Author Archives: granny g

The Firing Of A New York City College Professor

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On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that the Manhattan college professor who threatened a Post reporter with a machete has been fired. Really??!

The article reports:

Shellyne Rodriguez was sacked by Hunter College just hours after the adjunct professor was caught on camera holding the blade to the veteran reporter’s neck while threatening to “chop” him up outside her Bronx apartment.

“Hunter College strongly condemns the unacceptable actions of Shellyne Rodriguez and has taken immediate action,” school spokesman Vince Dimiceli told The Post.

“Rodriguez has been relieved of her duties at Hunter College effective immediately, and will not be returning to teach at the school.”

The unhinged art professor wielded the machete and spewed the menacing remarks after the veteran Postie approached her regarding a viral video that showed her flipping out on pro-life students at Hunter College earlier this month.

If this person is representative of the people teaching our children in school, we are in serious trouble.

Ford Cars Will Still Have AM Radios

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about Ford Motor Company and their reversal of the decision not to put AM Radios in their cars next year.

The article reports:

The Ford Motor Company on Tuesday announced that it would not eliminate AM radio from nearly all of its new vehicles amid considerable pushback from lawmakers and consumers.

“After speaking with policy leaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system, we’ve decided to include it on all 2024 [Ford] & [Lincoln] vehicles,” wrote CEO Jim Farley on Twitter. “For any owners of Ford EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update.”

“Customers can currently listen to AM radio content in a variety of ways in our vehicles – including via streaming – and we will continue to innovate to deliver even better in-vehicle entertainment and emergency notification options in the future,” he continued. “Thanks to our product development and manufacturing teams for their quick response to make this change for our customers.”

The company had not originally planned to include AM radio in most of its new vehicles and had cited research indicating that less than 5% of in-car listening came from AM stations. The decision generated significant backlash from right-leaning pundits and lawmakers.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle noted that AM radio is a key component in the U.S. Emergency Alert System, with Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher and New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer urging Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell to assert the importance of maintaining AM radio in vehicles.  Talk radio host John Catsimatidis and former Vice President Mike Pence also teamed up to create a public service announcement in support of AM radio.

AM Radio is also the home of a lot of conservative talk shows. There is a possibility that the company may have been under pressure to eliminate AM Radio as part of the continuing effort to squelch conservative speech.

Times Have Changed And We Have Lost Our Sense Of Humor

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I was never a Monty Python fan, but I have to admit that some of the skits in their movies were funny. Some were controversial, but also very funny. On Monday, Steven Hayward at Power Line Blog posted an article about plans to create a stage musical based on The Life of Brian. However, there is a problem.

The skit below is the problem:

I think the skit is not only funny, it is very timely. The movie was made in 1979, but the above scene totally captures where we are today.

The article at Power Line Blog reports:

Well guess what? There is a stage musical version of Life of Brian in development, largely because of the success of “Spamalot,” the stage musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And guess which scene the producers have said must be cut out? Of course you don’t need to guess at all:

Cleese, 83, the prime mover in the revival, said: ‘I think Life Of Brian is our best film. We are going to do it in London in the second half of next year and I’ve changed certain things.’

One exchange which has had to come out is the discussion between People’s Front of Judea members Stan (played by Idle) and Reg (Cleese). Stan says that he wants to be known as Loretta and to have babies. ‘It’s every man’s right to have babies if you want them,’ says Stan. Reg counters: ‘But — you can’t have babies.’ At which Stan responds: ‘Don’t you oppress me.’

Cleese told an audience at his one-man show last week that when the scene (co-written with the late Graham Chapman) was performed at a read-through for the new show in New York last year, doubts emerged. ‘At the end, I said to the American actors: ‘What do you think?’ And they said: ‘We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays.’

‘So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later.’

We have lost our sense of humor.

The Challenge Of Passing A Common-Sense Bill In The North Carolina Legislature

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In North Carolina, we all remember Covid–the lockdowns, the school closings, the church closings, the vaccine mandates, etc., but we need also to remember that a lot of those things were the result of Executive Orders by Governor Roy Cooper. Unfortunately there was no check on those Executive Orders and they never seemed to expire. There is an effort to change that–House Bill 169.

House Bill 169 states:

In plain English, this bill reins in the powers of the Governor, brings the Council of State into the process, and limits the time an Executive Order can be in place unless the General Assembly concurs.

This is a good bill. Unfortunately, according to ncleg.gov, the bill has been in committee since February:

Ref to the Com on Judiciary 1, if favorable, State Government, if favorable, Rules, Calendar, and Operations of the House on 2/23/2023

It’s time to call your Representative and get this bill moved out of committee and voted on.

 

Solving the Debt Crisis

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Author: R, Alan Harrop

The current debt default discussion is a good time for us to take an honest look at the extent of the problem. Here goes. The total federal debt in 1993 was 4.3 trillion dollars, today, thirty years later the debt is 32 trillion dollars. That is a 744% increase. It amounts to $91,430 for every man, woman and child. However, since only about 150 million people pay federal taxes, it amounts to $213,000 per taxpayer. I strongly suspect that your income and net worth has not increased 744% in the past 30 years. If you took the national debt of 32 trillion dollars and stacked them up, the stack would be 2,584 thousand miles high or 11 one-way trips to the moon. Clearly, this is unsustainable.

The question is, what do we do about it. As Reagan once said: “The federal government does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.” Assuming our elected leaders are serious about stopping this reckless spending (which is questionable at best), here are some things that can be done: (1) Reduce the budget of all federal agencies by 5% a year, exempting the Department of Defense. (2) Eliminate the federal Department of Education, which has a budget of $87 billion dollars. This agency was started during the Carter administration and is not needed, since the states have constitutional authority over education. (3) Reduce the budget of the FBI by 50% and refuse to fund their request to fund a new headquarters that would be larger than the current Pentagon. This should include removing arresting authority (started in 1934) from the FBI and returning it to a strictly investigative body with arresting authority remaining with local law enforcement. (4) Eliminate granting welfare, and other social programs to illegal aliens. They broke the law to get here and should be identified and returned to their country of origin. Illegal aliens currently cost the taxpayers $151 billion each year, and that number is growing exponentially. (5) Implement a strict work requirement for any healthy person who is currently receiving welfare payments. Too many people are staying home and refusing to take available jobs. According to the Heritage Foundation, the average family of four receives over $70,000 in total welfare payments per year. (6) Stop weaponizing non-law enforcement federal agencies such as the IRS, State Department, Dept of Commerce, etc.

There are plenty of other places to cut spending, such as grants to various institutions. This represents only a partial list of what could be done and needs to be done before the entire system collapses. No sane individual would run their household budget like the politicians run the federal government. Much of this wasteful spending is initiated and passed to help politicians get re-elected. This is one of the main reasons why there is increasing demand by some for term limits. The Republicans in the House are fighting to at least begin the process of controlling spending. Let’s hope they succeed.

What is long overdue, is an amendment to the Constitution requiring a federal balanced budget. A Convention of States may be the only way this will ever be accomplished.

 

Do Parents Have Rights?

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Under the Biden administration’s policies, there are some real questions as to what the actual rights of parents are.

On Saturday, The Daily Wire posted the following headline:

‘These Are Our Kids, They Belong To All Of Us’: Three Times The Left Trampled On Parental Authority This Past Week Alone

These are the examples cited in the article:

“There are more than 600 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation out there,” Jean-Pierre said at the GLAAD Media Awards. “A few hundred of them are anti-trans communities, and that matters because we have to call that out. And we’ve never seen this level. It’s historic in the number of pieces of legislation.”

Perhaps the response is “historic” because it seems like the Left is attempting to convince the world that child mutilation is good and changing “genders” is real for the first time in history en masse.

Regardless, Jean-Pierre continued, “I’ve met a lot of parents of trans kids in the past couple of months who have told me these devastating stories, whether they’re in Texas or Oklahoma or wherever they are, saying how they now have to seriously consider leaving their state to protect their child. That’s something that we have to call out and continue to be very clear about. These are kids. These are our kids. They belong to all of us.“ (emphasis added)

If these kids belong to all of us, how come no one ever offered to pay for my kids’ braces?

The article continues with two more examples:

Friday afternoon, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona tweeted, “Teachers know what is best for their kids because they are with them every day. We must trust teachers.” (emphasis added)

And finally:

But let’s check in on one teacher, a member of the public servant class that serves as the supposed voice of wisdom as praised by Cardona. Jenna Barbee, a fifth-grade teacher in Florida’s Hernando County School District, had some thoughts on when parental rights start and end this week.

Florida has a parental rights law that now bans education on gender identity and sexual orientation unless it is related to the curriculum. Barbee recently decided to show a film featuring LGBTQ themes. Parents obviously took umbrage with that — arguing it’s not Barbee’s job to teach that sort of stuff.

“What she’s missing and what these parents are missing is that they’re not in the school system,” Barbee said in response. “These conversations, these doors that she’s talking about, telling me that I’m stripping her rights as a parent — those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system because there are students talking about these things.”

Well, no parental rights end just because their children step into a public school.

Please take your children out of public school–right now it’s not a good place!

Slowly But Surely?

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According to a Reuters article posted on May 15th, last year the Biden administration sold 180 million barrels of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order to stabilize the oil market and fight the high prices Americans were paying at the pump. The fact that this was done during an election year is purely coincidental.

On May 20th, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

President Joe Biden in December began working to replenish the 180 million barrels he sold last year from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Nearly six months later, he still has zero barrels to show for it.

Biden’s Energy Department on Monday announced its intention to purchase up to three million reserve barrels as a “continuation” of the president’s “replenishment strategy.” So far, however, that “strategy” has seen the Democrat fail to purchase a single barrel of reserve oil. The administration first tried to purchase three million reserve barrels in December, when Biden kicked off his “plan to replenish the SPR.” One month later, Biden’s Energy Department revealed it had rejected all offers it received to purchase the oil because those offers “were either too expensive or didn’t meet the required specifications.”

…Facing the “impossible” task of refilling the reserve to its past levels—the stock held 638 million barrels of oil when Biden took office and now holds just 362 million—Biden’s Energy Department is now channeling its replenishment efforts toward a more modest goal. The department in May touted its “significant progress toward replenishment,” citing its role in canceling congressionally mandated sales that would have seen the department sell 140 million reserve barrels between 2024 and 2027. As a result, the department says, the reserve will be effectively replenished by 2027—not because the barrels Biden sold will have been bought back, but rather because the reserve will save barrels thanks to the canceled sales.

“This cancellation … will allow the SPR to have the same number of barrels in reserve by the end of FY 2027 that it would have had emergency barrels not been sold in 2022,” the department said.

Oil prices sit at $72 a barrel, and the Biden administration hopes to purchase reserve oil at anywhere between $67 to $72 a barrel. Republicans tried to fill the reserve to its capacity in the spring of 2020—when a barrel of oil cost as low as $15—but Senate Democrats blocked the plan, attacking it as a “bailout for big oil.”

Biden went on to sell a historic number of reserve barrels in 2022, when the average price for a gallon of gas exceeded $5 in the United States for the first time ever. Millions of those barrels were sent overseas—Biden even sold nearly one million U.S. reserve barrels to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant, the Free Beacon reported last year, a sale that came as America’s top adversary scrambled to build up its own stockpile of oil.

I can’t help but wonder who advised the Biden administration to sell oil to China when we were tapping our own oil reserves. The use of the SPR for political purposes is a first, and it has left America in a weakened position. It really is time to go back to drilling for American oil and selling that oil to Americans.

Do You Feel That Someone Is Watching You?

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On Sunday, Townhall posted an article about the number of warrantless searches on American citizens.

The article reports:

In the fiscal year for the U.S. government that ended in November 2021, the FBI conducted more than 278,000 warrantless searches on U.S. citizens.

The information was unsealed in a FISA court ruling this past week.

So on average, during just that one year, the FBI was carrying out as many as 762 warrantless searches per day. That’s 32 improper searches per hour. That breaks down to a new warrantless search every 2 minutes.

These numbers do not include proper searches that used warrants and carried out the usual function of the bureau.

It also does not include the 3,400,000 times the FBI searched citizens’ data without warrants. That’s 9,315 per day, 388 per hour, and 6.5 per minute.

So in 2021–every two minutes—the FBI conducted a physical search and 13 data searches—illegally—for the entire year.

The same agency we now know tipped off that Hillary Clinton was colluding with Russia to frame Donald Trump and did nothing about it…

The same agency that lied to the FISA court to extend search warrants to surveil people that were later vindicated and cleared…

The same agency that allowed agents to conduct extra-marital relationships (an action that violates the FBI code of conduct) and feverishly work to remove a lawfully elected President…

The same agency that has held the Hunter Biden laptop in its possession has chosen to do zero in enforcement….

The same agency that knew that one political party was attempting to smear, frame, and remove an incoming President and briefed then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice-President Joe Biden as to the plans…

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Unfortunately there is more.

Our Constitution protects us from unlawful searches:

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The people engaged in this unlawful surveillance need to be arrested.

Where Are The Fact-Checkers?

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On Friday, Just the News posted an article detailing some of the lies being told about raising the debt ceiling.

The article notes:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office is disputing reports on social media and websites that Republicans are demanding President Biden agree to work requirements on a litany of social services programs in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

A headline on the website Raw Story declared, “McCarthy demands work requirements on ‘all the programs’ including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP.”

The story was also retweeted by a former Obama campaign official Jon Cooper. 

“Kevin McCarthy is demanding that WORK REQUIREMENTS be added to receive not only Medicaid but also Medicare and Social Security. He doesn’t think Americans have earned their benefits – despite paying into all three programs over the course of their entire working lives,” Cooper wrote in another post Wednesday.

However, House Republicans’ push for work requirements as part of an agreement to raise the nation’s debt limit would apply only to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

The article notes:

The plan proposed by McCarthy and other GOP leaders to enforce work-related requirements in these federal benefit programs would not apply to Social Security and Medicare, contrary to information spreading on social media, the speaker’s office confirmed.

The article also notes that most Americans support work-requirements for some federal programs.

The article concludes:

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz argued that most Americans support work requirements as opposed to issuing benefits without any strings attached.

“An overwhelming majority of Americans support a work requirement for welfare,” Cruz said.

He also suggested that Biden doesn’t support such a requirement but once did.

“You know someone [whom] President Joe Biden ought to listen to? That would be Senator Joe Biden who has previously voted for work requirements for welfare. But now he’s handed the Democrat Party over to the crazy socialist wing of the party that doesn’t want anyone to work,” he said.

Democrats point to analysis from liberal organizations such as The Center for American Progress, which have concluded that work requirements would not work under programs like Medicaid. 

Most Americans are generous people who support charity. However, the government bureaucracy has grown so bloated that it is very easy for people to scam the welfare system. When social programs were handled locally, it was easy to tell who was gaming the system and who was not. Now there is a thought in the back of the basic bureaucrat’s mind that says, “If I get everyone off welfare, I will lose my job.” This is not a good business model.

Dealing With Crime In New York City

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Mayor Adams has released his plan to deal with crime in New York City. On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article about the plan.

The article reports:

New York, as with other Democrat-run cities, is experiencing a crime wave. Retail theft–shoplifting–has gone through the roof. Gangs of people go into stores and steal with impunity, leaving with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. It is both organized crime and disorganized. Thousands of people engage in the practice, with hundreds at least who do it as a living.

The article reports the plan:

The new crackdown includes giving first-time offenders intervention programs instead of prosecution, de-escalation training for retail employees, establishing neighborhood retail watch groups to share information about a theft in real-time with one another and the police, and installing kiosks in stores to connect would-be thieves with social service programs.

No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.

The article concludes:

Kiosks offering social service programs. Neighborhood groups to watch the crime happen–nobody, after all, is authorized or encouraged to interfere. We all know what interfering with a crime will get the good samaritan: time in Riker’s.

De-escalation training? Now that is funny. Expect to wind up on YouTube being smeared as a White Supremacist for not allowing yourself to be victimized. Oh..you don’t have to imagine it. It happens, and the MSM and the Left work overtime to destroy you.

…It took 6 months to come up with this plan.

Six months.

What is the point? When the tough-on-crime ex-cop suggests that kiosks with social service information are the solution to an ongoing crime wave, there really isn’t a point in sticking around. Pick up and leave.

As long as actions don’t have negative consequences, they will continue.

Why We Will Probably Never See More Footage From January 6th

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On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about one of the whistleblower’s testimony before Congress on Thursday.

The article reports:

FBI officials were concerned that footage from inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would show undercover agents and confidential informants, a whistleblower said in testimony revealed on May 18.

George Hill, a retired supervisory intelligence analyst who worked out of the FBI’s Boston field office, recounted that the bureau’s Washington field office (WFO) pressured officials in Boston to open investigations on 138 people who attended a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, even though there were no indications the people violated the law.

First of all, there is no reason to investigate anyone because they attended a rally. “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” is included in the First Amendment of our Constitution.

The article continues:

Boston officials pushed back, saying they would need evidence, such as footage of individuals inside the Capitol, to open investigations of the individuals.

“Happy to do it. Show us where they were inside the Capitol, and we’ll look into it,” one official was quoted as saying.

“We can’t show you those videos unless you can tell us the exact time and place those individuals were inside the Capitol,” WFO officials responded, according to Hill.

Hill said Boston officials questioned why they couldn’t get access to the tranche of some 11,000 hours of footage from inside the Capitol.

“Because there may be—may be—UCs, undercover officers, or … confidential human sources, on those videos whose identity we need to protect,” Washington-based officials responded.

Hill recounted the discussions during testimony to the U.S. House’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The clip from the testimony was played during a hearing on May 18 and detailed in a report the panel released based on whistleblower disclosures.

The FBI declined to address Hill’s testimony.

The article also notes:

Marcus Allen, another FBI employee who has also become a whistleblower, has alleged that he was retaliated against because he shared an email with other FBI workers that questioned whether FBI Director Christopher Wray was truthful while testifying to Congress.

“You believe that Christopher Wray indicated that there were no confidential informants, no FBI assets that were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that were part of the violent riot, isn’t that right?” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a member of the subcommittee, asked Allen.

“Yes, sir,” Allen said.

January 6th is looking more and more like a false flag operation planned by people who wanted to make sure Donald Trump would never be elected President again. That really makes me wonder exactly what they are afraid of.

There Was Some Interesting Information In The Durham Report

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article about some things in the Durham that have slipped under the radar.

The article reports:

Special Counsel John Durham’s highly-anticipated report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 revealed that top leaders at the Bureau shut down four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton.

In 2014, the FBI investigated a “well-placed” confidential source’s claims that an unnamed foreign government intended to “contribute to Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, as a way to gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency,” the report said.

The field office investigating these claims “almost immediately” sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, but it remained “in limbo” for approximately four months, primarily due to Clinton’s then-expected presidential campaign.

As stated in Durham’s report:

According to another agent, the application lingered because “everyone was ‘super more careful’” and “scared with the big name [Clinton]” involved. 321 “[T]hey were pretty “tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President.”

Durham’s report also revealed that three separate FBI field offices in Washington, DC; Little Rock, Arkansas; and New York City, New York, opened investigations into “possibly criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation” less than one year before the November 2016 presidential election.

Historically, people investigating the Clintons have a very high rate of suicide or accidental death.

The article concludes:

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee’s Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee, told the DailyMail that Durham’s report warrants “additional exposure and review.”

“The Clintons had a team of people at the FBI running interference for them to avoid criminal culpability,” Gaetz told the outlet. “These matters absolutely warrant additional exposure and review.”

Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said the FBI’s investigations into the Clintons “were shut down by the higher-ups who had an obvious political desire to see Donald Trump lose and Hillary Clinton win.”

“It’s disgusting really. Absolutely these investigations should be revisited,” he told DailyMail. “There’s no reason why Congress can’t have a series of hearings with the field agents who were pursuing the Clinton Foundation, and public interviews with them as well.”

There have been problems with the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover. I wonder if we currently have enough elected officials willing to dig into the dirt and clean up the Bureau.

The House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

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The House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government met on Thursday. It should not have been a political hearing, but it was. All Americans of both political parties should be concerned about using government agencies for political purposes. If you can use a government agency to silence your opposition, if your opposition ever gets control of that agency, they can use it to silence you. Think of Harry Reid and the ‘nuclear option.’ That is how we got three moderately conservative judges on the Supreme Court. I doubt that was Senator Reid’s goal.

On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted an article about the hearing. The article reports:

In an interim report, the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed testimony from whistleblower FBI agents on the “abuses and misconduct in the FBI.” The report was first obtained by Fox News.

“The disclosures from these FBI employees highlight egregious abuse, misallocation of law enforcement resources and misconduct with the leadership ranks of the FBI,” the report says.

The whistleblowers accused the FBI of “retaliatory conduct” taken against the agents after they made “protected disclosures about what they believed in good faith to be wrong conduct.”

Two whistleblowers who say they were retaliated against appeared on Capitol Hill Thursday morning to testify to the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Former FBI special agent Steve Friend and FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen both told the committee that the FBI retaliated unjustly against them.

“It appears that I was retaliated against because I forwarded information to my superiors and others that questioned the official narrative of the events of January 6. As a result, I was accused of promoting conspiratorial views and unreliable information. Because I did this, the FBI questioned my allegiance to the United States,” Allen told the committee. He said he has been suspended from the FBI for the past year.

The article notes:

The report said that Friend was suspended after he made protected whistleblower disclosures about the FBI’s handling of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) cases related to January 6. It added that the bureau manipulated DVE data connected to January 6 to make domestic extremism seem widespread instead of originating with a single event.

“According to whistleblower information, the FBI has manipulated the manner in which it categorized January 6-related investigations to create a misleading narrative that domestic terrorism is organically surging around the country,” the report says, according to The Washington Examiner. “Ordinarily, the FBI characterizes and labels cases according to the originating field office, with leads ‘cut’ to other field offices for specific assistance in that geographic location. With January 6 cases, however, the FBI has not followed its ordinary procedure, which would have resulted in the (Washington Field Office) leading the investigation and categorizing the investigations as WFO cases.”

There are a lot of questions about exactly what happened on January 6th. It appears that because Friend questioned the narrative that the Bureau, the Democrats, and the mainstream media set up, he was a threat. The FBI does need to be disbanded and replaced with an organization with much less power and under much closer oversight. There is a place for the FBI in America, but there is not a place for the political  organization it has become.

 

Behind The Smearing Of Justice Thomas And Justice Kavanaugh

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On Thursday, Red State posted an article about the accidental revealing of the donors behind Fix the Court, the group that is behind the effort to remove Justice Thomas and was behind the smear of Justice Kavanaugh.

The article reports:

The leftist campaign to force Justice Clarence Thomas from the US Supreme Court let its inner clown out when the executive director of the AstroTurf smear group Fix the Court inadvertently released the names of its donors to a Washington Examiner reporter.

Fix the Court has not only been a player in the current attacks on Justice Thomas, but they were also a major participant in the smear campaign directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

It all started innocently enough with Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky taking a deep dive into the finances of the fake groups trying to give the appearance of popular demand for Justice Thomas’ resignation. Kaminsky noticed that the New Venture Fund reported giving $111,677 to Fix the Court. On the other hand, Fix the Court did not file the required IRS Form 990 but used the truncated IRS Form 990-N used by non-profits raising less than $50,000. Kaminsky queried Fix the Court Executive Director Gabriel Roth about his violation of federal tax law.

…What the documents showed were two things. First, there is no widespread support for Fix the Court. In 2021, it received just over $290,000. Of that amount, $286,000 came from two grants: the previously mentioned $111,000 from the New Venture Fund and  $175,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In 2022, Fix the Court pulled in nearly $196,000. The three main contributors ponied up $185,000. The climate alarmist Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $50,000, the Lebowitz-Aberly Family Foundation donated $35,000, and the big loser was the Weinberg McCann Foundation which was tapped for $100,000.

Why do I say big loser? Well, of the $486,000 Fix the Court has raised in the last two years, $242,000 went to its executive director as salary. In 2022, $162,000 of the $195,000 raised went into Mr. Roth’s pocket. As a result, Fix the Court looks much more like a jobs program for one guy with a website than a non-profit.

When you support an organization, it’s a good idea to check out where the money goes.

Dancing Before The Senate

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article that illustrates the problem with investigating the possible corruption of the Biden family business (I’m still not sure exactly what that business was).

The article reports:

Testifying in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray was asked why the Bureau has failed to turn over a key document that allegedly shows President Joe Biden taking bribes from a foreign actor during his time as vice president.

“I can’t speak to the specific document. We are committed to working collaboratively with both committees but we also have to balance sources and methods and ongoing investigations,” Wray said under questioning from Republican Senator Bill Hagerty. “I really can’t get into the specifics here.”

When is an answer not an answer? I think the quote above answers that question.

The article concludes:

“It’s clear from the FBI’s response that the unclassified record the Oversight Committee subpoenaed exists, but they are refusing to provide it to the Committee. We’ve asked the FBI to not only provide this record, but to also inform us what it did to investigate these allegations. The FBI has failed to do both,” Comer released in a statement Wednesday about the FBI’s lack of compliance. “The FBI’s position is ‘trust, but you aren’t allowed to verify.’ That is unacceptable. We plan to follow up with the FBI and expect compliance with the subpoena.”

Keep in mind that the ousting of President Biden is a planned activity. It will happen when the Democrats and the compliant media want it to happen. The investigation is not scripted, but the Democrat, Department of Justice, and FBI response are carefully planned to proceed with a plan already in place.

The Attack On The Supreme Court Continues

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The overturning of Roe v Wade resulted in the political left attacking the Supreme Court. It also resulted in protestors at the Supreme Court Justices’ homes (despite the fact that protesting against a judge’s home is illegal (Merrick Garland has chosen not to enforce that law). The left has attacked Clarence Thomas since before he was actually on the Court. The most recent attack comes from a Senator in Massachusetts who is a walking advertisement for term limits.

On Tuesday, BizPacReview reported the following:

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey introduced a bill to pack the Supreme Court on Tuesday, claiming during a press conference on the legislation that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have “no right” to be on the Court.

Markey’s Judiciary Act of 2023, which pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America endorsed, would add four seats to the Supreme Court. During his press conference on the Supreme Court steps, Markey called for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign and claimed that two justices have “no right to be there.”

“In 2016, Senate Republicans broke the rules and packed the court,” Markey said. “In 2020, Donald Trump helped them to break the rules again.”

Republicans refused to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016. After former President Donald Trump took office, Republicans confirmed Gorsuch in 2017.

After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Republicans confirmed Barrett in October 2020.

“We now have two justices on the bench, who frankly, have no right to be there,” he continued. “This Republican court packing has given us partisan justices eager to toss aside decades of precedent to satisfy their deep-pocketed, right-wing special interest benefactors.”

His solution to the charge that the Republicans have packed the court is to have the Democrats pack the court. How in the world does that make sense?

The Supreme Court is the last defense against the radical left’s political agenda. That is the reason the political left is attacking them so hard. This is a battle the political left needs to lose.

Tyranny Or Not?

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

We should all know that the Revolutionary War was fought to stop the tyranny of King George. According to Webster’s dictionary a tyrant is a ruler who is unrestrained by law or constitution. Are we being governed by tyrants? Let’s take a look.

President Joe Biden is not only ignoring the Constitution, but has taken actions that are unlawful and destructive to this nation. Open borders violates the Constitution and federal immigration laws. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution and obviously has no intention of doing so. Forgiving student loans, mandating vaccines, implementing regulations on emission standards that will end internal combustion engines, warring against fossil fuels, and getting us involved in foreign wars without Congressional approval are all actions of a tyrant.

At the state level, we have a Governor who would not relinquish emergency powers meant for a natural disaster and used those powers to control and restrict out freedom. More recently, Governor Cooper has mandated by executive order that North Carolina reduce its CO2 emissions by 70% by the year 2030. This is impossible without destroying the standard of living of every North Carolinian. He has authorized the construction of three extensive wind farms off the coast of North Caroina as well as solar panels on extensive form acreage. The fact that he and his brother, own one of the designated plots of land for these solar boondoggles goes unreported and unknown to most of us.

In some ways the most insidious threats to our freedom comes from unelected bureaucrats. Ostensibly, members of the Executive Branch, they are given wide range to impose regulations and take actions that limit our freedom. Mandatory vaccines, increasing attacks on gasoline powered vehicles by establishing impossible to meet emissions standards and hiding documents that show how they influenced elections are just a few of the many examples of the bureaucrats controlling our lives. The recent release of the Durham Report (took way too long) proved that the corrupt FBI was colluding with the Marxist Democrats to overturn the presidency of Donald Trump. Perhaps, the most frightening and brazen action of the out of control bureaucrats is the arming of IRS and other non-law-enforcement federal agencies. Why would any IRS agent need training in the use semi-automatic weapons? What are they getting ready for?

The impact of the above unlawful actions, threatens to destroy this country and makes the impact of King George’s Stamp Act pale in comparison. President Lincoln said it best when he said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign enemy but rather, if we are to be destroyed, it will be from within. Well, that is what is happening now. The American people must rise up and remove these tyrants one way or the other. Elections are always the best solution, but the tyranny we are experiencing today raises the question of whether fair elections can be counted on as an effective remedy. Are there too many people addicted to government handouts to stand up to tyranny and demand freedom? Time will tell. But the time is getting short if we are to save this country from the likes of the worst and most corrupt president in the history of our nation.

Even Legal Immigration Has Consequences

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about some employee changes in big tech.

The article reports:

Another sort of talking out-of-one-side-of-the-mouth while doing something entirely different example today.

We’ve been keeping abreast of the lay-offs in the tech sector here as part of our watching the Biden economy teeter and totter precipitously, and there has been quite an adjustment in those overall numbers since last fall.

…The employees that are retained are dealing with a vastly rejiggered cultural landscape as far as the perks, expectations, work from home, and general employment indulgences that were an ingrained part of their jobs for decades. Suck it up and tighten that belt if you want to stay.

In one example of shifting business practices in “subdued” times, Microsoft is still paying people, but they’ve announced they won’t be handing out annual raises this year.

Heartbreaking? Oh, those poor companies are struggling. Wait. Not so fast.

The article continues:

Based on data the government just put out, it seems Google, Meta, Zoom – shoot, they all went on a hiring spree last month for visa recipients. It’s a schweet workaround for tech firms, big and small.

…The top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 and laid off 85,000 employees

The article concludes:

Of course, if you’re already a visa worker and included in the lay-offs, you’re screwed. You have 60 days to find a new gig or you’re supposed to leave/be deported.

Rather a kick-in-the-teeth for the American techs they could have rehired who might well have been willing to work for less as their severances packages eroded or were already gone, if they got one.

And that’s how the visa game is played, ladies and germs.

This is how our government subsidizes corporations while giving Americans a raw deal. The practice of laying off Americans and employing foreign workers needs to end. We encourage our children in STEM studies then undercut them in their search for jobs. That is not a good business model.

 

Green Energy And Jobs

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article by Stephen Moore noting that some unions are finally realizing that the Biden administration’s green energy policies are not going to provide jobs.

The article reports:

Could it be that union bosses are finally waking up to the cold reality that the greatest threat to steel workers, the United Auto Workers, miners, machinists and the Teamsters is the radical climate change agenda of the environmentalists?

The green movement has taken the Democratic Party hostage — and President Joe Biden’s all-in embrace of far-left green policies is wreaking havoc on rank-and-file union jobs.

The United Auto Workers recently announced it would withhold its endorsement of Biden as he runs for a second term. “The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers,” UAW President Shawn Fain recently declared. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom” for America’s workers.

My only question: Why did it take five years to figure this out?

What a shock that a union that makes automobiles would have second thoughts about endorsing the reelection of a president who, just a few weeks ago, announced new regulations that are intended to end production of all gas cars within a decade. That’s a death sentence for UAW workers.

Meanwhile, California Democrats have proposed new rules to end the production of nearly 2 million diesel trucks. Has anyone alerted the Teamsters?

The article concludes:

This isn’t complicated. The leftists’ religious pursuit of “zero emissions” leads to a green holy land with no smokestacks, no power plants, no cars, no trucks, no steel mills, copper mines, pipelines, gas stoves, air conditioners, airplanes, nuclear plants, washers and dryers, pesticides, plastics, or cows and other livestock.

Oh — and as we sprint to a new post-industrial-age America, with no need for blue-collar unionized workers. The green “degrowth” movement isn’t about creating prosperity for union workers but about putting them on unemployment lines.

It’s good news that the Big Labor bosses are finally expressing some doubts about what the climate change agenda means for hard-hat workers. But if they keep working to elect climate change crazies, the demise of our union workforce will be swift and brutal.

It is important to do everything we can to protect and preserve the environment. However, that preservation has to be balanced with the ability to feed people and help people raise their standard of living. As people, we have the ability to preserve the planet, but we need to preserve each other in the process.

Informing Americans?

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On Monday, Newsbusters reported the following:

On Monday, Special Council John Durham’s long-awaited report into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation fell out of the blue. The report faults the FBI and says they should never have opened Crossfire Hurricane since it was entirely based on “leads provided or funded by Trump’s political opponents.” Despite how Durham spelled out the fact that the Trump-Russia probe was based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News stood behind it.

ABC chief Justice correspondent Thomas reported that Durham’s report found the FBI “never should’ve launched a probe in the first place, since ‘neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion.’”

He noted: “The bureau relied on ‘raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence.’ Noting that ‘there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents.’” He even admitted the infamous Steele Dossier was part of that effort.

But Thomas still insisted that then-candidate Donald Trump provided all the evidence the FBI needed to open the investigation

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

President Trump had one of the most successful presidencies in our history. His tax and regulation policies created amazing economic growth. We went for four years without getting involved in any new military actions overseas. It was a period of prosperity. Can you imagine how much more President Trump could have done if the deep state had not hamstrung his administration during the first two years? I truly believe that America needs to elect President Trump in 2024 for many reasons. Two of those reasons are that we need someone in the White House who understands economics and will revive the middle class and also that in a gesture of fairness, we need to give President Trump a chance to be President without the deep state putting lead weights on him.

I Guess They Haven’t Learned Their Lesson

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Obviously, the big news today is the release of the Durham Report. Unfortunately there will be no consequences for those who violated the law, but at least we now have the proof that they did. However, the FBI and the Justice Department do not seem to learn from experience that they are not supposed to be political.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

The IRS on Monday removed the “entire investigative team” from its long-running tax fraud probe of first son Hunter Biden in alleged retaliation against the whistleblower who recently contacted Congress to allege a cover-up in the case, The Post has learned.

The purge allegedly was done on the orders of the Justice Department, the whistleblower’s attorneys informed congressional leaders in a letter.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote.

The whistleblower, who supervised the Hunter Biden probe since early 2020, hasn’t publicly identified the first son as the subject of the case that he says is being brushed under the rug, but congressional sources confirmed it.

The article concludes:

The federal investigation reportedly has looked at whether Hunter laundered money, violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lied about his drug use on a gun purchase form. 

House Republicans, meanwhile, are investigating President Biden’s role in his family’s overseas dealings, through which Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden earned millions from partnerships with wealthy people in countries where their powerful relative held sway.

Joe Biden met with his relatives’ business associates on many occasions — including those from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine — and House Republicans allege that Biden family members offered no legitimate business services and were merely selling access to the US government.

I am waiting for someone to explain to me how the lifestyle of some of our ‘representatives’ matches up with their salaries. That alone would justify investigations into many of the people in Washington.

Some Basic Facts About The Debt Ceiling

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Issues & Insights is a blog that was started by the team that for decades had produced IBD Editorials at Investor’s Business Daily. They are one of the most reliable sites on the web for financial and political information.

On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the debt ceiling ‘crisis.’ The article pointed out a lot of basic facts that are being overlooked in the debate.

The article notes:

At the heart of all fearmongering over the debt ceiling “crisis” is the claim that if the federal government can’t borrow more money it won’t be able to pay interest on its existing debt, leading to a default.

But that’s poppycock. The government will collect more than a trillion dollars over the next three months. (It collected $638 billion in taxes in April alone.) That will be more than enough to pay interest on the debt. And it will be enough to pay all Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid bills, welfare checks, food stamps. There will even be enough money to pay for Joe Biden’s new electric car subsidies.

There just won’t be any money left for anything else. Nothing for the military, infrastructure, education, the environment, law enforcement, or any other program the federal government currently operates.

That’s because, as it stands today, every penny collected in taxes goes to pay interest on the debt and a category described as “payments for individuals.” Everything else is paid for with borrowed money.

…This year, the federal government will collect $4.8 trillion in taxes, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

It will spend $4.2 trillion on “payments for individuals,” and $661 billion in interest on the national debt.

Everyone knows about interest payments. But what are these “payments for individuals”?

As the budget document explains, payments for individuals:

Are federal government spending programs designed to transfer income (in cash or in-kind) to individuals or families. To the extent feasible, this category does not include reimbursements for current services rendered to the Government (e.g., salaries and interest).

In 1946, “payments for individuals” accounted for less than 11% of federal spending. By 1991, they reached 50%. In 2014, they topped 70% for the first time and have been bouncing around that level ever since.

The article also notes:

The vast bulk of these “payments for individuals” involve middle-class entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, which are paid for in volume by … the middle class. Only a fraction of the money (26%) targets the poor and needy for programs such as Medicaid, welfare payments, food stamps, earned income tax credits.

Worse, some programs, Medicare, for instance, are regressive. A paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that “Medicare has led to net transfers from the poor to the wealthy, as a result of relatively regressive financing mechanisms and the higher expenditures and longer survival times of wealthier beneficiaries.”

This is all by design. The left desperately wants to increase dependency on government, and there’s no better way to do that than through income redistribution. Take as much money away from people as possible, then give it back to them in the form of a “benefit.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We don’t just need to cut spending–we need to overhaul the entire federal budget and follow the lawful budget process.