over the weekend to say the plan would create 19 million jobs.

The White House later indicated that Mr. Deese misspoke.

Mr. Buttigieg clarified on CNN Monday that the Moody’s study projects an additional 2.7 million jobs in its forecast if the plan is passed.  

I wonder how many Americans missed the ‘clarification’ and are still believing the original number given.

When Judges Don’t Read The U.S. Constitution

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about a recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The article reports:

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that there is no right to carry a gun in public.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 7-4 ruling rejected a challenge to Hawaii’s requirement that residents must pass an application to have weapons outside the home.

Hawaii’s law requires residents to show an urgency or need to carry a firearm, the applicant must have good character, and he or she must be “engaged in the protection of life and property.”

The Second Amendment states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

The article continues:

George Young applied twice for a firearm carry license, but was denied. He unsuccessfully sued Hawaii officials over the restrictions.

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved 11 of the panel’s judges.

The article concludes:

Four of the panel’s judges disagreed with the ruling, arguing the state regulations destroyed the right to carry a gun for self-defense outside of the home. 

“This holding is as unprecedented as it is extreme,” wrote Judge Diarmuid  O’Scannlain, a Reagan appointee.

The National Rifle Association said it would not allow the ruling to stand.

“The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit just ruled that THERE IS NO RIGHT TO CARRY – either openly or concealed in public. This ruling impacts RTC laws in AK, HI, CA, AZ, OR, WA, & MT. This was not an NRA case but we are exploring all options to rectify this,” the gun-rights group wrote on Twitter.

Blue states saw the ruling as a green light to implement strict firearm laws.

Gurbir Grewal, New Jersey’s attorney general, said he was proud to lead 10 states that filed a brief in the legal battle to support firearm safety laws.

“Today the Ninth Circuit agreed that laws that limit carrying guns in public are constitutional,” he wrote on Twitter.

Some of my concealed carry permit holder friends believe that the right to concealed carry is enshrined in the Second Amendment. It seems to me that you could make a better case for that interpretation of the Constitution than the interpretation by the 9th Circuit.

 

A Serious Flaw In The Covid Relief Bill

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about an item that is included in the Covid Relief Bill that simply should not be there. We have learned in recent years how deep and wide the swamp  in Washington is, but this item reaches a new level.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s coronavirus stimulus package outlines a one-time $1,400 check to families financially affected by the virus.

Yet the fine print in the House stimulus bill sneaks in this fascinating nugget: If you’re a federal employee, you can receive $1,400 a week in paid time off for 15 weeks if you decide to stay at home and virtually school your child.

As first reported by Forbes, the carve-out is included in the bill’s $570 million “Emergency Federal Employee Leave fund,” which is exclusively reserved for federal employees.

Among those eligible are those who are “unable to work” because they are caring for school-aged children not physically in school full time “due to COVID-19 precautions[.]”

The new fund allows a federal employee “caring for a son or daughter” to qualify for the paid leave, specifically “if the school or place of care of the son or daughter has been closed, if the school of such son or daughter requires or makes optional a virtual learning instruction model or requires or makes optional a hybrid of in-person and virtual learning instruction models, or the childcare provider of such son or daughter is unavailable, due to COVID-19 precautions.”

The article continues:

Meanwhile, millions of families are trying to balance work with virtual learning and child care — with only a lousy one-time $1,400 check to help compensate them for their efforts. Yet federal government employees will be paid weekly not to work. The entire thing is insane, and another example of how the swamp takes care of its own.

As Forbes notes, the drafting of the federal employee leave fund is intentionally sloppy. It doesn’t include age requirements for the children (meaning federal employees could apply for this leave even if their children are attending college), and it also would allow for government employees to receive the benefit even if their child could be in school five days a week, but the employee chooses a virtual option instead.

The entire House stimulus bill includes no financial reimbursement for working families who have decided to place their children in private schools because their school districts are virtual, even as they continue to pay school taxes. They continue to pay for a service not being rendered — with no exact timeline of when it will be.

This is a disgrace. The small businesses that have been forced to close receive a fraction of what employees of our bloated federal government receive. That is simply wrong.

This Is Troubling, But Not Surprising

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Yesterday PJ Media posted the following headline, “REPORT: Former Obama Staff Colluded With Iran to Undermine Trump.” This is not really a surprise. There were a lot of Democrats and Republican who sought to undermine Trump. We heard a lot of talk about a ‘peaceful transition of power’ when Joe Biden was elected, but we need to understand that there was no ‘peaceful transition of power’ when President Trump was elected. President Obama remained in Washington, D.C., and from his command center threw every obstacle he could into the path of President Trump with full compliance from the media. The antics of the Democrats, some swamp-dwelling Republicans, and the media from 2015 until 2020 are a disgrace to our republic.

The article reports:

Former Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, went behind President Donald Trump’s back in backchannels with Iran, sources told The Washington Times. Some of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after Trump withdrew from the deal.

A slew of former Obama officials, including Kerry, Obama’s Middle East advisor Robert Malley, and Obama-era Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, met with Zarif during the Trump years. Kerry, Malley, and Moniz led negotiations in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in which the U.S. provided sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts in exchange for Iran’s promises to limit nuclear enrichment.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018, citing the need for a tougher agreement that also addressed Iran’s support for terrorist groups and its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. Yet a former senior U.S. official told The Washington Times that Zarif met with Democrats like Kerry multiple times in 2017, 2018, and 2019, before the Trump administration halted his visa in 2020.

The former official told the Times that Zarif’s meetings aimed “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to build support for a new version of the Iran deal in case a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.

Kerry acknowledged meeting with Zarif at least twice in the early years of the Trump administration. He told radio host Hugh Hewitt that there was nothing secret about his meetings with the Iranian minister. Kerry said he intended to find out “what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”

Kerry was a private citizen at that time; he had no authority to represent America in any way or to meet with foreign leaders in any capacity.

The article concludes:

“Former administration officials can play a very helpful role in close coordination with a sitting administration to open and support sensitive diplomatic channels,” Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Times. “But it is not good practice for senior officials who served at the highest levels of a former administration, Democratic or Republican, to be trying to undermine the policy of a sitting administration by engaging actively with a known enemy of the United States.”

Indeed, Malley was reportedly engaging in this “shadow diplomacy” while Iran-backed militias targeted U.S. troops in Iraq, leading up to the assassination of Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

Sources also told The Washington Times that Zarif wields tremendous influence over the Iran lobby in the U.S. They described a “web” of activity linked to think tanks across the U.S. as well as lobbying efforts that reached into the Obama White House.

Many members of Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have hired current or former staffers with the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), an organization with links to Iran’s regime and which Iran state media has described as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

Did the Obama administration architects of the Iran deal carry out a “shadow diplomacy” with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism in order to undermine President Trump, hoping that a Democrat would win in 2020 and return them to power? Did they work with the Iran lobby behind the scenes? This explosive report suggests the answers to those questions are “yes,” but the details are yet to be forthcoming.

Where is the Logan Act when you actually need it?

Vendetta

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According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a vendetta is 1. a blood feud or 2. an often prolonged series of retaliatory, vengeful, or hostile acts or exchange of such acts. I sincerely believe that what we are currently seeing in American politics is a vendetta against President Trump. So what did he do to trigger this vendetta? Let’s take a look back for a minute.

President Trump came into politics as an outsider. The mainstream media treated him as if he were a joke. He had the audacity to win. What happened when he won? First of all he discovered that a lot of Washington insiders took joy in stabbing him in the back. Secondly, he discovered that the intelligence apparatus in America was being used as a political weapon. (That has never been dealt with and probably continues under the Biden administration.) Third, he exposed the Washington swamp and was able to accomplish some noteworthy things in spite of it–energy independence, wage increases at the lower end of the economic spectrum, bringing manufacturing back to America, creating jobs, lowering gas prices, peace treaties in the Middle East, developing the coronavirus vaccine in record time, etc. Because he was successful as an outsider the Washington swamp hates him. They impeached him twice, and his poll numbers are still high. But they are not done yet.

There are two recent headlines those of us who believe the attack on President Trump has been over the top need to pay attention to. An article in Red State posted yesterday reports that the Attorney General in Fulton County, Georgia, is planning the charge President Trump with a crime in relation to a phone call to the Governor of the state. The  headline in yesterday’s Washington Times reports, “Trump properties in New York under investigation: Report.”

The Washington Times article states:

Former President Trump is facing scrutiny from prosecutors in Manhattan over millions of dollars in loans he took out for several properties in New York, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is “investigating financial dealings” involving the Trump properties.

Specifically, the people said prosecutors are looking at loans that were made to Mr. Trump by subsidiaries of the same real-estate investment trust, Ladder Capital Corp., the Journal reported.

On May 9, 2018, The Oxford Eagle posted an article that noted the following:

Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe, bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” was Beria’s infamous boast. He served as deputy premier from 1941 until Stalin’s death in 1953, supervising the expansion of the gulags and other secret detention facilities for political prisoners. He became part of a post-Stalin, short-lived ruling troika until he was executed for treason after Nikita Khrushchev’s coup d’etat in 1953.

Beria targeted “the man” first, then proceeded to find or fabricate a crime. Beria’s modus operandi was to presume the man guilty, and fill in the blanks later. By contrast, under the United States Constitution, there’s a presumption of innocence that emanates from the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments, as set forth in Coffin vs. U.S. (1895).

Regardless of how you feel about President Trump, do you want to see the Constitution shredded because the deep state has a vendetta?

 

 

Why Borders Are Important

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Yesterday The Washington Times reported the following:

Border Patrol agents arrested 11 Iranians Monday after they sneaked across the border into Arizona.

The five women and six men were traveling as a group, and were nabbed on a bridge near San Luis, a border crossing point. Agents said the group had just crossed the border.

These men and women may have simply been people seeking a better life, but because our southern border is generally porous, they were able to enter America illegally. We have no idea how many Iranians or people from countries that wish America harm have come in through our southern border.

If we intend to remain a country, we need to secure our borders.

Interesting Pushback

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According to the Los Angeles Times (in an article posted January 21st):

The Biden administration announced Thursday the suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for U.S. lands and waters, effective for 60 days, as officials moved quickly to reverse Trump administration policies on energy and the environment.

The suspension, part of a broad review of programs at the Interior Department, went into effect immediately under an order signed Wednesday by acting Interior Secretary Scott de la Vega. It follows President Biden’s campaign pledge to halt new drilling on federal lands and end the leasing of publicly owned energy reserves to help address climate change.

That ruling resulted in the following letter written by Luke Duncan, Chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee, to the Acting Secretary of the Interior, Scott de la Vega (posted at Breitbart January 24th)

The article at Breitbart quotes a Washington Times article:

The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, which has run an oil-and-gas operation on its 4.5 million-acre reservation for more than 70 years, requested Thursday an exemption for tribal lands from the Interior Department order that halts agencies from issuing permits and leases on mineral production for 60 days.

Breitbart reports:

Duncan called the order “a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination,” adding, “Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any action on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.”

According to the tribe’s website, mining oil and natural gas is “big business on the reservation.”

The Ute Indian reservation is obviously much smaller than it originally was. The government took a large portion of their land. Now we are adding insult to injury by preventing a group of people engaged in legal, profitable economic activity from making a living and being self-supporting. I am not sure this is really the direction we should be headed. Stay tuned.

 

 

The Role Of The Media In The 2020 Presidential Election

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Yesterday The Washington Times (the link is to the article posted on outline, as I don’t have a subscription to The Washington Times) posted an article about the role of the media in the 2020 Presidential election.

The article reports:

A new post-election poll conducted by the Media Research Center reveals that 36% of voters who chose presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden were not aware of the evidence linking him “to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter Biden,” noted an analysis of the findings released Monday.

“Thirteen percent of these voters (or 4.6% of Biden’s total vote) say that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for the former Vice President. Such a shift away from Biden would have meant President Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes,” the conservative press watchdog noted.

The greater implication: Press coverage was at fault.

“It is an indisputable fact that the media stole the election. The American electorate was intentionally kept in the dark. During the height of the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, the media and the big tech companies did everything in their power to cover it up. Twitter and Facebook limited sharing of the New York Post’s reports, and the liberal media omitted it from their coverage or dismissed it as Russian disinformation,” says Brent Bozell, founder of the center.

Remember that The New York Post was shut out of Twitter for posting an article about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Any articles dealing with Biden family corruption are immediately fact-checked by Facebook. My right wing granny group on Facebook has been charged with sharing false information (anyone can join, please do). There is a mass exodus from Facebook right now. I am not sure how permanent it will be. As much as it is nice to communicate with old friends, it is not so nice to be brainwashed. Actions have consequences, and Facebook may be facing those consequences.

Judging Current Statements On Past Actions

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On July 4, 2019, The Washington Times posted an article detailing some of the arguments then Senator Joe Biden made against giving refuge to South Vietnamese fleeing to America. The statement simply does not line up with statements and claims that the former Vice-President is currently making.

The article reports:

Democratic presidential front-runner Joseph R. Biden, who has denounced President Trump’s efforts against Central American asylum-seekers, vigorously opposed resettling as refugees South Vietnamese who had helped the U.S. during the war.

The Washington Examiner reported Thursday, citing records from the administration of President Gerald R. Ford, that as a U.S. senator, Mr. Biden tried to deny refuge to hundreds of thousands fleeing the imminent North Vietnamese victory and likely Communist persecution.

Mr. Biden’s arguments about refugees reverse what he and other Democrats now insist are the only moral stances, saying that the U.S. had “no obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals,” the Examiner reported.

Certainly the need to provide asylum at that time was critical. Anyone even accused of helping America or siding with America was going to be executed as soon as the communists took over South Vietnam.

The article continues:

“The United States has no obligation to evacuate one — or 100,001 — South Vietnamese,” Mr. Biden said then.

In an April 1975 meeting at the White House with Ford and several of his top foreign-policy officials including Henry Kissinger, Mr. Biden said he would not vote to fund evacuation of non-Americans.

The article concludes:

“I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out,” Mr. Biden said, speaking two weeks before the fall of Saigon.

This angered Ford, calling such a refusal a betrayal of American values in terms similar to what Democrats say about Mr. Trump in 2019.

“We opened our door to the Hungarians. … Our tradition is to welcome the oppressed,” Ford said.

In a Miami Herald op-ed column last month, Mr. Biden called the Trump administration’s efforts to keep out or discourage asylum seekers at the border, “actions that subvert American values.”

Mr. Biden didn’t get his way on opening American doors to endangered South Vietnamese.

He was one of only three Foreign Relations panel members to vote against Ford’s funding request and one of just 14 to do so on the Senate floor.

More than 130,000 South Vietnamese fleeing the victorious Communists were eventually evacuated and granted refuge in the U.S.

I guess then Senator Biden figured the Vietnamese wouldn’t vote Democrat.

Do You Believe Joe Or The Treasury Department?

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The Washington Times ( to read the entire article, try opening it up in a private window) posted an article yesterday about the charge levied by President Trump that Joe Biden’s son Hunter took large sums of money of money from corrupt oligarchs and Chinese communists during the time Joe Biden was vice-president.

The article reports:

“That’s is not true. That report is totally false,” Mr. Biden said.

A Senate Republican report by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee says Mr. Trump is right, though it was not Moscow’s mayor, but his wife, whom the U.S. suspects of corruption in attaining billionaire status.

Hunter Biden received a single wire transfer of $3.5 million from Elena Baturina. The Senate report said she became a billionaire through illegal construction contracts awarded by her husband, since deceased.

This is based on Treasury Department reports received by committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.

The Senate narrative is not specific, but the types of transaction records match the description of confidential suspicious activity reports that the Treasury issues when it suspects illegal activity.

The Senate report says, “On Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement.’ Rosemont Seneca Thornton is an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden that was incorporated on May 28, 2013 in Wilmington, Del.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It provides a timeline of the appointment of Joe Biden as President Obama’s point man in Ukraine and Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings.

The Senate report also states:

“In addition to providing new and descriptive details about the nature, origin and extent of payments from Burisma Holdings to Hunter Biden, the documents acquired by the Committees also shed light on a much broader array of questionable financial transactions involving Hunter Biden, other members of the Biden family, and their associations with foreign nationals. These foreign nationals have questionable backgrounds that have been identified as being consistent with a range of criminal activities, including but not limited to organized prostitution and/or human trafficking, money laundering, fraud, and embezzlement.”

Re-electing President Trump would end the Biden family corruption. That would be nice.

 

 

What Did They Expect?

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about the increase of shootings in Portland, Oregon, after the Mayor Ted Wheeler disbanded the city’s police gun crimes unit. What did they expect?

The article reports:

The city recorded 223 shootings in July and August, up from 77 over the same period in 2019. And a little more than halfway through September the city already had 64 shootings, or double the shootings from the same month last year.

The numbers were released last week.

On Monday the federal Justice Department declared Portland and two other cities, Seattle and New York, to be “Anarchy Jurisdictions.” In Portland the federal officials cited the increase in gun crimes as one reason.

The city has faced near-nightly mayhem since late May, when protests broke out over the death of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis. More than 25 riots have been declared in the days since.

The article concludes:

Mr. Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, announced in early June he was disbanding the Portland Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team as part of an effort to “reimagine” city policing. Protesters had said the unit unfairly targeted Black men.

In August, after seeing the spike in shootings in July, Mr. Wheeler said he was pondering restoring some type of gun crimes unit.

At least Mr. Wheeler is considering correcting his mistake.

It Has Happened Before, It Will Happen Again Unless It Is Stopped

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about double voting that occurred in
Georgia and North Carolina 2016-2018.

The article reports:

Anti-universal mail ballot activists say the two states are a tip-off for what will happen in the Nov. 3 election.

Liberal journalists demand that the Trump administration, which opposes mass-mailed ballots in most states, provide evidence of fraud. The counterargument is that it is difficult to cite such examples when only a handful of states before 2020 adopted remote voting.

Those unique balloting procedures painstakingly took years to perfect the checks and balances needed to avoid doubling voting. Today, because of the coronavirus pandemic, 22 states are fast-tracking the shift from in-person voting and toward the U.S. Postal Service, according to Ballotpedia.

Experts estimate that 80 million Americans will vote by mail in the 2020 general elections, about double those in 2016, when a total of 138 million people cast ballots for president in person or from afar.

The article explains:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has investigated instances in which fraud already may have occurred.

Clark County, Nevada’s largest, decided to switch to mail-in ballots just two months before its June primary. The result: nearly 225,000 of 1.3 million mailed ballots (17.3%) were sent back by the Postal Service as undeliverable. Only 305,000 mail-in ballots (23.5%) were accepted and counted, according to numbers provided to PILF.

In this year’s primary seasons alone, election boards across the country have rejected 534,000 ballots, compared with 318,716 in the 2016 election.

“American voters have a variety of warning signs demonstrating why voting in person in 2020 is the safest option to ensure their vote counts,” PILF spokesman Logan Churchwell told The Washington Times. “Even if they trust the postal system enough to get their votes handled on time, they still risk historic amounts of rejected ballots.”

Federal law prohibits voting more than once in the same election. From press reports, it appears that most mailed ballots are rejected because the voter’s signature does not match the one on file.

The article also notes:

PILF picked North Carolina and Georgia, where lawsuits are pending, to request a huge amount of voter data and then file two court briefs.

In North Carolina, auditors found nearly 20,000 voters who appeared to have voted twice in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

“This is a widespread concern in North Carolina,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said after filing a court brief in July. “We should be talking about how to strengthen our systems against misdeeds done out of the sight of election officials in 2020 instead of defending an imperfect system from total ruin. The plaintiffs are only raising the threat of worsening the settled fact that voter fraud is most common in the mail.”

In Georgia, PILF not only found more than 4,000 dead people on the rolls but also calculated that about 10,000 registrants voted twice in 2016 and 2018.

Obviously, this is an important election. We need to make sure that every legal vote is counted and the no legal votes are canceled by an illegal vote.

Something To Consider Before You Vote

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Yesterday Jed Babbin posted an article at The Washington Times titled, “Biden’s loose lips will make it difficult to maintain national security and America’s secrets.” That is a frightening statement, but unfortunately it is true.The article notes the events following then Vice-President Biden’s statement that Osama bin Laden was killed by a Navy SEAL Team.

The article notes:

On May 2, 2011, President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden. He credited the action to a “small team of Americans.” That was the right way to do it.

Nine days later, Mr. Biden made a speech in which he said that the bin Laden operation was conducted by Navy SEALs. He did not name SEAL Team Six specifically, but once the SEALs were named, any intelligence agency (or terrorist network) could easily determine that it was Team Six. The location of their home base — and thus their families — has been one of the worst-kept secrets in the military. Mr. Biden’s remarks endangered them all.

Caring for the nation’s secrets is a mundane task at which the Obama administration — including Mr. Biden — failed utterly. 

The members of Navy SEAL Team Six were killed in an ambush on August 6, 2011. The claim that the ambush was a result of Joe Biden’s stating that the SEALs killed bin Laden is disputed by some, but those familiar with the events believe the ambush was the result of the Vice-President’s statements.

The article also notes that during the Obama administration classified information was sent over non-secure computers (Hillary Clinton’s private server) even by the President. It is considered highly likely that the Chinese had a copy of everything that went through Mrs. Clinton’s server in real time. We lost a lost of intelligence assets in China during those years.

Those who have watched the infrequent appearances of the former Vice-President believe that he is showing his age. He does not seem to be able to hold a train of thought for an extended period of time and seems to be easily distracted or confused. Are the American voters willing to trust a man who may not be working at full mental capacity?

 

This Article Is NOT Satire

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article with the following headline, “Jamie Lee Curtis warns of Trump fans stealing mail trucks to win 2020: ‘Let’s not let it happen!'”

The article includes this tweet:

The article reports:

Celebrity activist Jamie Lee Curtis says she’s worried that President Trump’s supporters may steal the 2020 election by making off with United States Postal Service trucks. 

The “Halloween” star left Twitter users confused on Tuesday after peddling a conspiracy theory of enormous size and scope. 

“I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters,” she tweeted nearly 560,000 fans while attaching an image of a damaged USPS vehicle. “Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden.”

I have nothing to add.

I’m Not Convinced This Was An Accident

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The Washington Times is reporting today that three New York City police officers were served drinks laced with bleach at a Shake Shack at 200 Broadway in Manhattan.

The article reports:

The New York City Police Department found “no criminality” by Shake Shack employees after three officers drank milkshakes believed to be contaminated with bleach.

The NYPD reached that conclusion early Tuesday after a “thorough investigation” by detectives in Manhattan.

I’m sorry–I just don’t believe that. How many other people had drinks with bleach in them? How many other people got sick after ordering drinks from the Shake Shack? I am not impressed by the investigation by the detectives in Manhattan.

The article concludes:

The PBA (Police Benevolent Association) said the officer had been “on protest detail.”

The group advised all members “to carefully inspect any prepared food item they purchase while on duty.”

“When New York City police officers cannot even take meal without coming under attack, it is clear that [the] environment in which we work has deteriorated to a critical level.

“We cannot afford to let our guard down for even a moment,” the PBA advised in bold-face type.

According to WCBS, the Shake Shack employees were being questioned, but there have been no arrests.

Just last week, Shake Shack bragged about its contributions to those protesting the police around the country and calling for departments to be defunded.

“Last week, we shared the immediate actions we’re taking to become better allies, not only for our Black colleagues, but for the entire Black community. That included a $100K donation to” the Equal Justice Initiative, which the restaurant chain said it “stand[s] behind the important work” such as “ending mass incarceration + excessive punishment.”

On June 12th, The New York Post reported that two National Guardsmen who were deployed to Washington, D.C., during the George Floyd protests were delivered a pizza containing shards of glass in the dough and cheese.

There are a lot of crazies out there. Everyone needs to be careful.

 

Something To Watch While Everything Else Is Going On

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about contact tracing in the era of the coronavirus. Since the article is behind the subscriber wall, I found it on Outline. The article reminds us how the government can easily abuse its power under the guise of tracking contacts to prevent the spread of a virus.

The article reports:

From The Hill, in a piece titled, “A day in the life of America’s contact tracing army,” comes this quote of Kelsey Green, a contact tracer working for the Carroll County Health Department in Maryland: “It’s not a fun job at times,” she said, in reference to the telephone calls she makes to people to inform them they may have come into contact with someone who’s tested positive for the coronavirus.

She went on to say: “A lot of people don’t want to hear it, but when they do hear it, they’re receptive and thankful. It seems a little intrusive, but it makes me so happy if someone answers [the phone], and I’m able to tell them, ‘Hey, you’ve been in contact with someone who’s tested positive. Can you quarantine?’ “

Quarantine?

How about this as a response: Who the freak are you? Hang up, hang up quick. Hang up quick and call the police; there’s a stalker on the streets.

The article concludes:

If the government says you have been exposed to the coronavirus — then that’s it, you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus. And now you must stay home. Now you must cede your civil liberties.

Now you must do as the government says.

Now you must obey.

This is America, post-COVID-19, and the “new normal.” Where are the Republican lawmakers on this?

Congress, at least the conservatives in Congress, need to step in and put a speedy end to these crazily unconstitutional designs with legislation that makes clear: Neither contract tracers nor their minions in the bureaucratic health fields have power to tell free citizens what to do, positive coronavirus test results be danged.

Free American citizens are only free so long as they are able to keep control of their most basic private and personal decisions. If the government can tell citizens what to do when they’re sick, or maybe sick, or might be sick, or have maybe crossed paths with someone who is sick, or maybe sick — well then, that’s the end of freedom in America as we know it.

The “new normal” is no America at all.

If we are still a country in five years, I wonder how we will look back on this. Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article.

Being Black vs. Being Politically Black

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Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about Joe Biden’s recent statement about being black. The article is behind the pay wall, but you can find it here.

The article notes:

New York Times luminary Nikole Hannah-Jones, architect of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, touched off a social-media uproar Friday after drawing a distinction between being “politically black and being racially black.”

“There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black,” tweeted Ms. Hannah-Jones. “I am not defending anyone, but we all know this and should stop pretending that we don’t.”

Despite insisting that she was not defending “anyone,” Ms. Hannah-Jones made her comments shortly after former Vice President Joseph R. Biden suggested that only Democrat-voting blacks are truly black in a heated exchange with radio host Charlamagne Tha God.

“I’ll tell you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black,” said Mr. Biden.

Ms. Hannah-Jones deleted her tweet because “the racist trolls are here,” but also responded to critics who accused her of demeaning black voters who support conservatives, as captured in a thread on Twitchy.

“I don’t think he was saying you are not racially black, or racially black enough if you vote for Trump. I think he was speaking about politics, yes,” tweeted Ms. Hannah-Jones on her “Ida Bae Wells” account.

She added that Mr. Biden, the putative 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, was “clearly saying no black person would vote for a white nationalist with his policies,” apparently referring to Mr. Trump.

So the President who gave us the lowest black unemployment ever recorded is a white nationalist? Wow.  That takes some serious logic leaps. The Democrats always pull out the race card when they feel that they are losing an election. Hopefully, there are enough people of all races to realize that the Trump presidency has been good to people of every race. I look forward to the day when all people vote ideas rather than race.

Citing A Non-Existent Report In Order To Fuel The Narrative

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It is no surprise that the mainstream media is trying to blame President Trump for any and all deaths associated with the coronavirus. Not to mention the fact that many deaths reported as caused by the virus have very little to do with the virus. However, one of their recent attempts has failed miserably. There has been a claim that President Trump was briefed on the coronavirus in November. The Washington Times posted an article on April 9, 2020, that corrects the claim.

The article reports:

The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

ABC said the report was issued in November by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It supposedly warned of a pandemic of what would be later named COVID-19.

Relying on sources who said they saw the report, ABC News said the warning was briefed “multiple times” to the DIA, the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House.

I have learned in recent years that any claim made by unnamed sources tends to be proven wrong as events unfold.

The article continues:

The Pentagon said it did an exhaustive search and could find no such document.

Col. R. Shane Day, a physician who heads the medical intelligence unit, issued a flat denial.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” Col. Day said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

A defense official told The Washington Times, “The center is part of the broader Intelligence Community effort to provide intelligence, expert assessments, and pandemic warning to senior U.S. government leaders, with the critical mission of supporting defense policymakers and U.S. warfighters. NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product.”

November was the date of the first reported victim of the virus, but considering that our intelligence assets in China were severely compromised because of the Chinese hacking into Hillary Clinton’s private server, it it unlikely that we would have had information on the virus.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s Report Has Been Released

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Yesterday Charles Hurt posted an opinion piece at The Washington Times about the report of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz concerning abuses at the highest levels of the Department of Justice.

The piece reports:

We now know that FBI agents — operating at the behest of powerful appointees of the Obama administration — deliberately doctored foreign intelligence to obtain secret warrants to spy on an active political campaign for president. In the United States of America.

This is no longer opinion or speculation. This is fact, backed up by exhaustive investigation and extensive evidence. The fact that these massive abuses are getting short-shrift in the media today only reveals the extent to which the media has been a co-conspirator in this travesty of justice.

They have become outright defenders of a police state, where spying on innocent Americans seeking political office is now perfectly acceptable to them.

Meanwhile, in Congress, the most powerful Democrats in the land knew what was going on and encouraged it. All for sick partisan gain.

To cover their tracks, they lied and accused their political opponents of doing exactly what they themselves did: Using foreign disinformation straight out of Moscow to sow discord and win an election here in the United States.

Again, this is not some hot-headed opinion from a crazy conspiracy theorist. Or, at least, it’s not just that. It also happens to be the stone-cold truth.

As the information is revealed, it is easy to understand why the people involved fought so hard to keep it from becoming public. There are many of our elected officials who have fought to keep the truth from coming out. The voters are the only way that those not directly involved who worked to keep the truth away from the public will be held accountable. It is now becoming obvious that the entire impeachment fiasco had nothing to do with President Trump, but instead was to distract Americans from the truth that many of our elected officials were attempting to keep buried.

Why A Secure Border Matters

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Evidently China has been dealing with the coronavirus since December of last year. The virus has had a serious impact on the country in both economic and health areas. The restriction on Chinese citizens traveling to America that began in January has probably helped prevent a widespread epidemic in this country. However, the risk is still there.

The Daily Wire is reporting today:

“Some 328 illegal immigrants from China have been nabbed jumping the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year, according to Homeland Security data that raises the prospect a coronavirus carrier could sneak into the country via the border,” The Washington Times reported. “Three other people from South Korea — another country with rapidly spreading cases — have also been arrested at the border, as have 122 people from the Dominican Republican, where the coronavirus has now been detected.”

…Border Patrol agents told the Times that in addition to the 1,000 illegal aliens who are caught every day entering the United States through the southern border with Mexico, which is also dealing with an outbreak of the coronavirus, a significant number of illegal aliens are managing to sneak into the country undetected.

“The journey to the U.S. border puts migrants in poor conditions,” a Homeland Security official told The Washington Times. “We don’t know if they have come into contact with someone who has the flu, there is no passport, medical history, or travel manifest.”

The article concludes:

Another senior administration official told The Examiner, “We have a unique public health threat posed by individuals arriving unlawfully at the border. Any halting of MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols –the remain in Mexico policy) would exacerbate that threat.”

DHS acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told The Examiner that the department’s top objective was protecting the American people, and that Trump’s efforts have gone a long way toward achieving that goal.

“The American people can be assured that we’re doing everything we can to protect our homeland. While the general risk to the American public remains low, DHS has mobilized a departmentwide response to keep Americans safe, secure, and informed,” Cuccinelli said. “Fortunately, we were able to engage DHS assistance early to prevent the spread of this virus in the U.S. We remain locked arm-in-arm with our interagency partners, HHS and CDC health professionals, and state and local officials acting as one to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.”

An open border represents both a security risk and a health risk. It is time to stop playing politics with the lives of American people and secure the border.

How Soon They Forget

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On Thursday, The Washington Times posted an article about President Trump’s naming of Richard Grenell as the new acting director of national intelligence. The political left is complaining about the nomination, claiming that Ambassador Grenell is not qualified. The article reports that when Leon Panetta was chosen by President Obama to lead the CIA, Panetta had no intelligence experience.

The article notes:

What’s wrong is Grenell is pro-Trump and he’s being appointed to head an agency with a deep state reputation filled with deep state resentments about this president. The left is panicked about the potential for light to shine on their anti-Trump — anti-American — covert activities.

So they’re pretending as if Grenell isn’t the right guy for the job based on his experience.

“Grenell … is known to be fiercely loyal to Trump, but critics have noted that he has no background in intelligence and no top-level management experience,” NPR reported.

And this, from ex-FBI agent Clint Watts, on Twitter: “Grennell as DNI can only be seen as a way for Trump to achieve confirmation bias for his conspiracies & block real analysis and true assessments of threats. Not a serious nominee. How much tax payer money will be used to run down nonsense?”

And this, interestingly enough, from Iran Press: “Trump names incompetent person as acting spy chief.”

The article concludes:

Grenell, at least, is an ambassador — somebody who has to deal with national security issues while navigating complicated, oft-conflicting waters, while calming and soothing and wheeling-and-dealing with a variety of personalities, all expressing a variety of interests. In other words: Grenell is somebody who at least has some hands-on experience doing exactly what intel folk do.

But Grenell is pro-Trump.

And that’s why the deep state and globalist elites deem him unqualified.

If Panetta was qualified as CIA chief, Grenell is more than qualified as acting director of national intelligence.

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Kash Patel previously worked as Devin Nunes’ senior staffer on the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI).  It was Patel who was the lead author of the Nunes memo exposing corrupt conduct of the FBI and DOJ officials during Crossfire Hurricane.

Patel joined the National Security Council’s International Organizations and Alliances directorate last February and was promoted to the senior counterterrorism role at the NSC mid-summer 2019.  According to recent reporting Patel is now joining Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as a Senior Advisor and Catherine Herridge is reporting the objective is to ‘clean house‘.

I wonder how much of this ‘housecleaning’ is going to put some members of Congress in a very bad light. Bring it on!