This Is Becoming More Obvious

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a group of black pro-life people who have filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood charging the organization with racial discrimination.

The article reports:

According to an announcement released last week at Christian Newswire, the National Black Pro-Life Coalition filed the racial discrimination claim with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

Catherine Davis, president of the Georgia-based Restoration Project, said in a statement:

Systemic racism and abortion intersect at the door of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has targeted Black women and their babies for almost five decades. These intentional actions violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal for recipients of federal assistance to discriminate on the basis of race.

The article notes:

Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues4Life Foundation, observed abortion has become “the leading cause of death for Blacks,” an outcome that has led to a 1.8 fertility rate, less than the 2.1 rate needed to replace the population.

“At this rate, by 2050 the total Black fertility rate will be 1.3 or lower, a rate that is irreversible,” he said.

In recent months, some Planned Parenthood employees have accused the organization of a racist environment in some workplaces.

Alexis McGill Johnson, the CEO of Planned Parenthood, said in response to the accusations of “misconduct, abuse, racism and more, do not align with Planned Parenthood’s standards or our values.”

“We are taking steps internally to address” the allegations, she added. “[O]ur country is in the middle of a racial justice reckoning – one that includes Planned Parenthood.”

As you consider this lawsuit, there is something you need to keep in mind.

According to the Britannica website:

Planned Parenthood traces its beginnings to the birth control movement led by Margaret Sanger and her colleagues, who opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in 1916 in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. Created to free women from the “chronic condition” of pregnancy and the dangers of self-induced abortion, the clinic was shut down by police after only 10 days. Sanger and the others were imprisoned for violating the anti-obscenity Comstock Act of 1873. Sanger’s continuing efforts led to the foundation of both the American Birth Control League in 1921 and the Birth Control Federation of America in 1939, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942.

Please investigate the writings of Margaret Sanger. The foundation of Planned Parenthood is based on her work and writings. Even a slight glance at her writings reveals a woman who believed that White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants in America were racially superior to other races and that other races should be limited in their right to reproduce.

This lawsuit has been a long time coming, but at last someone has decided to take action against racism in its most obvious form.

Recognizing A Blatant Attempt To Use Coronavirus For Political Reasons

Yesterday President Trump held a rally in Minnesota. In an effort to slow down President Trump’s momentum, the corrupt governor and attorney general of Minnesota put a 250 person attendance limit on the rally, citing the coronavirus as the reason.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about what happened next.

The article reports:

The corrupt governor and attorney general of Minnesota blocked the rally for President Trump by hiding behind their arbitrary COVID mandates and limiting crowd gatherings. But the patriots showed up anyway and surrounded the venue.

Despite knowing they would be turned away from the rally, they showed up anyway; stood resolute and represented the very best within our nation.

You see, when the American people see corruption holding influence while individual liberty is so easily dispatched and nullified, at an inherent and internal level we know our own freedom is also at risk.

It is still true that most Americans can actually still see the bigger picture.

Most Americans go quietly about their business trying to do the next best thing for themselves, their family, their friends and their community. Most Americans just go about living without much discussion; and we don’t try to interfere in the liberty or happiness of others; but we notice stuff.  That deep and inherent expectation of fairness holds the key to understanding “Cold Anger.”

We notice the things that are put in front of us that are not fair, even if they are not happening to us. The expectation of fairness is actually very important to Americans. Construct unfair systems, and we notice. Often we don’t say anything, but we notice.

Foolishness and betrayal of our nation have served to reveal dangers within our present condition. Misplaced corrective action, regardless of intent, is neither safe nor wise. We know exactly who Donald Trump is, and we also know what he is not.

The article reminds all of us that President Trump is the only thing that stands between us and those who would limit our freedom:

This man has faced opposition that would overwhelm any other President. Our chosen President is constantly attacked by those holding a corrupt, conniving and Godless leftist ideology.

It is our job now to stand with him, firm on his behalf.

The people in Minnesota did exactly that yesterday.

I tip my hat to our brothers and sisters; and thank them for standing despite the corrupt political schemes of their totalitarian state officials.

Let all Minnesotans, of every political outlook, use this opportunity to think carefully about their freedom.  Then contrast their state officials’ power grab against the restraint shown by President Donald Trump in not using COVID-19 to grant the federal government even more power over We The People.

Support freedom.

Vote liberty.

Vote Donald Trump.

I agree.

Does Wearing A Mask Matter?

Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about the effectiveness of masks in curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Because of the previous sentence, I expect the fact-checkers on Facebook to flag this article, but their flags can’t dispute facts. The article at The Federalist includes twelve graphs contrasting the spread of the virus where masks were mandatory with the spread of the virus where masks were not required. Please follow the link to the article to see those graphs.

The article concludes:

Why Don’t Masks Work?

Why don’t masks work on the general public? For one, if you read the fine print on most consumer masks you will see something along the line of “not intended for medical purposes and has not been tested to reduce the transmission of disease.” Masks can work well when they’re fully sealed, properly fitted, changed often, and have a filter designed for virus-sized particles. This represents none of the common masks available on the consumer market, making universal masking much more of a confidence trick than a medical solution.

If we actually wanted effective masks, then manufacturers should be conducting scientific tests evaluating masks specifically for their ability to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration and CDC should be making recommendations on which masks to use and approving masks based on their scientific efficacy rather than promoting the wrapping of any piece of miscellaneous cloth around your face.

Effective masks, if they exist, should then be distributed to highly vulnerable groups for use only in rare and extenuating circumstances. There would be little point for the population at large to wear masks all the time because while focused protection may be possible, it is not possible to eradicate the virus at this point or stop its spread.

Our universal use of unscientific face coverings is therefore closer to medieval superstition than it is to science, but many powerful institutions have too much political capital invested in the mask narrative at this point, so the dogma is perpetuated. The narrative says that if cases go down it’s because masks succeeded. It says that if cases go up it’s because masks succeeded in preventing more cases. The narrative simply assumes rather than proves that masks work, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

The narrative further ignores places like Sweden and Georgia, which never required masks in the first place, and it suppresses new scientific evidence if it doesn’t support desired political results, such as data from the world’s only randomized trial investigating if masks actually protect from COVID-19. Even a Nobel laureate has been canceled because his COVID charts and data were found to be undesirable.

History does not bode well for times that politics meddles with science. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leader in disease surveillance methods and infectious disease outbreaks, describes the current COVID scientific environment this way: “After 300 years, the Age of Enlightenment has ended.

In the end, it will be the loss of credibility in our scientific institutions, and the unnecessary division they have sowed among us, for which masks will be remembered.

Stay tuned. Eventually the truth will prevail.

An Interesting Endorsement

Red State posted an article yesterday about one of the most unique endorsements of President Trump I have heard.

The Washington Spokane-Review posted the following on Wednesday. This is their rather lukewarm endorsement of Governor Inslee:

It’s been nearly 50 years since Washingtonians elected a governor to a third term, but given the state Republican Party’s inability to field a strong candidate in this year’s race, Gov. Jay Inslee should get one.

There’s a lot to worry about with another Inslee term, not least that the governor has seemed more focused on national and global issues than on the issues hitting his own state the hardest. He has spent more time running for president and railing against climate change than addressing homelessness, a far more critical concern to the state.

The distracted governor also remains oblivious to big and small business concerns outside the Puget Sound, especially agricultural industries.

He is beholden to public employee unions and an opponent of education reform and accountability.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Inslee led by executive order far longer than necessary rather than work with lawmakers. On his watch, the Washington Employment Security Department flailed and got ripped off by scammers.

Despite all that, he’s the better choice. Republican Loren Culp is token opposition. He’s the police chief in Republic (population: 1,105) who made a name for himself fighting regulations on firearms. That’s not the résumé of a governor.

Inslee offers deep experience working on state policy and executive leadership skills. Washington at least knows what it’s getting with him.

Their endorsement of President Trump seems to be even more lukewarm:

Donald Trump is a bully and a bigot. He is symptomatic of a widening partisan divide in the country. We recommend voting for him anyway because the policies that Joe Biden and his progressive supporters would impose on the nation would be worse.

The list of Trump’s offenses is long. He panders to racists and prevents sensible immigration reform in a nation built on immigrant labor and intellect. He tweets conspiracy theories. He’s cavalier about COVID-19 and has led poorly through the pandemic. He seeks to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without proposing a replacement. He denies climate change.

Voters knew his character in 2016 and elected him anyway. Four years later, the nation is still standing. Indeed, in many ways it flourished until the pandemic upended everything.

The economy and markets roared under Trump’s championship of market-based solutions and individualism. Unemployment among communities of color reached record lows. He reset trade and diplomatic relationships in America’s favor. He provided historically high support for traditionally Black colleges. He rolled back extreme environmental regulations and led the way for U.S. energy independence. He backed federal sentencing reform to address inordinately high American incarceration rates. And he’s committed to supporting law and order in American cities.

Biden might win on personality and comity, but his policies would strike at the economic well-being of the country. He favors massive growth in government and a historic increase in federal spending through green initiatives, free health services, free education and other ideas grounded in reliance on the state as savior rather than creating an environment in which individual liberty and hard work can thrive. Public employee unions would hold outsized power and demand greater spending.

To afford it all, Biden and a Democrat-controlled Congress would have to impose unprecedented tax increases or accept catastrophic deficit spending.

Taxes and spending likely would increase under Trump, too, but the nation stands a better chance of moderation and reform with him in the White House than it does with Biden pushed left by progressives intent on reshaping America to fit their fantastical vision.

This is an election that pits a wretched human being whose policies and instincts for helping America thrive are generally correct against a doddering, doting uncle who would hand out gifts the nation can’t afford in order to win people’s love. Given that choice, economic policy and principle should prevail. Vote for Donald Trump.

I disagree with a lot of their premises, but at least they came to the right conclusion.

An Interesting Timeline on Hunter Biden’s Laptop

Yesterday Just the News posted an article detailing the history of Hunter Biden’s laptop and how it became public knowledge. It’s a rather lengthy article, so I suggest you follow the link to read the entire article. There were a few things that stood out to me as I read the article.

The article reports:

The family of the Delaware shop owner who says he came into possession of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden first tried to turn over the computer to the FBI in summer 2019 but was rebuffed, only to have agents return months later during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings, his lawyer said Thursday night.

The article notes the timeline:

  • A man claiming to be Hunter Biden dropped off three laptops on April 12, 2019 to Mac Isaac’s shop to be repaired, and returned two days later with an external hard drive. The man believed to be Hunter Biden eventually abandoned one of the laptops and the external hard drive without paying for them.
  • Mac Isaac’s father, a retired Air Force colonel, first tried to provide a copy of the laptop to an FBI office in Albuquerque, N.M., in summer 2019, but the bureau turned him away.
  • FBI agents from Albuquerque, N.M., contacted the father in October 2019, as impeachment proceedings were ongoing in Washington, to discuss the laptop and then to interview the younger Mac Isaac in Delaware. A few weeks later, FBI agents in Delaware seized the original laptop from Mac Isaac.
  • On Oct. 13 of this year, Hunter Biden’s attorney contacted Mac Isaac to discuss the hard drive and followed up with an email but no further action.

The article details some of the difficulties with getting law enforcement to pay attention to the laptop:

“Out of an abundance of caution, John Paul made a copy of the drive in case he was ever thrown under the bus as a result of what he knew. As John Paul watched the impeachment trial, he wondered why there was no reference to the information he had provided to the FBI. As a result, starting in February of 2020 and until July of 2020, John Paul reached out to several members of Congress to notify them of what he had in his possession. His requests fell on deaf ears.

Out of frustration, in the beginning of September, John Paul reached out to someone he thought would be able to provide the information directly to the President. That person was Rudy Giuliani. A day after John Paul reached out to Giuliani’s office, Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, contacted John Paul to discuss the information and John Paul’s concerns.

On September 24, 2020, John Paul then submitted information about the drive to Senator Ron Johnson through the whistleblower link on Senator Johnson’s website. After that submission and while Giuliani’s office was still trying to verify the information, Senator Johnson released the Senate report on the Biden business dealings.”

The article concludes:

“… The problem is not that John Paul turned over the information to those he believed he could trust, it is that politics today seems to revel in sensation and ignores the collateral damage left in its wake. Not only are our elected officials seemingly happy to obfuscate the facts in order to attack their opponents, they are also perfectly willing to throw everyday Americans under the bus for their own political gain.”

…”Instead of reporting on the matter, news outlets are making the decision themselves as to the veracity of the claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop. If you are an avid follower of CNN or Politico, you have already been led to believe that John Paul is a part of an overall Russian disinformation campaign.

“Twitter and Facebook have taken it upon themselves to relegate this story to a level equal to that of conspiracy theories. The actions by these social media platforms further hurt John Paul’s reputation by advancing the notion that he is a part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

If you depend on the mainstream media for your news, a lot of this information is new to you. That is not good for the health of our representative republic.

Watching Actions Rather Than Paying Attention To False Accusations

Just the News posted an article today that featured statements from veterans as to why they support President Trump and will be voting for him.

The article reports:

The U.S. military community is sorting chaff from truth when deciding whether to reelect Donald Trump as commander in chief, veterans and active duty service members told Just the News — with presidential action, not alleged words, swaying their votes.

“For those who haven’t heard the term, chaff is a countermeasure meant to distract you,” one Air Force enlisted woman said. “What we’ve seen with negative reports about Trump’s so-called problems with the military is a whole lot of worthless, distracting chaff.” Like other active duty service members, the airman withheld her name from publication because she is not allowed to speak privately to the media.

The negative reports include claims from anonymous sources, published in the Atlantic, that Trump disparaged the military, and said that Americans who died in war are “losers” and “suckers.” 

The article details the reactions of the veterans:

“I don’t think hardly any veteran believes it,” said Jim Lechner, who served multiple tours in the Army, and is a decorated and wounded combat veteran. “It’s debunked propaganda.”

Another veteran who was wounded in combat echoed those views.

“I do not think Trump actually said it,” said Chuck Ziegenfuss, who is retired from the Army. “And that’s what it boils down to. Do I believe a president who has done more for veterans than any other … or the author and editors of the Atlantic?”

The key issue in the presidential contest is action, the veterans said.

“For many years, we have had leaders who were great orators who like many politicians, knew how to talk the talk,” said Chad Longell, who deployed with the Army as part of the global War on Terror. “Despite concerns by some of President Trump’s rhetoric style, unlike many typical politicians, he has shown a determination to actually deliver results.”

The veterans have noticed the accomplishments of President Trump:

Others contacted by Just the News credited Trump with military pay raises, reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the ongoing Middle East peace deals.

Accomplishments include “rebuilding our military strength while also telling our NATO partners to pay up, and actually not starting nor expanding new wars,” Ziegnefuss said.

The article notes, however, that not everyone shares the positive view of President Trump. Some of the military evidently want to go back to the days of Barack Obama when veterans were not getting the medical care they deserved or the raises they deserved.

Good Economic News

CNBC is reporting today that America’s Gross Domestic Product grew at a rate of 33.1% annualized during the third quarter. It was anticipated that the growth rate would be 32 %.

The article reports:

Coming off the worst quarter in history, the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace ever in the third quarter as a nation battered by an unprecedented pandemic started to put itself back together, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Third-quarter gross domestic product, a measure of the total goods and services produced in the July-to-September period, expanded at a 33.1% annualized pace, according to the department’s initial estimate for the period.

The gain came after a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter and was better than the 32% estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The previous post-World War II record was the 16.7% burst in the first quarter of 1950.

Markets reacted positively to the news, with Wall Street erasing a loss at the open and turning mostly positive.

The article includes two Tweets that provide insight into the election:

Please note that Joe Biden gives no facts to back up his claims. We are not out of the woods yet with the coronavirus, but we are moving forward. The Democrats in the House of Representatives have chosen to hold the stimulus package hostage to their pet projects to prevent the help to those who need it from being disbursed. I suspect that the funds will be allocated after the election.

The Sad Decline Of An Organization

The Girl Scouts became political a long time ago. Live Action posted an article in March of last year that lists some of the political events held by the Girl Scouts in recent years.

The article reports:

In June of 2018, the Girl Scouts tweeted a thank you to Teen Vogue regarding a Teen Vogue Summit in which they participated. This summit has featured “reproductive justice” as one of its topics. “We had a blast,” they said. “Talk about feeling empowred.” Along with the tweet was a video which included the pro-abortion mantra, “my body, my choice, my rights.” It’s a clear message from the Girl Scouts. They falsely believe that abortion is a right, rather than a gross attack on human life and human rights.

…In November of 2018, the Girl Scouts again tweeted support for Teen Vogue, thanking them for “extending the sponsorship opportunity” for a Teen Vogue Summit. Teen Vogue Summit events include topics such as “an honest and intimate conversation on healthy, safe, and pleasurable sex, in a new age of inclusivity.” The events have featured former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, and manager of Youth Organizing for Planned Parenthood Sharim Hossain as speakers. In addition, Teen Vogue has recently been outspoken about their support for late-term abortion.

…On December 26, 2018, the Girl Scouts got straight to the point on Instagram. In a #WednesdayWisdom post, they celebrated Girl Scout alum Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, highlighting O’Connor’s “duty to ‘help people at all times.’” They celebrated O’Connor because, as they say, “she was a key swing vote in many important cases, including the upholding of Roe v. Wade.” It doesn’t get more clear than that. The Girl Scouts support Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States through all nine months of pregnancy, overruling multiple state laws enacted by the elected representatives in those states.

Fast forward to an article in The Daily Wire yesterday.

The article reports:

The Girl Scouts of America has deleted a Wednesday social media post that congratulated Justice Amy Coney Barrett for becoming one of only five women in U.S. history to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

In a statement on social media, the Girl Scouts explained that the post was deleted because it was viewed as a political statement, instead of as simply congratulatory.

…“Earlier today, we shared a post highlighting the five women who have been appointed to the Supreme Court. It was quickly viewed as a political and partisan statement which was not our intent and we have removed the post,” explained the organization.

“Girl Scouts of the USA is a non-political, nonpartisan organization. We are neither red nor blue, but Girl Scout GREEN. We are here to lift up girls and women,” said Girl Scouts.

The original Girl Scouts post featured a photo of Barrett, along with a photo of the since-retired Sandra Day O’Connor and the three sitting female justices on the Supreme Court, and read simply: “Congratulations Amy Coney Barrett on becoming the fifth woman appointed to the Supreme Court since its inception in 1789.”

The post was taken down due to pushback from people who opposed the appointment. The article includes a number of Twitter posts from those people. It is sad to see people so blinded by politics that they cannot celebrate the accomplishments of someone who holds different political views.

This was posted on Facebook by Robert DuChemin, a Florida attorney who does amazing research:

The Chinese Own Us:
The bias in our major news media in the United States is the result of the repeal of some previous laws and the failure of the government to enforce antitrust laws. Until about 40 years ago, the FCC would not approve ownership of any news broadcasters by foreign companies and individuals.
NBC, and it’s radio counterpart, RCA, were the largest broadcasting networks in the United States in 1932, when the Justice Department forced their owner, General Electric, to divest both corporations to comply with antitrust laws.
After the Feds relaxed antitrust enforcement, GE re-purchased NBC (and RCA) in 1986. After a series of sales and mergers, Comcast now owns NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. Comcast Is one of the largest movie producers in the world, through one of its other properties, Universal Studios.
The combined market share of NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC, is greater now than NBC’s was at the time that General Electric had to divest in 1932.
ABC is owned by another huge producer of movies, the Walt Disney Company. They also own more than 40 cable networks including ESPN, FX, History, A&E, and National Geographic, and more than 20 news magazines. They are the largest movie and television producer in the world. Disney is in partnership with the communist Chinese government in at least 10 corporations.
The Chinese Communist Party owns AMC, the largest movie theater company in the United States. They will not let any movies be shown in their theaters until they have been approved by the CCP. Disney and Comcast would lose their movie business and all of their Chinese businesses if they upset the Chinese government. The CCP has enticed Disney to remove several programs from the History Channel as well.
Several movies over the past three years have been edited to delete things the CCP didn’t like, even movies that were only released in the United States or on American television stations. It’s hard to believe the CCP is not also controlling what ABC and NBC put on the news.
To get unbiased news, Congress could easily pass a law prohibiting foreign or conglomerate ownership of news broadcasters and prohibit ownership of more than one network by the same entity. That used to be the law in this country.
Oh, BTW, CNN is owned by AT&T. AT&T also owns Warner Communications, including Warner Brothers Studios. They also need CCP approval to get their movies shown in AMC’s theaters or distributed around the world.
The CCP is not going to allow the news organizations they control broadcast anything that hurts Joe Biden. They have too much money already invested in Biden.
——
In case you missed it, Tony Bobulinski, revealed more information last night on Tucker Carlson, including information about the Bidens being involved in a secret Chinese-Russian energy deal while Joe Biden was Vice-President of the United States. Hunter Biden clearly was breaking US law and it is also clear that Joe Biden was helping him, even if he wasn’t directly receiving any funds. That makes Joe an accessory to the crimes Hunter committed, a felon. This is far worse than anything they ever accused President Trump of doing.
My favorite part was when Tucker played the recording that Tony made when he was telling Joe Biden’s lawyer that he was going to go public. The lawyer was trying to persuade Tony to shut up.
The lawyer said, “you‘re just gonna bury all of us.” I don’t think he would’ve said that if Joe was just buying ice cream.
Anybody who supports or votes for Joe Biden is a traitor to the United States. The FBI needs to investigate why the media is covering up his crimes.
If Joe Biden becomes president, you will have the privilege of living at the time in history when the United States came to an end.
——
For the second day in a row a group of criminals numbering somewhere around 1,000 took control of Philadelphia, a city of more than 1,500,000. All the mayor and governor have to do is ask President Trump for help and the National Guard will put down these riots. They won’t do it because they are Chinese pawns. Unlike Joe, however, they don’t know they are Chinese pawns.
The patriot militia will start coming out to protect US citizens because their corrupt government won’t.

In Case You Missed It

Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article today about last night’s Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. Tucker Carlson interviewed Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden.

The article cites a number of articles that have been written about the interview and includes a partial and full video of the interview. Please follow the link above to see those.

The article notes a few key points about the interview:

  • Hunter and James Biden brought nothing to the deal other than the Biden family name,
  •  What China wanted was the Biden family name,
  •  Joe Biden was involved in the business deal, so much so that he had veto power over negotiations,
  •  In 2017, Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice when the Biden side of SinoHawk was courting him to step in and act as CEO,
  •  Bobulinski also spoke at length with James Biden, Joe’s brother,
  •  When Bobulinski asked James how they could get away with this kind of deal, which seemed to be falling into dangerous territory given that Joe could run again for president, James announced, “plausible deniability,” and
  • The Biden group stiffed Bobulinski, leaving him out of pocket for all his expenses while channeling CEFC’s money into another entity that did not involve Bobulinski.

Regardless of how you feel about the relationship between China and the Biden family, I think after watching the interview, you might hesitate to do business with the Bidens just on the basis of their concept of ‘plausible deniability’ and the ethical perspective that statement reveals.

Actions Have Consequences

One of the many contentious battles that President Trump has had to fight was the battle to erect a border wall. A large part of that wall has been built, and there are consequences. Today The Washington Examiner posted an article about some of the impact of that wall.

The article reports:

Border Patrol agents who work in the Pacific Ocean off the southern coast of California saw a dramatic increase in the number of arrests made over the past 12 months, an indication that the addition of new border wall in the region since 2017 is prompting smugglers to find new ways to move people and drugs into the United States.

“Over the past year, within 2020, we’ve had a record number of marine interdictions, including pangas [small, fast boats], jet skis, swimmers, and paddle boaters,” Border Patrol San Diego Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke told the Washington Examiner during a land and sea tour. “The wall structure itself is solidifying the land border, and it’s forcing the smugglers to come out into the maritime environment.”

Agents, using jet skis and boats to patrol the 20-mile stretch from Chula Vista at the border up past downtown San Diego, made 302 interdictions in fiscal 2020, which ran from Oct. 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, compared to 195 the previous year and 88 in 2015. One such incident resulted in the seizure of a small boat that was loaded with more than 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine.

Arrests of illegal immigrants and smugglers jumped 92% from 662 in 2019 to 1,271 in 2020. Comparatively, 219 people were arrested in 2015.

The article concludes:

Border Patrol’s San Diego region has seen 53 miles of border wall added to its 60-mile area of responsibility, including the duplicate fencing. A small portion of the new wall was completed with funding from the final year of the Obama administration, but most was funded in federal budgets passed during the Trump administration. The foundation of the double-layer fencing goes up to 10 feet below the ground, preventing people from digging shallow tunnels into the U.S., as was possible with the Clinton-era metal scraps. It stretches from 18 feet to 30 feet tall and is comprised of steel fence posts filled with concrete and rebar. It starts at the coast and goes up into the mountains in Otay Mesa, California, significantly further than the scrap metal that was taken out. Construction teams are in the process of completing the wall over the mountains, a seemingly impossible task for how steep the terrain is here.

Agents in San Diego said this new wall and the technology that comes with it will be hard to get past for most people and will funnel others to areas where agents are present because they have been freed up to focus on less secure areas as a result of the new wall. Those who do attempt to climb over the wall will be better detected thanks to new cameras, sensors, radar systems, and underground fiber optic systems.

Border Patrol officials had expected smugglers to try new approaches, including taking to the water. Heitke said smugglers who do choose to go the boat route are being tracked, oftentimes by the cellphone they leave behind in a boat or when it is seized after they are arrested.

“The smuggler has a phone with them,” said Heitke. “We can dump the information on the phone and find the routes saying where they’re going, and we’re able to see an enormous range of travel, whether they go out 50 miles or 100 miles out, whether [they] go up 50 or 100 miles to land.”

How many drug overdoses have been prevented because President Trump fought Congress to build a wall?

Negatively Influencing The Culture With Taxpayers’ Money

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The exhibit is titled, “Girlhood (It’s Complicated.”

The article reports:

The goal of the exhibit, as it states on its web page, is to rewrite stereotypes of girls and aid society in adapting new ones. “The history of girlhood is not what people think; it’s complicated,” states the exhibit’s page. “Young women are often told that girls ‘are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.’ What is learned from history is that girls are made of stronger stuff. They have changed history.”

The exhibit opening did feature some amazing women who have broken the glass ceiling in different ways. Women like Minnijean Brown-Trickey, a member of the Little Rock Nine, the African-American teenagers who integrated Little Rock Central High School following the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools. She is a champion of civil rights to be sure.

So far, so good, but unfortunately that is not the end of the story.

The article continues:

The exhibit featured incredible athletes, such as Billie Jean King, the world-famous tennis star, and Judi Oyama, the skateboarding pioneer and graphic designer.

Kavya Kopparapu, a 19-year-old Harvard student who has been pioneering new treatments for brain cancer through computer science, was also featured. Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential teens in 2018.

Still, even with these incredible women and their stories, the event seems to have been tainted somewhat by leftist indoctrination. I saw this in two ways: transgender activism and third-wave feminism.

In addition to remarkable women heralded for civil rights issues, athletic achievement, or intellectual genius, the event also featured Beanie Feldstein, an actress and outspoken leftist activist, and Jazz Jennings, a transgender activist and star of the TLC show “I am Jazz,” which stopped airing this year after six seasons.

Jennings was born a biological male. The show, “I am Jazz,” showed Jennings’ journey from “boy to girl” through hormone-replacement therapy and multiple surgeries. Placing Jennings in the same category as women who have achieved gender parity through sports, scientific achievements, and the civil rights movement is disingenuous.

The event treated Jennings just like TLC has. It asserted the belief that identifying as another gender is simply another stage of evolution—groundbreaking, just like being a world-class athlete or championing desegregation. These are not at all the same thing, and to equate them as such is a slap in the face to women who truly have championed gender parity for women.

The article concludes:

The event included interviews with girls, one of whom said leaders should know, “We are strong. We are not afraid to speak our mind about injustices we face in our everyday life. We love and support all sizes, beliefs, and genders.”

It was clear this quote amplified the event’s theme highlighting discrimination as an ongoing problem, particularly as it relates to gender issues. The notion that girls are facing rampant injustice in the United States, at a time when there has never been more gender parity—both socially and under the law—is really quite ignorant.

In fact, it does a disservice to the women who came before this generation. To presume that girls growing up in 2020 face more difficult challenges that women in the 1950s or before raises the question: Are the adults who organized this event ignorant of history, or just self-absorbed? Either answer isn’t good.

It’s one thing to host an event highlighting all that women and girls have done, and still do, to break glass ceilings, shift stereotypes, and make the world a better place. But it’s quite another to do so with the preconceived notions that transgender women are just like biological women, and that women today still face incredible discrimination.

Neither of those claims are fact-based beliefs, but hallmarks of leftist indoctrination that should not be broadcast from any of the Smithsonian museums.

Your tax dollars at work. Girlhood was a whole lot less complicated before the political left got hold of it.

Good News From Ohio

Yesterday Cincinnati’s The Enquirer posted an article about Operation Autumn Hope, the largest human trafficking sting in Ohio history.

The article reports:

They called it Operation Autumn Hope, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said it resulted in 177 arrests and 109 human trafficking survivors being rescued.

The results of the collaboration between more than 50 of law enforcement and social service agencies was announced Monday.

Yost quoted Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus to emphasize the importance of this work, which he called the largest operation of its kind in the history of Ohio.

“A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he said. “What you do to least of these, you’ve done it to me.”

During the operation, the U.S. Marshals clear 76 missing and exploited children cases. Of those, 45 children were physically recovered while others were found to have returned home on their own.

The majority of the arrests occurred in the Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus areas. In the three counties where those cities reside, 157 arrests were made.

“The success of Operation Autumn Hope is measured not only in the number of arrests but in the lives that were rescued from this evil,” Yost said. “Every agency on this team looks for the day when no person is bought and sold in Ohio. Don’t buy sex in Ohio!”

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

Human trafficking has been one of the legal focuses of the Trump administration. He has provided grants to help victims find housing and jobs to transition back into society. The President has also made finding and arresting traffickers a priority.

 

Know Your Sources

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the British magazine the Economist.

The article reports:

The Economist provided sympathetic coverage of a Chinese tech giant widely considered a national security risk without disclosing the publication’s lucrative business relationship with the firm that spanned nearly a decade.

Huawei Technologies commissioned the Economist‘s business consulting division to advance its policy agendas and deflect cybersecurity concerns raised by Western governments. The influential British magazine produced reports on a wide range of subjects—including a report on broadband access in the United Kingdom that Huawei credits to have influenced British policy. The publication has also run numerous Huawei advertisements, and its editors have cohosted several global forums with the company, helping the tech firm boost its public image as it faced growing scrutiny from the developed world for its close ties with the Chinese government.

The Economist defended Huawei in a front-page cover story in 2012—the year the publication’s consulting division started working with the company—that accused Western countries of using cybersecurity concerns as a pretense to oppose legitimate competition from Huawei. The publication’s coverage of the tech company has become less overtly pro-Huawei in recent years, but the Economist‘s coverage of the company is seen as friendly enough that Huawei’s PR division has cited several of the magazine’s articles to deflect criticism.

The article concludes:

While the Economist‘s coverage of Huawei has become more skeptical of the Chinese firm over the years, the magazine continues to criticize U.S. efforts to sanction Huawei. The company has been all too happy to cite some of the Economist‘s coverage in its “facts” section, which seeks to assuage concerns about Huawei. Its CEO, Ren Zhengfei, also gave open-ended interviews with the publication in December 2019 and January 2020, the latter with the Economist‘s editor in chief.

None of the Economist‘s coverage of Huawei mentioned the publication’s long-standing business relationship with the tech firm.

Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Huawei’s relationship with the Economist appears to be part of its multifaceted campaign to influence British and European public opinion.

“Huawei has a large propaganda operation in Europe and invests vast sums of money to influence thinking in Europe,” he said. “It is very disappointing that some European media organizations and businesses chose to collaborate with an entity that is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

This relationship is important to note because it illustrates one way the Chinese Communist Party peddles influence. All of the shenanigans we see going on between the Biden family and the CCP generally relate to gaining access and peddling influence. The CCP uses its money and businesses to infiltrate western media and politics to gain advantages in trade and policy decisions. The thing to remember is that no business is successful in China unless it follows the wishes of the Communist Party.

 

Do You Remember Scholastic Magazine?

It seems like propaganda has become a way of life for American education. I remember fondly when Scholastic Magazine would arrive in the classroom, and we would all read it to find out what was going on in the world at a level we could understand. The magazine still exists, but its purpose seems to have changed drastically.

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the current state of Scholastic Magazine.

The article reports:

This is what our children are being told about President’s Trump’s position on “Racial Justice”:

The long history of unjust treatment of Black people in America is a major focus of this election.

This past spring, in the wake of police killings of Black Americans, huge protests erupted across the country in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has seriously underscored the widespread problem of racial inequality in the United States. Data show that people of color are contracting and dying of the virus at the highest rates, largely because of the wealth gap that exists between white people and people of color. Many Americans of all races are now demanding an end to police violence and other injustices toward Black people in this country.

That’s the preface. This is an issue, according to Scholastic Magazine, on which there is only one possible perspective.

In June, President Trump signed an executive order encouraging police departments to change how they train officers and use force. But overall, he has defended law enforcement…

As well he should!

…opposed protesters’ calls for reforms, and taken an aggressive stance against the largely peaceful demonstrations.

“Largely peaceful,” the Democrats’ weasel phrase.

In July, for instance, he sent federal police to Portland, Oregon, to break up rallies there. Local officials say those officers illegally detained protesters and sparked violence.

This is outrageous. What was happening in Portland was not “rallies.” It was rioting, arson, crime and violence. The idea that the presence of federal officers “sparked violence” is a far-left trope that is totally at odds with the facts. The violence long preceded, and succeeded, any federal involvement.

Many people see the president’s response to the protests as part of a pattern of racism.

“Many people.” The most dishonest trick of the left-wing journalist.

He has repeatedly made racist statements and at times shown support for people who promote white supremacy.

This is a lie. It is intended to poison young minds against the president, his party and his supporters.

Please follow the link to read the rest of the article. It is disturbing. It’s time to take a stand against the garbage our children are being taught in school. Pay attention to School Board elections. Your future could depend on them.

I spent part of my day today handing out campaign literature at the polls. I met a very sweet, but very misled young lady who told me that socialism didn’t deserve the ‘bad rep’ it has. It’s really a good thing. God help us if the people she supports ever get in power.

More Evidence For The Mainstream Media To Ignore

Gregg Jarrett posted an article today about more evidence that is coming to light about the activities of the Biden family during the time Joe Biden was Vice-President.

The article reports:

Joe Biden’s claim that he has never discussed business directly with his son Hunter “is false” says Tony Bobulinski. “I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden” added Bobulinski who has been outed as a colleague of the Bidens in text messages obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

On May 1, 2017, Hunter Biden texted Bobulinski, “No matter what it will need to be a US company at some level in order for us to make bids on federal and state-funded projects. Also, We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents under the FCPA which is much more expansive than people who should know choose not to know.” The very next day after the text was sent, May 2, 2017, Hunter arranged for a meeting in Los Angeles with Bobulinski, James Biden and Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden’s text went on to say, “James has very particular opinions about this so I would ask him about the foreign entity. Regardless, we should have a DE come called CEFC America…” At a press conference on Thursday, Bobulinski recognized the occurrence of the meeting and said it lasted an hour. In that hour, the entire meeting, “the Biden’s family business plans with the Chinese” was discussed. Bobulinski said of father Joe Biden that he was “plainly familiar” with the plans discussed at the meeting “at a high level.”

Biden’s reference to FCPA is believed to be the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. CEFC China Energy is “a Chinese conglomerate whose chairman had links to the communist regime in Beijing” according to the DCNF. Additionally, the DCNF acknowledges “Biden did not explain in the messages why he thought the venture with CEFC would violate FARA or FCPA without the buffer of a U.S. shell company.”

At least he was smart enough to use the loopholes in the law to avoid officially breaking the law.

The article concludes:

Bobulinski has provided emails, text messages and business records to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and even met with the FBI on Thursday. Information provided showed “Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, James Biden and two other partners, James Gilliar and Rob Walker, went on to form companies called SinoHawk and Oneida Holdings to partner with CEFC.” Furthermore, the information shows Oneida Holdings was formed only a mere three weeks after the big meeting, on May 22, 2017.

Where is the FBI that so meticulously combed through every scrap of information they could find on President Trump and his associates?

This Is Sad

The Daily Wire posted an article yesterday about some recent comments by former Vice-President Joe Biden. His mental decline under the pressure of campaigning is sad to watch. Because his campaign has announced that he will not be campaigning between now and the election, that decline will generally be hidden from voters.

The article reports:

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden warned on Sunday that next month’s election was the “most consequential” in a long time because of what would happen if there were “four more years of George,” an apparent reference to former President George Bush. Biden, after saying “George” twice, corrected himself.

“This is the most [consequential], not because I’m running, but because who I’m running against, this is the most consequential election in a long, long, long time,” Biden said. “And the character of the country, in my view, is literally on the ballot, what kind of country we’re going to be.”

“Four more years of George, uh, George, uh, he, uh,” Biden said, “gonna find ourselves in a position where if Trump gets elected we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be in a different world.”

The article includes another interesting statement:

Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for President Obama’s administration before this, we have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics. What the president is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won’t be counted. It can’t be counted. We’re gonna challenge it and all these things. If enough people vote, it’s gonna overwhelm the system. You see what’s happening now. You guys know it as well as I do. You see the long, long lines in early voting.

This is simply sad to watch.

Unfortunately Lies Are A Part Of The Campaign Season

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some recent lies told by Kamala Harris. The Senator told the lies to back up her accusation that President Trump is a racist. Even a casual look at President Trump’s actions before running for President show that the charge is false, but the Democrats keep making the charge anyway. Just as an aside, I would like to point out that President Trump literally fought city hall to assure that his luxury resort in Florida would allow blacks and Jews to join. That doesn’t sound very racist to me.

The article lists the lies told on “60 Minutes” by Senator Harris:

(1) [Birtherism] Trump questioned Obama’s eligibility to be president. He did the same with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was born in Canada (and later produced evidence of his mother’s U.S. birth). Trump applies the same standard to everyone. (Proof.)

(2) [Charlottesville] Trump never said the neo-Nazis were “fine people.” In fact, he said they should be “condemned totally.” Harris knows that she is lying, because Vice President Mike Pence told her the truth to her face at their debate earlier this month. (Proof.)

(3) [“Mexicans”] Trump did not refer to Mexicans as rapists and criminals. He was referring to people who entered the U.S. illegally, making clear that he was not even talking about all illegal immigrants: “And some, I assume, are good people.” (Proof.)

(4) [“Muslim ban”] Trump never imposed a “Muslim ban.” He restricted travel from terror-prone countries identified under Obama. Most Muslim states were unaffected, and the ban was upheld at the Supreme Court. Non-Muslim countries are on the list.

Unfortunately none of these lies will be acknowledged as such by the mainstream media.

Mafia-style Tactics

Yesterday The America Thinker posted an article about a recent event in Seattle.

The article reports:

Grocery retailer Trader Joe’s, which refused to cave in to political correctness in its product names, is experiencing new problems with Black Lives Matter protesters in Seattle, according to Breitbart News:

Black Lives Matter protesters pushed their way into a Seattle Trader Joe’s demanding the company give “15 percent at least.” The group has repeated the tactic of harassing the store’s staff and customers over the past few months.

A video tweeted Thursday night shows a large group of BLM activists entering a Seattle Trader Joe’s store. They chanted and beat drums as they marched through the grocery chain location.

Seattle has five Trader Joe’s locations, and Breitbart reports that three of them have been hit in this way.  It shows that Trader Joe’s, which resisted the demands, remains a target, based on Seattle’s failure to send police to protect them.

A Tweet included in the article notes:

This is exactly how mafia works. Either you pay us something – il “pizzo” it’s called in Italian – or we burn down the place at least. This can happen when the State is absent, that’s why defunding the police in crucial in every mafia system.

The article concludes:

BLM is led by “trained Marxists” who just happened to have learned their tactics at Hugo Chávez’s knee.  Here’s a piece I did on their pilgrimages to Caracas, where these kinds of shakedowns are what goes on in that hellhole.  And don’t think the Chavista agenda they embrace isn’t to harm the entire U.S.  Here’s one I wrote from 2019.  Venezuelans, too, have noticed the similarities.

Now their successors in the U.S. are turning Seattle into a hellhole, too, complete with Venezuela-style shakedowns. 

Seattle is getting pretty comparable to Caracas without police to enforce rule of law just on crime and disorder alone, but Trader Joe’s is no battered Venezuelan storefront shop.  It’s a huge national private corporation whose structure protects it from activist shareholders stirring up the pot and agitators calling for woke acts, allowing it to do what it always does which is put the interests of its customers first.  Instead of pay the danegeld, Trader Joe’s is in a position to walk out.

It’s shown backbone in standing up to rioters, and who knows how many shakedowns it has fended off.  But if it gets bad — and recall that Breitbart notes that three stores in Seattle have been targeted — it may well decide that the cost of doing business in Seattle outweighs the benefits and pull out of the city and open up someplace less mafia-like.

By then, the city may become a food desert — self-inflicted, based on the majority’s voting choices.

At some point, we are going to hear people who live in the cities that have refused to deal with the BLM protestors complain that there are no convenient grocery stores or other markets. At that point they will have only themselves to blame–if you keep electing people who refuse to enforce the law, eventually you have no law.

Praise From An Unexpected Source

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about a recent statement by former Obama White House advisor Van Jones.

The article reports:

“Donald Trump — and I get beat up by liberals every time I say this, but I’m gonna keep saying it — he has done good stuff for the black community,” Jones said on CNN, where he is a frequent contributor. “Opportunity zone stuff, black college stuff. I worked with him on criminal justice stuff. I saw Donald Trump have African American people, formerly incarcerated, in the White House — embraced them, treated them well. There’s a side to Donald Trump that I think he does not get enough credit for.”

Jones said part of the reason Trump’s accomplishments didn’t break through were because of the “incendiary stuff” the president said. He also accused Trump of violating “the No. 1 rule of blackness, which is, ‘I don’t mess with people who mess with people I don’t mess with,’”

I totally don’t understand that last statement, but that might be because I am unfamiliar with the ‘rules of blackness.’

Van Jones is an interesting gentleman. In September 2009, a website called Political Pistachio posted the following:

In 2001, Jones was the leader and founder of a radical anti-American group, the communist revolutionary organization “Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement,” or STORM. This is the same group that Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck showed America, via a section of STORM’s manual (called “Reclaiming Revolution” – what kind of revolution? Something in line with Cuba’s? Russia’s? China’s?), that describes Van Jones’ radical organization as having a “commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism.”

Mr. Jones is entitled to hold any political view he chooses, but I do think it is interesting that after serving in the Obama administration, he is a frequent contributor to CNN. The statement that President Trump has done positive things for the black community has already resulted in requests to have him fired. So much for free speech.

 

Critiquing The Debate

On Friday, Breitbart posted a list of the eleven biggest lies Joe Biden told during his debate with President Trump. I am simply posting the list. Please follow the link to the article to read the details.

The list:

  1. No One Lost Their Insurance Under ObamaCare
  2. America was Cozy with Hitler
  3. I Never Opposed Fracking
  4. I Didn’t Oppose Trump’s China Travel Ban
  5. Illegal Aliens Show Up For Asylum Hearings After Being Caught and Released
  6. Raising the Minimum Wage Does Not Hurt Anyone
  7. No One Brought Up Biden’s Troubling Ukraine Conflicts of Interest During Impeachment
  8. Trump Never Told Putin to Stop Meddling in American Elections
  9. Hunter’s Emails are Part of a “Russian Plan”
  10. Trump Refused to Take ‘Responsibility’ for the Coronavirus
  11. Trump Has Alienated ‘All’ Our Allies

Politicians need to remember that in the age of the Internet, it is very easy to compare current comments and policy positions with past comments and policy positions. Some of these lies can be researched easily with a quick Internet search. Some of these lies simply go against common sense. At any rate, the truth seemed to elude Joe Biden during the debate.

 

Skirting Campaign Finance Laws

Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about some of the dark money being spent in the 2020 elections.

The article reports:

When Hayden Ludwig and a colleague showed up at the Civic Participation Action Fund’s (CPAF) Washington, D.C., office in 2019 seeking copies of the group’s most recent tax returns, they were greeted by an angry Stephen McConnell.

McConnell, then-CPAF’s president, demanded to know who paid his inquisitors’ salaries. Ludwig identified himself as an investigative researcher for the Capital Research Center (CRC), and his colleague as an intern there.

Ludwig also reminded McConnell that federal regulations require groups like CPAF and CRC to provide the documents on request. At that point, Ludwig said McConnell cooled down and produced the documents.

“They’re not used to being in the limelight,” Ludwig laconically told The Epoch Times on Oct. 22.

Indeed, throughout its carefully planned five-year lifespan, CPAF flew under the radar even as it spent millions of dollars from anonymous overseas donors on campaigns to boost Democratic registration and voting in highly-targeted neighborhoods in the 2018 and 2020 campaigns.

The article notes:

“CPAF is best described as a $50 million secretive conduit for moving Atlantic Philanthropy’s foreign ‘dark money’ dollars into U.S. left-wing infrastructure groups doing Get Out The Vote (GOTV) and voter registration campaigns that help Democrats,” Ludwig said.

Atlantic Philanthropy is an offshore complex of closely related foundations based in Bermuda and established by American entrepreneur Chuck Feeney, who made his fortune with the Duty Free Shoppers line of retail stores. Atlantic received $1.6 billion when Feeney sold his interest in the stores in 1997.

Atlantic Philanthropy channeled nearly $50 million to CPAF in 2015 via Atlantic Advocacy Fund, one of its associated groups. McConnell was Atlantic’s U.S. Director before starting CPAF. The group also received funds from other liberal Democratic sources, including $367,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

The plan from the outset was that CPAF—a “limited life initiative”—would complete its mission in time for the 2020 presidential election.

The article notes the legal loophole that allows CPAF to be involved in politics:

“Due to technicalities of American foundation law, since it is organized offshore, Atlantic Philanthropies is permitted to fund 501(c)(4) advocacy activities, which American-based foundations cannot,” according to CRC’s Influence Watch. Names of individual donors behind funding sources remain anonymous.

The article concludes:

In addition to encouraging voter registration in heavily Democratic neighborhoods, CPAF also made grants to activist groups closely aligned with Democratic candidates.

One such group, Arizona Wins, which got $437,675 from CPAF, played a major role in Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) narrow win over Republican Martha McSally in 2018.

Neither McConnell nor Roberts could be reached for comment, while Atlantic Philanthropies completed its grant-making and closed down its media office earlier this year, according to a recording on the foundation’s main telephone line.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There is nothing wrong with encouraging voter registration, but there are laws that restrict the political activities of certain groups based on their tax status. Using offshore companies to skirt those laws is not ethical, even if it does not violate the ‘letter of the law.’

Disturbing News From The Middle East

Most of the world wants peace in the Middle East. President Trump has been moving in that direction by normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. However, not everyone in the region is in favor of peace. To some nations, war serves a purpose–it distracts from internal problems and can be a unifying force, it stimulates the economy by creating a demand for planes and weapons, and it often will strengthen the leadership position of whoever is in charge of the country fighting the war.

The United States Naval Institute News (USNI) News reported on Wednesday that two Russian Navy ships were seen in the Mediterranean Sea escorting an Iranian-flagged oil tanker to Syria.

The article reports:

Last week, the Iranian-flagged oil tanker Samah entered the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. After a few miles, the 900-foot-long ship stopped reporting its position and destination. Evidence suggests the ship sailed to Syria, escorted by two Russian Navy ships, including a destroyer.

Russia’s role in protecting the shipment may change the dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the past, Iranian tankers sailing to Syria have been intercepted by the U.K. Royal Navy. The Russian Navy escort could be viewed as a precautionary step, raising the political and military risks of any intervention by the Royal Navy or others.

Last July, an Iranian tanker destined for Syria, Adrian Darya-1, was seized by U.K. Royal Marines off Gibraltar. The British accused Iran of supplying Syria with oil in contravention of European Union sanctions. Iran quickly seized a British-flagged tanker in a likely retaliatory move. Eventually, in September, Adrian Darya-1 was released by a local court with the assurance that it would not deliver its oil to Syria – but days later, it transshipped its oil in Syrian waters.

The article concludes:

The Russian Navy has hinted it would be more active in escorting merchant ships in the region. After the Iranian delivery, the Russian Navy has publicized an exercise off Syria, meant to protect “smooth passage of civilian ships.” A simulated attack by a submarine was dealt with by Vice Admiral Kulakov, which may be intended to send a message to allies and potential adversaries alike that Russia will actively prevent any interference with the Iranian shipments.

Russia now maintains a permanent squadron in the Mediterranean, based in Tartus, Syria. This includes submarines and large warships. If Moscow decides the Iran-Syria oil run is now a regular mission for the Russian Navy, it’s set to complicate enforcement of international sanctions which could otherwise shut down one of the Syrian regime’s vital lifelines.

Russia has always wanted a ‘warm water port.’ It looks as if they now have one.