From my friends at Townhall:
Author Archives: granny g
The Cost Of Bidenomics
On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article that provides some insight into the actual state of the American economy.
The article reports:
Small-business bankruptcies are up 61% on the year. It is a cackle-nomics miracle.
The data comes from bankruptcy analyst Epiq, which reports that commercial filings for Chapter 11 bankruptcies soared to 4,553 so far this year.
Meanwhile, total corporate bankruptcies are also rising, hitting the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which is hitting especially hard in retail, with a parade of chains going under this year, including Red Lobster and its beloved endless shrimp. Never forget what they have taken from us.
What’s causing it? Simple: Inflation, high interest costs, and COVID-19 loans.
Inflation, of course, drives up business costs to the point they have to hike prices, which chases consumers out.
High interest rates are well-known to strangle business. In fact, that’s why the Fed does them, to strangle household spending enough that federal spending has inflation all to itself.
And then the COVID-19 loans: During the pandemic, the Small Business Administration pumped out 4 million loans—worth about $380 billion—in so-called economic-injury disaster loans. Note these were separate from the Paycheck Protection Program loans, where $800 billion were handed out to bribe voters into lockdowns.
While many of the PPP loans were fraudulent—actually, most of them, according to NPR—96% of those loans were forgiven.
Incidentally, one gang member recently killed in a Baltimore shootout had, it turned out, an outstanding PPP loan for a nanotech company. Not a joke.
Thing is, those $380 billion in injury loans actually do have to be paid back.
And it turns out a lot of companies can’t. Eighty percent are still outstanding—$300 billion—so, we’re probably just seeing the tip of the injury-loan bankruptcies.
As Tim Walz stated at a recent Pennsylvania rally, “We can’t afford four more years of this!”
Please follow the link above for further details.
Dealing With America’s Health Crisis
There is a health crisis in America. It has taken many forms. How many people do you know in your life that take less than two pills a day (other than vitamins)? Compare the beach-goers of today with those of the 1960’s–admittedly in the 60’s they were covered in more material, but there was a whole lot less fat. Did the entire country stop exercising or eating right? What happened? A number of well-informed people believe the increase in obesity is due to things being added to our food that weren’t there 60 years ago.
On Tuesday, Zero Hedge posted an article about the health crisis in America and some plans to make us all healthier.
The article reports:
After more than four decades in public health, Redfield believes the former president “chose the right man [RFK Jr.] for the job” to combat the processed foods industrial complex, which has ignited an obesity crisis across the Heartland.
“For instance, obesity in American children has increased dramatically since John F. Kennedy’s presidency, from around 4 percent in the 1960s to almost 20 percent in 2024,” he said, adding, “The causes of childhood obesity are complex, but a primary origin is clearly the modern American diet of highly processed foods.”
He explained the causes for this obesity crisis are primarily due to “special interest and corporate influences on our federal agencies.”
Redfield pointed out that “Kennedy is right” about the corporate capture problem of federal agencies.
Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture. A large portion of the FDA’s budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies. NIH is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies and its scientists are allowed to collect royalties on drugs NIH licenses to pharma. And as the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I know the agency can be influenced by special interest groups.
Redfield acknowledges that agency capture is a serious issue, highlighting that federal agencies responsible for regulating food and medicine are possibly compromised by the food industrial complex and big pharma.
Maybe it was a warning sign when big pharma and the feds pushed Ozempic as the ‘wonder shot’ to end the obesity crisis instead of promoting exercise and safe, clean food.
Voting for President Trump could improve your health!
The Wrong Solution
On Monday, Hot Air posted an article reporting a suggestion from the Mayor of South Portland, Maine, on how to pay the increasingly high taxes imposed by the city.
The article reports:
In a city that has raised taxes by almost 25% over the past half-decade, the mayor has made the obvious suggestion: use your home’s equity to hand over your wealth to keep the city’s gravy train going.
It’s a brilliant solution if you think about it. You worked all your life to buy your house outright, happy that you can pass along the value to the next generation.
But really, wouldn’t you rather keep the government bureaucrats happy instead? The children of the community are the children of the community, which means that your children belong to the government, just as your home should too.
Included in a quote from the Mayor was the following link:
You don’t suppose that might have something to do with the almost 25% increase in taxes?
The article also notes:
Notice that link in the middle of the quote? City directs $150,000 to help migrants find permanent housing.
Hmm. I wonder if there is some correlation.
This is exactly what you should expect in modern-day America. Governments spending money to help migrants while screwing their own citizens.
Is it any wonder that people are angry? We are constantly being asked to sacrifice our own futures for the benefit of people who aren’t citizens. We are paying the freight for others while being asked to surrender what we have.
Elections matter. Any Democrat you vote for in November will continue to give your money away to people who broke the law coming here.
I Wish I Could Trade Stocks Like The Pelosi Family
On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about some recent stock trades by Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi.
The article reports:
Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, dumped over $500,000 worth of Visa stock just weeks before the Department of Justice slapped the financial giant with an antitrust lawsuit, according to the New York Post.
The timing couldn’t be more suspect. Visa, one of the most dominant players in the debit card market, is now facing charges of monopolizing the industry.
The DOJ’s antitrust unit claims Visa has abused its market power, forcing financial tech companies to work with them while penalizing those who try to go with competitors.
The article concludes:
“Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” the congresswoman’s spokesperson told The Post.
Visa shares plummeted by 5.5% after the news of the lawsuit hit the markets. And yet, the Pelosis dodged that bullet by a matter of weeks. Coincidence? Skeptics are right to ask: How much did Nancy Pelosi know? Did her perch as a top Democratic power player give her insider knowledge that her husband conveniently acted upon?
Public records and filings don’t lie. Even though Paul Pelosi’s stock dump didn’t occur at the height of the market fallout, the timing of the sale—mere weeks before a bombshell antitrust lawsuit—raises a cloud of suspicion.
Last year, Paul Pelosi dumped 20,000 shares of Google stock in December – a month before the Department of Justice and Merrick Garland filed their antitrust lawsuit.
In 2022, Paul Pelosi exercised $1 million to $5 million Alphabet call options before Democrats proposed a congressional stock trading ban. In the same year, Paul Pelosi sold all of his NVIDIA stock just one day before Congress was set to vote on a bill that would boost domestic production of semiconductors.
It’s amazing how astute some relatives of members of Congress are in predicting what the stock market is going to do.
The Corruption Runs Deep
A lot of Americans don’t have the time or the energy to look past the mainstream media. That is one of many reasons this country is in the mess it is currently in. Conservative radio stations exist and conservative news stations exist–they are slanted, but less slanted than the mainstream media. In America, control of the media is important.
Yesterday, Real Clear Politics posted the following headline, “FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr: FCC Creating A New Shortcut For “Soros-Backed Group” To Buy Hundreds Of Radio Stations Before November Election.” Just for the record, the FCC is composed of a majority of Democrat Commissioners.
The article reports:
Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr voiced concerns about a decision to fast-track the sale of hundreds of radio stations owned by bankrupt firm Audacyt to the Soros Management Fund — before the 2024 election, during a hearing with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
In June, The New York Post reported:
Left-leaning billionaire George Soros is trying to recruit the Democrat-controlled Federal Communications Commission to help fast track his takeover of the nation’s second-biggest radio network.
Soros, 93, pumped $400 million into Audacy in February, a network which reaches 165 million monthly listeners and includes a handful of conservative shows from hosts including Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson.
But their influence is likely to be muted if the billionaire takes over and imposes his agenda, as has happened with other media acquisitions.
Considering the programming, is it any wonder George Soros is trying to fast track this takeover before the election?
The article at RealClearPolitics quotes a House Oversight Committee hearing:
CARR: There is nothing about this transaction that is out of the ordinary. It’s the type of thing that we see all the time, and the FCC has a process for this.
The full commission itself has never signed off on a shortcut like this. What we usually do is we require people to file a petition with us. We bring in national security agencies, they can review the foreign ownership. It’s probably no big deal here, but we review that foreign ownership. and then we vote. Here, they’re trying to do something that’s never been done before at the commission level.
LANGWORTHY: Yeah, I must say commissioner, I am extremely alarmed at what’s happening with this transaction. This is very unprecedented. Looking at the facts, it seems that the administration is giving a left-wing billionaire, who is a major donor, a close ally, one of the chief funders of all of the efforts in their dark money, a free pass to take control of hundreds of local radio stations, flooding the airwaves with leftist propaganda, and I think it’s blatant.
What would a normal proceeding look like commissioner here for the transfer of ownership in this nature?
CARR: If you follow the process that the FCC adopted back in 2016, there would be a petition ruling. We’d bring in national security agencies, they would review the excessive foreign ownership that’s involved here. They would figure out if there’s any issues — again, probably not, but we don’t know yet.
We haven’t reviewed it. That could take 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 months. Then the full commission would step in and decide up or down on the merits of the transaction. It looks like we got the cart before the horse this time.
LANGWORTHY: It certainly appears that way from my perspective, local radio and local media are the lifeline of communities like those in my district, much as small-town America and they, offer a diversity of ideas and viewpoints that aren’t available elsewhere.
And it’s that diversity of ideas at the left, including, you know, partisan very activist billionaires, George Soros, like to stifle, and they like to silence, and I’m deeply disturbed that this administration has fast-tracked a process to hand over these stations to one of their most loyal funders and make no mistake, they know exactly what they’re doing and they welcome the result.
This would not be good for America.
Foreign Election Interference On Display
A lot of powerful people have a lot invested in the Ukraine-Russian war. The military-industrial complex in America is selling weapons faster than they can make them. That is probably the most successful sector of the economy under President Biden. No wonder the President does not want the war to end. How much money is being laundered through Ukraine and kicked back to Zelensky, Biden and members of Congress?
In October 2023, Breitbart reported that America was blocking peace in Ukraine:
Schröder’s (Gerhard Schröder, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005) criticism was not limited to the Biden administration, with the ex-chancellor saying that both French President Emmanuel Macron and his successor as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz need to do more to lobby for the cause of peace, saying that the war is “not just an American matter but above all a European matter.”
He argued that rather than trying to come up with solutions to end the war, Western leaders seem to be more interested in the question of how to supply Ukraine with more weapons, which the former German chancellor said has been to the “delight of the American and German arms industries.”
“Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer to talk to Russia?” Schröder questioned. “The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone is sitting in trenches. How many more people have to die? It’s a bit like the Middle East. Who are the victims on one side and on the other? Poor people who lose their children. None of the people who matter are moving.”
On Monday, Townhall reported:
Greg Price shared a photo of Zelensky touring an ammunition factory, as well as a screenshot of part of an interview that the foreign leader did with The New Yorker.
Zelensky and the interviewer were talking about Trump, and comments he’s made about the war in Ukraine, but then Vance also came up. “Apart from Trump’s own reluctance to talk about Ukrainian victory, he has chosen J. D. Vance as his Vice-Presidential candidate,” the interviewer said, which prompted Zelensky to claim Vance “is too radical.” He even cut the interviewer off to continue to take issue with Vance.
Beyond the screenshotted portion, Zelensky also went after to Vance for engaging in what he called “sloganeering.”
“For us, these are dangerous signals, coming as they do from a potential Vice-President,” Zelensky said as part of his response to another question, “What does it mean for Ukraine that people with such ideas and slogans are rising to power?”
Zelensky was flying around the country at taxpayer expense into a swing state. This is foreign election interference. I wish we had some Republicans with spines.
Have We Considered Prayer?
Author: Pastor Daimon – CCTA Chairman
Once upon a time, there was a group of men that gathered together in the “Newfoundland” for the purpose of forming a new nation as they were escaping a tyrannical King in their “mother land.” One of their most desired freedoms to gain was the “freedom of religion,” the freedom to assemble together as a community of people who deeply believed in the LORD God our Creator. With every gathering, there was an underlying, uniformed thought among each of our founding fathers, and that thought led to an automatic action in the way of prayer at the beginning of these gatherings and assemblies. This internal, intense urge to pray was so instinctive, it was as though there was a mandate place upon them by their very own hearts to petition our Heavenly Father to guide them, intervene in every discussion, and infuse them with the wisdom to carry forth the vision for this new settlement that began with “Thirteen Colonies” and eventually became the United States of America.
These brave pilgrims enlisted the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, through the practice of prayer to speak to their hearts and minds that the vision would be clear, that their purpose would be focused, and that they would obtain complete and total victory in gaining their freedom and maintaining this freedom to establish a more perfect union. While fighting in battles against the British, these soldiers had wives and families who carried the mantle of prayer as well. We call them “prayer warriors,” better known as “intercessors” in prayer. These first settlers lived a lifestyle of prayer so much so that it was as though the LORD God was a family member living amongst them. Well, He actually was due to the fact that faith in Jesus Christ makes God our father by the “new birth” and adoption of His Spirit. Therefore, “Abba” Father was always present with these faith believing settlers and they knew it. They knew that without Him and His input, they could do nothing. But with God, all things are possible, all things are possible to them that believe, and they could do all things through Christ who strengthens them.
This nation was founded with the principles of the Scripture in mind and prayer as the engine to build properly these principles into the dynamic documents that are found to be the most powerful of all to govern a nation. Through the use of prayer, they confidently made their requests known unto God, being certain that His ears were open to their prayers, and He would hear them, forgive their sins, and heal the land. Prayer is tightly linked to God’s Providence over a nation when that nation yields to Him in all reverence. Our United States of America Founding Fathers understood this and sprinkled the inclusion of prayer and worship throughout our founding documents. They understood that repentance and prayer were as essential to live as breathing is to sustaining life, and therefore made them an essential part of the opening activities of the day, every day, in the House of Congress; that every Congressional session was to open with prayer.
The question remains, “Have we considered prayer?” “If My people, who are called by My name, would humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways (repent), then I will hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (nation)!” (II Chronicles 7:14)
Taking Preventative Steps To Combat Election Fraud
On April 10, 2020, The Wall Street Journal reminded us:
‘Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” That quote isn’t from President Trump, who criticized mail-in voting this week after Wisconsin Democrats tried and failed to change an election at the last minute into an exclusively mail-in affair. It’s the conclusion of the bipartisan 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III.
That is still true, with mail-in ballots of any kind running a close second. However, there is a group that is taking pre-emptive measures to prevent voter fraud in the 2024 election.
On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported:
This week, a group of citizens, attorneys, investigators, writers, former elected officials, tech entrepreneurs unveiled a powerful technology platform to even up the fight with Leftist NGOs stealing U.S. elections.
Their site, StopBogusBallots.com is an initiative of Common Sense Elections, a PAC applying quantum speed technology, innovative, successful legal strategies, top flight investigative talent – to exposing mail-ballots from nonsensical addresses BEFORE the votes get counted.
2024 will be decided by mail-in ballots, from 7 swing states, each of which is currently too close to call.
NGOs are active in each swing state, operating ballot mills registering illegal aliens and other migrants – capturing their ballots – and voting them.
The Common Sense Elections Dark Money Tracking System tracks every NGO influencing U.S. elections – dollars they spend, dollars they receive.
There is no organization in America, who can, with 3 clicks from a phone, expose every connection between the Chinese Progressive Association, Tides Advocacy, down to Leftist street-level GET-OUT-THE-VOTE organizations impacting the 2024 election.
The article explains:
StopBogusBallots.com does not simply find an anomaly; they cross-search it with property tax records, real-time U.S. postal change of address records, and other databases to challenge a mail-in ballot before it is counted rather than litigate afterward.
The product is a ballot challenge – with full documentation – from an official government document – like a property tax entry – and a street level photo – delivered weeks or days BEFORE the ballots are counted.
Let’s say Phineas votes from 135 Elmont Street.
The voter roll reveals nothing about the address.
Common Sense Elections cross-searches property tax rolls, which informs us that the address is a vacant lot in an abandoned mall with no bedrooms.
…Should a ballot come from that address, Common Sense Elections, or affiliated groups can challenge it, consistent with Wisconsin procedure, before it is counted.
How could Phineas get a mail-in ballot where a mail-in ballot cannot be delivered?
But he did get that ballot! He cannot get it in the mail! The ballot is then cast!
Why doesn’t each state do this on their own?
Shame on this group for interfering in the voting rights of dead people and illegal aliens who don’t have the right to vote!
Just A Reminder Of How Things Work
On Sunday, Miranda Devine posted an article at Hot Air that included a screenshot of a Tweet. The headline of the article is, “Nobody Was Ever Charged for the Antifa Attack on the White House.”
This is the Tweet:
Meanwhile, people who walked through the Capitol on January 6th after the police waved them in are rotting in jail almost four years later. Where are their Civil Rights? Does anyone in Congress really care about Civil Rights? Where are the courageous Congressmen speaking out against this?
A Campaign Based On Lies
One of the main issues in the Democrat party campaign for the presidency is abortion. Unfortunately, they have decided that rather than fight their fight on the merits, they are simply going to lie about the issue. First of all, Roe v. Wade was overturned because it violated the 10th Amendment. A federal ban on abortion would also violate the 10th Amendment and would also be overturned by the courts. President Trump has already said he would oppose a federal ban on abortion, but that is not what the Kamala Harris campaign is reporting. The campaign is also lying about what constitutes an abortion and what medical care should be available to women who miscarry.
On Friday, The Federalist posted an article explaining how a recent claim by the Harris campaign is a lie.
The article reports:
Democrats and their corporate media allies are so desperate to get rid of pro-life laws that they’ll fabricate stories to wrongly smear them as not only bad for women but deadly.
The latest is ProPublica’s story of a Georgia woman who died after a North Carolina abortionist gave her chemical abortion pills — which, contrary to Democrat narratives, are unsafe. The article, however, pretends the death was caused by Georgia’s pro-life laws. The author of the story repeatedly attempts to conflate a procedure used to treat miscarriages, dilation and curettage (D&C), with elective abortion.
In ProPublica’s telling, 28-year-old Amber Nicole Thurman had ingested the chemical abortion pill regimen, which consists of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone ends the life of the developing human being; misoprostol helps achieve complete expulsion of the embryo.
It’s worth noting that the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone acknowledged its risks and enacted safety requirements, including a seven-week gestational limit, requiring women to see a physician in person, and a mandatory one-time post-abortion appointment to confirm that the uterus was empty and that bleeding had subsided. The FDA also required manufacturers of the abortion pill to report all adverse health events that were reported to them, such as infection or excessive bleeding — not just patient deaths.
But thanks to Democrat efforts to relax safety requirements for abortion pills, important safeguards no longer apply. When Thurman experienced “complications” from the abortion, which ProPublica wrongly asserts are “rare,” she went to the hospital for a D&C.
While ProPublica claims, “Thurman had told doctors her miscarriage was not spontaneous — it was the result of taking pills to terminate her pregnancy,” Thurman was not experiencing a miscarriage. She had undergone an abortion. Her unborn twins had already died, and she had retained parts of their bodies or the placenta — a known complication of abortion pill use and one of the very reasons for the FDA’s requirement for a post-abortion follow-up visit with a doctor.
The article concludes:
Amber Thurman did not die because of Georgia’s abortion law, which was enacted to protect the lives of mothers and preborn children. She died from complications of medical abortion. Perhaps, had the FDA decided not to remove its mandatory requirement for a doctor’s follow-up visit from abortion pill labeling, and had she received more appropriate care, she might have survived.
ProPublica says, “Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed ‘preventable,’ is coming to public light.” But what about the death of Alexandra Nunez? Or Rebecca Charland, Tonya Reaves, Jennifer Morbelli, Maria Santiago, Lakisha Wilson, Jamie Lee Morales, Cree Erwin Sheppard, Keisha Atkins, Tia Archeiva Parks, or April Lowery — all of whom died during or shortly after their abortions?
Were their deaths preventable? Or is maternal death associated with elective abortion acceptable, even though such abortions are performed on healthy mothers with healthy babies?
Abortion has risks. I have friends who as a result of legal abortions were not able to have children when they wanted to have them. There was also a study in Japan in the 1970’s linking abortion to an increased risk of breast cancer. This is not a safe procedure whether it is done with drugs or other methods.
This Was Inevitable
On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article explaining how Chipotle is dealing with the new minimum wage requirements for fast-food establishments in California. This is not surprising and should give legislators in all states a reason to pause before changing the minimum wage laws.
The article reports:
Chipotle has introduced two robots that can take over tasks normally done by its workers.
The ‘autocado’ can peel, stone and cut an avocado for guacamole in 26 seconds. Meanwhile, a ‘digital makeline’ portions up salads and bowls based on orders on the app.
The machines are part of an automation drive that Chipotle bosses hope will cut down the number of workers needed – slashing rising labor costs.
So, it is no surprise they are being put to use first in two of the Mexican chain’s restaurants in California, the company announced on Monday.
Recent legislation raised the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20-an-hour in the state.
The controversial wage hike – $4 more than the minimum wage in the state for any other job – was introduced by California Governor Gavin Newsom at chains with more than 60 locations in the US, and came into effect on April 1.
Chains including Burger King have already ramped up the roll out of digital ordering kiosks to cut the number of cashiers needed in Californian restaurants.
It is not yet clear how the production costs of using Chipotle’s new machines compares to human labor when making Chipotle menu items.
Also, robots don’t call in sick or require vacations or sick days.
The article concludes:
Chipotle’s sales this year beat Wall Street expectations – boosted by price hikes and a jump in loyal customers.
But the company has come under fire for its reported varying portion sizes.
It prompted Chipotle’s then CEO Brian Nicol – who has now moved to Starbucks – to deny that he had instructed staff to scrimp with servings as he revealed the company will be instituting changes to ensure satisfaction.
He revealed Chipotle will be retraining its staff to ensure ‘generous portions’ are consistent across its more than 3,500 stores.
Last month, Wells Fargo analyst Zachary Fadem and his team tested the theory that Chipotle has been skimping on its usually-large portions, after a series of videos posted to TikTok showed employees barely filling their burrito bowls.
The team ordered and weighed 75 bowls – all with the same ingredients – from eight locations across New York City.
They discovered that the consistency of the burrito bowls varied widely from restaurant to restaurant. Some locations served bowls that weighed up to 33 percent more than others, the study found.
Even without the minimum wage hikes, fast food is another victim of Bidenomics.
Is This Constitutional? Do We Still Have A Constitution?
On September 21st, Hot Air reported on the first cabinet meeting President Biden has held in almost a year. It was not a normal cabinet meeting.
The article reports:
I suppose this has happened often enough during this administration that we probably shouldn’t be all that shocked, but that doesn’t mean that this behavior should be normalized. As we have noted here multiple times in the past, It’s been almost a year since Joe Biden sat down for a meeting with the members of his cabinet to discuss world affairs and get their agenda in order. That changed yesterday when the first such cabinet meeting in more than eleven months was held at the White House… sort of. A meeting was indeed called to order, but Joe Biden’s entire participation in it was comprised of his introductory remarks where he welcomed the person who would actually be chairing the meeting. That would be his wife, Jill Biden. Dr. Jill wound up doing almost all of the talking while Joe disappeared into the background before departing. This jarring event led many observers to yet again as the same question we’ve been wrestling with all year. Who is actually running the country right now?
Can you imagine the uproar if Melania had held a cabinet meeting?
The article concludes:
No matter what you may have thought of the outcome of the 2020 elections, the fact is that we did hold an election. Not a single person voted for Jill Biden to hold any sort of official office or power over the fundamental operation of our country. And yet she is obviously the person in charge of America’s government today. Are you okay with that? If the elected President is unable to discharge his duties (as clearly seems to be the case) the Founders provided us with various options to ensure the orderly transition of power, with further clarification coming from the addition of the 25th Amendment. It is impossible to imagine the authors of any of those fundamental documents writing, “If that doesn’t work out, don’t worry. There will be another election coming along soon enough. Let’s just hope for the best, shall we?”
As the Post correctly notes, Joe Biden has been officially on vacation for two-thirds of the days of the past month. I specify “officially” because there is typically so little on his schedule each day that it’s difficult to discern which days are vacation days and which are “work days” when he simply does basically nothing. Looking around that room and seeing the collection of DEI appointees for cabinet positions that Biden has assembled, it’s difficult to say who – if anyone – is actually running anything anymore.
They were happy to show up and clap like trained seals for Jill Biden and she seemed to be enjoying the experience fully. How nice for her. Meanwhile, the world is on fire and the Vice President (who should have already replaced Biden under more normal circumstances) is busy campaigning while taking no questions and refusing to discuss her policy plans. This is no way to run an airline, folks. Fasten your seatbelts. We still have several months to go before we can officially say goodbye to Joe Biden and it will probably turn out to be a very rocky ride.
This is no way to run a country.
Rewarding The Hand That Feeds You
There are people in America who will vote for Kamala Harris for many reasons–the idea of a woman President, the idea of a mixed-race President, and the idea that a Harris presidency will provide free money for a lot of people.
On Thursday, mrctv reported the following:
The union that represents the nation’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents announced Wednesday that it is endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president in this year’s election.
Vice President Harris has played a role in “one of the most pro-labor administrations in history,” the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) explained in a press release announcing its decision:
“The administration also delivered agency budgets that provide federal employees with additional staffing and resources, including significant new investments to rebuild the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Indeed, the Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris cast the deciding vote to break a Senate deadlock, boosts the IRS budget by $80 billion, enabling the agency to hire an additional 87,000 employees – while increasing the union’s membership in the process.
However, the IRS expansion won’t just increase union membership, it’ll also help the agency to collect an additional $5 trillion of tax increases Harris wants, analysis by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) finds:
“Harris-proposed tax increases will kill jobs in the private sector but create jobs for IRS agents.
“Agents certainly appreciate her call to make the IRS even larger and more powerful if she wins the presidency. Agents will be hired and deployed to implement the $5 trillion of tax increases Harris wishes to impose over the next decade.”
ATR research also found that 97% of political contributions by the IRS agents’ union went to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle. In all, the union gave $635,170 to Democrats during that election cycle.
Nothing like supporting your local IRS agent.
Governor Cooper Has Vetoed The Expansion of Opportunity Scholarships Bill
On September 21, The Carolina Journal reported that North Carolina Governor Cooper has vetoed a bill that fully funds Opportunity Scholarships, requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, and includes adjustments to the budget proposal. The North Carolina legislature is expected to override his veto.
The article reports:
Just a day before, Cooper spent most of his time as the keynote speaker Thursday at the Legislative Session of the 151st Annual North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) Convention blasting Opportunity Scholarships, insisting they will hurt public schools.
“That veto can be upheld if enough legislators in both parties tell Republican leaders that they don’t want to vote on a veto override this year,” he said at a press conference Friday.
Cooper noted at the NCPA Convention that he, his children (although at least one had gone to a private school), and more than 84% of the state’s students go to public schools, and as the pillars of the free press need to be safeguarded, so do public schools.
“Unfortunately, those public schools are facing the biggest threat in decades from the legislature that is pillaging taxpayer money from them and using it for private school vouchers that even the wealthiest families can use for children already in private school,” he said. “These hundreds of millions of dollars in vouchers come with no accountability.”
Cooper said that legislators plan to spend $4 billion on school vouchers over the next decade and that rural schools would be hurt the most because there are fewer private schools in those areas.
The article concludes:
Incoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, told CJ that while he couldn’t comment directly on Cooper’s comments since he arrived later in the session, he thinks parents ought to make their own decisions about where their children go to school, pointing to the 55,000 backlog of students waiting on the list.
“I think those results speak for themselves,” he said. “The money that we put towards Opportunity Scholarships is towards education because it’s to help those kids get to the school that their parents want them to go to. I’m proud of the program and glad to continue it.”
When asked about Cooper’s promise to veto it, Hall jokingly said he made that announcement for him last week, so it’s not breaking news. He added that the GA will override his veto sometime shortly, possibly before the election, if not shortly after that, and probably with some Democratic support, making it a bipartisan effort.
North Carolina needs a veto-proof legislature to protect the interests of its voters. Hopefully that pattern will continue.
Saving Money By Enforcing The Law
On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the impact importing the people who are here illegally would have on the federal deficit.
The article reports:
A study by the Manhattan Institute’s Daniel Di Martino finds that mass deportation of the millions of unskilled, uneducated migrants who have flooded this country thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s disastrous border policies would greatly improve the national deficit.
In his study, titled “The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants,” Di Martino found that the onslaught of Biden’s unskilled, uneducated migrants is a net loss to the U.S taxpayer, costing up to $130,000 per migrant over the migrant’s lifetime should they choose to stay in the U.S.A., he explained in an op-ed published by Fox News on Friday.
I am perfectly willing to let people come into America if they do it legally and they plan to support themselves, but we can’t support people who are here illegally while we have Americans homeless on our streets.
The article concludes:
As to Trump’s plan to initiate mass deportations of unskilled, uneducated — and often dangerous — illegals, Di Martino says it would absolutely not be the disaster Trump’s critics claim it would be.
“I looked at whether the mass deportation program promised by former President Donald Trump would be the disaster that its critics claim,” Di Martino wrote in his op-ed. “My study shows that mass deportations would actually reduce the debt over the long run by over $1 trillion. But again, selectivity is better: Were a mass deportation policy combined with legalization of college-educated Dreamers, the U.S. could potentially reduce the federal debt by $1.9 trillion — nearly doubling its savings.”
Di Martino concluded, “As the federal debt keeps rising toward unsustainable levels and the border stays wide open, America cannot afford to ignore the fiscal consequences of immigration.”
If you are not familiar with the Cloward-Piven theory, now might be a good time to look it up.
Isn’t This Racist?
On Wednesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported that the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring Israeli presence to be illegal in any area over the 1949 armistice line. That’s interesting. Israel is one of the few countries in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have the same rights and are allowed to participate in the government of the nation. Why is the United Nations picking on the a non-racist country in the area rather than the countries where Jews are not allowed? Why–because there are now enough Muslim countries in the United Nations to begin to take over the organization and to align with the non-Muslim tyrants to attempt to make Sharia Law and Muslim dominance a feature of the United Nations.
The article reports:
More than 40 countries sponsored the resolution, which was the first that Palestinians filed after being granted unprecedented privileges, for a non-U.N. member, earlier this year.
The resolution calls on the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months, which means evacuating all Jewish communities beyond the armistice line, including Jerusalem’s Old City.
It also bans arms sales to the IDF of any equipment that would be expected reasonably to be used in the territory over the 1949 lines and calls for a boycott of all products produced by Jews in those areas.
The resolution text lacks any mention of Israeli security concerns, historic ties to the lands or Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.
Just for the record, this is the land given to Israel by the Balfour Declaration”
These are the borders for the Jewish state set up by the League of Nations:
The Arabs do not have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip. Historically, all of these lands are Jewish and play a major role in both Jewish and Christian history.
The article at the Jewish News Syndicate concludes:
Arsen Ostrovsky and Nadav Steinman, CEO and board chair, respectively, of the International Legal Forum, stated that “today, simply put, the United Nations has become the diplomatic arm of Hamas” and that the resolution “is just the latest in a litany of obscenely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. since Oct. 7.”
“All it does is reward the murderers, rapists and abductors of Hamas while pouring further fuel on worldwide antisemitism and eroding whatever remaining credibility of the already problematic and politicized International Court of Justice, upon which this resolution is meant to be based,” they added. “Ultimately, peace will only prevail when Hamas is defeated and the hostages are released, not through tiresome antics and pyrrhic Palestinian ‘victories’ at the U.N.”
Giving land to terrorists has never worked in the past. There is no reason to believe that it will work in the future.
Preventing Voter Fraud Before It Happens
On Wednesday, The Federalist reported that Arizona has found 100,000 non- citizens on its voting rolls.
The article reports:
In Arizona, voters need to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in statewide elections. Those who do not provide proof are registered as “federal-only” voters, which allows them to cast a ballot only in federal elections. But the state says it discovered nearly 100,000 voters on the rolls who did not provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote but were nonetheless tagged as eligible to vote in both state and federal elections.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer flagged an “erroneous voter registration record” to Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs on Sept. 7. A green card holder who, as a noncitizen, is legally prohibited from voting, had ended up on the voter rolls as a full-ballot voter, according to VoteBeat.
Why are non-citizens being allowed to vote in federal elections?
According to ballotpedia:
…in 1996, the U.S. Congress passed a federal immigration enforcement bill called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA). Section 611 of IIRAIRA criminalized noncitizen voting in federal elections, but the law did not explicitly prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections in accordance with state constitutions and local ordinances.
…In 2018, North Dakota became the first of several states to ban noncitizen voting by changing their constitutions. North Dakotans for Citizen Voting, the group that sponsored Measure 2, supported the ballot measure in posts on its website
The Federalist reports:
Hobbs says her team “identified and fixed an administrative error that originated in 2004, and affects longtime residents who received a driver’s license before 1996” but that “out of an abundance of caution, [the secretary of state’s office and the motor vehicle division] will be implementing an independent audit to ensure that MVD systems are functioning as necessary to support voter registration.”
One hundred thousand votes are enough to make a difference in an election. All states need to clean up their voter rolls.
Political Or Good Policy?
At a time when Americans are still dealing with inflation, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by half a percentage point.
On Wednesday, Breitbart noted:
The Federal Reserve moved to cut interest rates by a half percentage point—the first reduction since the central bank cut rates to near zero when the pandemic struck in 2020—in a vote of confidence that inflation will continue to moderate and an attempt to fend off a further increase in unemployment.
“Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains have slowed, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low. Inflation has made further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective but remains somewhat elevated,” the Fed said in a statement.
…Fed officials have also said that they now view the risks to their mandate to maintain full employment to be greater than the risks of a resurgence of inflation. Earlier this summer, the unemployment rate tripped the Sahm Rule threshold by rising more than a half a percentage point above its recent low, typically a signal that the economy is already in a recession. Claudia Sahm, whose research is behind the rule, has said she does not think the economy is currently in a recession but worries that restrictive monetary policy could unnecessarily increase unemployment even more.
The article concludes:
The longer-run projection for the fed funds rate rose to 2.9 percent, four-tenths of a point above the 2.5 percent the Fed had consistently projected from 2019 through the end of last year. In the June projections, officials had indicated an expectation for a longer run rate of 2.8 percent.
On the other hand, unemployment is now seen as going higher. When the Fed last released projections in June, officials forecast a four percent rate of unemployment at year-end. The new projections have unemployment rising to 4.4 percent. Next year, unemployment is seen as staying at 4.4 percent, up from the earlier estimate of 4.2 percent. Similarly, the median projection for economic growth ticked down to two percent from 2.1 percent this year.
Eleven officials voted for the rate cut. One Fed governor, Michelle Bowman, dissented, preferring a quarter-point cut.
I am not an economist, so I don’t have a lot to say about this. However, I do think inflation has continued to be a problem that cutting interest rates might exacerbate. I am hoping that the Federal Reserve has made the right decision for the right reasons and that this is not a political move.
Legal Immigration Is A Good Thing–Illegal Immigration Is Not
On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about how Americans feel about illegal immigration.
The article reported:
A majority of Americans favor the mass deportation of illegal aliens a recent survey has revealed, presenting a potential window for former President Donald Trump to make headway with one of his signature campaign pledges.
In a Scripps News/Ipsos survey released Wednesday, 54% of respondents supported mass deportations. A further 62% expressed support for allowing law enforcement to detain illegal aliens. Sixty-nine percent backed restricting the number of migrants who may claim asylum while 68% support a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens who arrived as children.
Immigration featured among the top concerns for voters, with 39% placing it among the most important issues. Only inflation ranked higher, with 57% choosing that option.
We need to fix our legal immigration system. However, we need to close the southern border quickly while we still have a country. We have no idea who is coming through that border, and we may regret that at some time in the near future. The people coming here illegally have partnered with the Mexican cartels to get here. They have not respected our laws in coming here, and may not respect our laws once them get here. Many of the people crossing our border are from cultures alien to western civilization. It will be difficult for them to assimilate. Let’s control our immigration and give newcomers a chance to assimilate and become Americans.
What It Takes To Be A Never-Trumper
On September 19th, Don Surber at Substack posted an article explaining what you have to believe to be a never-Trumper. He totally captures the spirit of the movement.
The article explains:
If after a full term of a Trump presidency and nearly four years of this one, you are a Never Trumper, then this is what you really believe.
You believe abortion not only is a constitutional right but one superior to all other rights. The federal government send protesters at abortion clinics to prison for years. Contrast and compare with the catch-and-release of illegal aliens.
You believe liberals should be running the judiciary. President Trump’s appointment — and a Republican Senate’s confirmation — of three justices ended Roe, overturned Chevron and reined in the EPA. Without Trump, Merrick Garland would be a lifetime justice abusing his power for political purposes.
You believe censorship is constitutional because we must protect butt-hurt feelings and stop people from receiving disinformation — also known as the truth.
You believe the government should be allowed to pay Twitter and others to block a sitting president’s account to prevent him from communicating directly to the people.
You believe that Elon Musk buying Twitter is bad because no one man should control the flow of information; the deep state should.
You believe NATO is unworthy of consultation. The surrender of Afghanistan not only made meaningless the deaths and disabling of thousands of American soldiers, but desecrated the lives of thousands of U.S. allies.
You believe we should protect the borders of Ukraine but not the borders of our own country. Maybe America should do a GoFundMe to pay off Hunter and get a few hundred billions of dollars to build walls north and south, and kick the invaders out.
You believe Israel should stop killing terrorists but Ukraine should fight Russia until the last drop of blood.
You believe that a small town in Ohio should be forced to accept 15,000 immigrants from Haiti (a nation that eradicated its white population in 1804) but Martha’s Vineyard should not take in any of the 52 illegal aliens sent there.
You believe that assassination is justifiable because Trump is just an object that is a danger to the world just as Hillary said. You wanted Hillary to win in 2016. Her reaction to Assassination Attempt No. 2 was, “The late great journalist Harry Evans one time said that journalists should try to achieve objectivity. The object in this case is Donald Trump. His demagoguery. His danger to our country and the world.”
You believe that borrowing money and paying it back with interest constitutes fraud.
You also believe that taking out a loan to pay for college (including travel to Spain and elsewhere) and not paying it back constitutes victimhood and deserves to have the loan forgiven.
You believe we should ban gas stoves, as well as gas-powered cars, as well as plastic straws, as well as pipelines, as well as drilling for oil not because of the debunked climate change myth but because the oil industry is too capitalistic for your tastes.
You believe the only way to keep the economy afloat is by fudging unemployment numbers and flooding the nation with money that comes from thin air.
You believe that men should enter the girls’ bathroom, shower with girls in the locker room, and beat the crap out of a woman to win an Olympic gold medal.
You believe that boys should be castrated and girls have their breasts removed in the name of transgenderism.
You believe that people should be fired or jailed (or both) for calling a man sir or calling a woman ma’am.
You believe that rioters are peaceful protesters while peaceful protesters are insurrectionists unworthy of their constitutional rights to a fair trial.
You believe in everything that Hillary, Biden and Kamala believe in because you worked to elect them over Trump.
Above all, the one thing that you do not believe is that America should be great again.
Wow! Please follow the link to the article for further details.
The Logic Of This Escapes Me
On September 19th, The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent vote in Congress regarding non-citizens who commit violence against women.
The article reports:
One-hundred fifty-eight House Democrats voted Wednesday against a resolution put forward by South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace that would designate noncitizens convicted of sex offenses or domestic violence inadmissible to and deportable from the U.S.
Two-hundred fifteen Republicans voted in favor of the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, with no one in the party opposing it. Meanwhile, only 51 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, with 158 voting against it. Mace, who introduced the resolution, told the Daily Caller that “158 Left-wing members of Congress just voted against deporting rapists, pedophiles and murderers of women and kids.”
How many times have we heard Democrats say, “If banning guns saves only one life…?” Well evidently saving women from rape and murder by people who came here illegally is not as important.
The article reports some of the arguments against the bill:
Meanwhile, Democrats have been largely silent on their vote against the resolution. In May, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler explained his opposition to Mace’s resolution, saying the bill is “dangerous.”
“By layering immigration consequences onto the existing challenges of talking about domestic abuse, this legislation will almost certainly create a chilling effect in immigrant communities with regard to the reporting of crimes of domestic violence. Further, this bill attempts to create a new ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence which does not require a conviction and does not have any of the exceptions that currently exist in the deportability grounds,” Nadler said during a May hearing.
We have laws against Americans who commit violence against women; shouldn’t we be able to deport people who commit violence against women? Do illegal aliens have special privileges?
The article concludes:
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson praised Mace for introducing the bill and slammed the Biden-Harris for the ongoing border crisis.
“The Biden-Harris border crisis has made daily life less safe for American women. They engineered this crisis, ignored efforts to solve it, and have refused to deport those who commit heinous crimes against American citizens,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told the Daily Caller.
“As crime by illegal aliens continues to rise, I commend Rep. Mace’s proactive leadership in ensuring the rule of law is followed. H.R. 7909 will keep America safe since the Biden-Harris Administration will not,” Johnson added.
The Senate can now retake up the bill or propose a different version.
Why do we want to protect violent people from deportation? Don’t look to your government for protection. If you are a woman, you are on your own.
I Am Impressed
It has become obvious that neither President Trump nor JD Vance are welcome in Springfield, Ohio. Heaven forbid we should find out exactly what is going on there. However, Vivek Ramaswamy is planning on holding a rally there. Just for the record, I have two reports from people there saying that the Haitians there that practice voodoo are continuing their practices–which include animal sacrifice.
On Wednesday, Hot Air reported:
Vivek Ramaswamy will be there tomorrow, and he is ensuring that it won’t just be a bitch session aimed at Haitian immigrants. He is inviting people from all walks of life to attend, and I expect that he will do an outstanding job representing the Republican ticket there.
I love Vivek; although I am unconvinced he is the kind of guy who would succeed in the job of being chief executive of the country. Frankly, he is too smart for the job and too intellectual in particular. He is smart, quick on his feet, makes the political and policy cases for our cause extremely well, and appeals to people like me because of it.
But what I am not certain of is whether a quick-talking intellectual is the sort of guy Americans can identify with. He is so smart that you kinda wonder whether he is “just like me” when it comes to empathizing with our day-to-day concerns.
The article notes:
And Springfield may turn out to play an outsized role for a couple of reasons: there are allegations that the mayor is making bank on the influx of migrants as he appears to have recently invested in rental housing in a big way, and despite denials from local officials that there is any truth to the rumors of pets being killed, recent footage from a town meeting shows that at the very least the city manager knew of the allegations and of reports that they were.
There are a number of people profiting from the migrant influx. Taxpayer money is given to NGO’s to bring people into the country and provide housing, medical care, etc. with American tax dollars. Landlords and hotel owners are evicting Americans because the government pays them more to house legal and illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, we have homeless Americans who are getting none of these benefits. This is not rational policy.