Check With The Experts Before You Change Your Name

Some of us are old enough to remember when Chevrolet introduced its new “Nova.” It was a cute, compact car that was marketed to compete with the Ford Falcon. However, there was a small problem marketing the Nova in Spanish-speaking countries. “No va” in Spanish translates loosely to “it doesn’t go.” Not a great name for a car. Well, it seems as if Mark Zuckerberg has made a similar mistake renaming Facebook.

The Western Journal reported the following today:

Giggles, snickers and some awkwardness greeted Facebook’s decision to change its corporate name to Meta.

Jokesters poked fun at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, because “meta” is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word for “dead,”, according to the Times of Israel.

“In Hebrew, *Meta* means *Dead*,” Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt, a tech expert, tweeted on Thursday. “The Jewish community will ridicule this name for years to come.”

…Zuckerberg said the name Facebook does not cover “everything we do” at a time when his empire includes Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform and more. Zuckerberg explained that the metaverse is a form of the virtual world where everyone is connected by virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses and phone apps.

The article also notes:

In Portuguese and Spanish, the word is not so troubling because it means “goal.” In Brazil, however, the word has a sexual connotation, according to Bloomberg.

Zuckerberg’s announcement was a boon for Nova Scotia-based Meta Materials. The company’s stock rose 26 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, when Zuckerberg made his announcement, and another 6 percent on Friday, according to Reuters.

The article concludes:

Name changes can often fail in translation.

Kentucky Fried Chicken learned that when it entered the Chinese market in the 1980s, according to the BBC.

The restaurant’s “finger lickin’ good” motto, when translated into Mandarin, came out “eat your fingers off.”

It’s probably a good idea to use a translation application of some sort before you make a significant name change. Sometimes mistakes can be very misleading!

 

A Not-So-Veiled Threat?

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s request for recognition as legitimate by the nations of the world.

The article reports:

The Taliban warned the U.S. and the rest of the global community Saturday that their decision to withhold formal recognition of Afghanistan’s new government may result in consequences for the world.

“Our message to America is, if unrecognition continues, Afghan problems continue, it is the problem of the region and could turn into a problem for the world,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at Saturday’s press conference, according to Reuters.

Mujahid noted that absence of formal diplomatic ties between Afghanistan and the U.S. led to the military invasion in 2001, Reuters reported.

I don’t think the absence of formal diplomatic ties was actually the problem.

The article concludes:

Although not yet recognized by a single country in the world, the Taliban are counting on China to provide financial assistance to Afghanistan’s struggling economy. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar, in late October, Reuters reported.

The spokesperson also added that China had vowed to inject funds into Afghanistan’s transport infrastructure, as well as to provide Kabul’s exports access to Chinese markets via neighboring Pakistan.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said the Biden administration’s strategy in regard to the Taliban was a “far cry” from formal recognition during a briefing in September. However, she did not claim that the U.S. would never recognize the organization.

There are a few things to consider here. China has moved quickly to fill the vacuum left by the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is quite possible that China will be able to use the infrastructure America left behind to exploit the rare earth elements that could bring Afghanistan into the twenty first century. China has been working for decades on cornering the market on the elements needed for the computer technology of today. Also consider the fact that much of our Washington ‘leaders’ are indebted to (that’s a polite word for owned by) China. I only wish that we could afford to pay our national leaders as well as China pays them. There are many aspects of the Afghanistan debacle that have much wider ramifications than simply leaving Afghanistan.

Removing The Policy That Worked

The Washington Times is reporting that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is seeking to cancel the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” border policy.

The article reports:

The move comes even as Mr. Mayorkas is trying to restart the program under a federal judge’s injunction.

In a lengthy memo, the Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. cannot assure the safety of people it pushes back across the border under the policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, and the government doesn’t want to spend the money needed to improve conditions in Mexico.

I realize that there is a humanitarian element to this, but we are not responsible for the people that are ‘pushed’ back across the border. That is like saying that if someone breaks into your house and you manage to get them out of your house you are responsible for their safety on the street. No. These people are breaking the law and coming into our country illegally. We owe them nothing except possibly a trip home. President Trump had the right idea in trying to help improve conditions in the countries the migrants are coming from. Until the corruption and lawlessness in these countries is dealt with, there is no point in sending the countries financial aid–it will only add to the corruption and lawlessness. However, if we can put strings on any financial assistance, we may actually be able to help some of the poorer countries in South America and Central America. Meanwhile, we simply do not have the resources to support the entire western hemisphere.

The article concludes:

But immigrant-rights groups said some legitimate asylum-seekers were pushed back and faced kidnappings, robberies and other abuse while waiting in Mexico.

The Biden administration had halted MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols) early in its tenure, and Mr. Mayorkas issued a memo in the spring attempting to cancel it altogether. But a federal judge in Texas ruled he cut too many corners.

In particular, the judge said Homeland Security in the Trump years had conducted a review of the program and found it to be a critical border tool. Canceling the program required more than Mr. Mayorkas‘ cursory dismissal of those findings, the judge said.

The judge ordered the program restarted, and the Biden team says it is negotiating with Mexico to do that — even as it works to undermine the program legally.

The new memo canceling the program runs to 39 pages of justification, arguing MPP is a misuse of resources at a time when the Biden team is trying to erase most of the Trump immigration legacy.

Mr. Mayorkas has promised a new system that he said will erase the incentives for illegal immigration while protecting legitimate asylum cases.

The thing to keep in mind is that there is a difference between legitimate asylum and economic migration. Economic migrants need to work to find a way to improve conditions in their home countries. I realize that in many of these countries, corruption and lawlessness are a problem, but until someone stands up to the problem, it will continue to exist.

Thank You, Congressman Murphy

Representative Greg Murphy is the only practicing physician currently in Congress. He was interviewed recently on NTD’s “Capitol Report.” The Epoch Times posted an article today about that interview.

The article reports:

A remark made by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adviser is “the most dangerous statement I’ve ever heard in medicine,” the only active practicing physician in Congress said in a new interview.

Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and an associate physician specializing in infectious disease at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, sits on the administration’s vaccine advisory panel.

Before the panel voted this week to advise the FDA to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 jab for kids 5 to 11, Rubin said, in part: “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes. That’s how we found out about rare complications of other vaccines, like the rotavirus vaccine.”

“That is literally the most dangerous statement I’ve ever heard in medicine,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), a doctor, said on NTD’s “Capitol Report.”

“How’s that going to sit with the average mom, the average parent that cares about their child? That they want their child experimented on?” he added.

The article continues:

The panel pondered the potential benefits and risks of giving young children the vaccine but ultimately decided the benefits outweighed the risks. The FDA accepted the recommendation on Friday.

Rubin said after the vote that surveillance systems would be crucial in learning “how safe” the Pfizer jab is for children.

“We decided to go for it with a lot of heavy conscience. But I’m hoping that this is the start of learning more about it,” he said.

Murphy and Rubin did agree on one point. COVID-19 vaccines should not be mandated at this point due to the lack of safety data. Several other FDA advisers also said they are opposed to mandating the vaccine for young children at this time.

Murphy, speaking to NTD, noted a key difference between COVID-19 and diseases that children routinely receive vaccines for early in their life.

“The vaccines that we have for children are measles, mumps, rubella, those things that we give kids, we have to have them before they go to school. And I agree with that, that’s fine. But the problem is, those are childhood diseases. COVID is not a childhood disease. It can affect children, but its lethality rate is infinitesimal compared to what it is in adults,” said Murphy, who practices at the Vidant Medical Center, a 1,000-bed level 1 trauma center,

Congressman Murphy has not been in Washington long enough to understand the role that money plays in all decisions in every bureau of the government.

The article concludes:

“I just don’t understand why it’s being pushed on kids so much,” he added, predicting a federal mandate for kids soon just to go to school. “We don’t mandate that kids get the flu vaccine to go to school. We don’t mandate that kids have the HPV vaccine. So I just don’t understand the biology and the virology for this.”

There is no medical justification for vaccine mandates for children.

Amazing Weather

The Western Journal posted an article today about a solar flare forecasted for this weekend.

The article reports:

“Auroral activity will be high(++). Weather permitting, highly active auroral displays will be visible overhead from Inuvik, Yellowknife, Rankin and Iqaluit, to Portland OR, Cheyenne, Lincoln, Springfield, and New York City, and visible low on the horizon as far south as Carson City, Oklahoma City, and Raleigh,” according to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

The auroras at the poles occur when charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s upper atmosphere, according to Space.com.

…The same solar flare that will spark the light show in the skies is expected to cause what the NOAA has classified as a strong geomagnetic storm on Saturday and Sunday, according to CNN. The storm is rated at a three on a five-point scale.

The impact of the storm could cause voltage irregularities and false alarms on some devices, NOAA warns. High-frequency radio blackouts and loss of radio contact on the side of the Earth facing the sun are also possible.

A strong solar flare can cause the same type of disruptions that would be caused by an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.

The article notes:

“Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel,” NASA wrote.

“This flare was classified as an X1-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, and so on,” NASA wrote. “This was the second X-class flare of Solar Cycle 25, which began in Dec. 2019. A new solar cycle comes roughly every 11 years.”

The solar flare will allow much of the United States to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) at some point during the weekend. I am hoping the Lights will be visible this far south as they are beautiful.

Florida Leads The Way–Again

Yesterday NewsMax reported that Florida is suing several government agencies over vaccine mandates.

The article reports:

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida sued President Joe Biden, NASA, and other government agencies over the “unlawful” COVID-19 vaccine mandates that require federal contractors to get vaccinated, and “threaten” the state’s economy.

Biden early last month announced plans to impose vaccine mandates on federal employees and businesses with 100 or more employees. Unvaccinated workers must get tested regularly.

The Republican governor and state Attorney General Ashley Moody filed the lawsuit, first reported by Fox News, against Biden, NASA, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and officials within the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the Department of Defense over the vaccine mandates.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday morning in U.S. District Court in the middle district of Florida’s Tampa division, Bloomberg News reports.

The article concludes:

“Let’s not have Biden come in and effectively take away — threaten to take away — the jobs of people who have been working hard throughout this entire pandemic,” DeSantis said during a news conference in Fort Myers. “I am offended that a police officer could potentially lose their job.”

The governor last week said he would call together a special session of the Florida legislature to ban COVID-19 vaccine mandates on businesses.

Florida previously sued the Biden administration over its “illegal” catch-and-release policies at the U.S.-Mexico border. The lawsuit says the administration’s policies force Florida to “incur millions of dollars in expenses” as a result of migrants being relocated to the state.

Covid cases and deaths are winding down. Unfortunately the government power grabs that took place during the pandemic are not winding down. We need more governors willing to stand up for Americans and their freedom to earn a living.

Insanity Reigns

The Patriot Daily Wire is reporting today that the Biden administration is considering a plan to offer immigrant families separated during the Trump administration $450,000 per person in compensation. This was originally reported in The Wall Street Journal.  American soldiers killed in action do not even receive that much.

The article includes a portion of The Wall Street Journal article:

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government. The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller, the people said, as government officials aren’t sure how many will come forward. Around 940 claims have so far been filed by the families, the people said. -WSJ

Welcome to America where the government thinks money grows on trees. How about helping our homeless veterans and others before helping people who are here illegally?

The article concludes:

“It is a complicated, complex piece of litigation” – trying to resolve hundreds of separate lawsuits at the same time, and “sometimes even more complex to try the cases” said Margo Schlanger, who ran the civil-rights office during the Obama administration at the Department of Homeland Security and now teaches at the University of Michigan law school.

What will the reparations crowd think of this?

This is not acceptable.

 

A Short History Lesson

When Israel became a nation in May 1948, it was promptly invaded by all of its Arab neighbors. Israel was not able to maintain control of the entire city of Jerusalem, and part of the city fell into Arab hands and was controlled by Jordan. From 1948-1967 Jews were denied access to their holy sites by the Jordanians. In 1967, when Israel regained control of the entire city of Jerusalem, Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all given access to their holy sites. That is one illustration of the difference in the way Jews treat Arabs and the way Arabs treat Jews.

In 2001 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused a deal brokered by President Clinton that would have established a Palestinian State.

The deal included the following (source: The Jewish News of Northern California):

control over some 95 percent of the West Bank, 100 percent of Gaza, predominantly Arab areas of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount and most of the Old City), the Muslim holy sites and the limited return to Israel for at least some of the Palestinian refugees.

That is not all: The Palestinians would have been compensated for the missing 5 percent of West Bank territory with an equivalent area inside pre-1967 Israel, presumably in the Negev Desert, contiguous with the Gaza Strip.

Arafat refused the deal. Had he accepted the deal, he probably would have met the same fate as Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated after signing a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It needs to be understood that the ‘Palestinians’ do not want peace with Israel–they want to drive Israel into the sea. The Palestinians are teaching their kindergarten children to be martyrs to reclaim Jerusalem. Below is a picture of a Palestinian kindergarten class.

Fast forward to today…

The Times of Israel is reporting today:

The intention of the U.S. Biden Administration to reopen a consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem should be a trigger warning for Israel.

The consulate was closed in 2018 by former President Trump when the U.S. embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The closure shut down our enemies’ hope for the division of Israel’s capital, a hope that will be revived if it is reopened.

A unilateral decision by the Biden Administration in that regard without Israel’s consent would not only contradict international law, but would also send a message that day by day we are giving up increasing control over almost everything —over Jerusalem and the territories, over the nation’s fabric and identity, over the exorbitant transfer of money to Gaza which afterwards transforms into weapons against us. We would be giving up on ourselves, on our right to be in the Land of Israel.

The Biden administration is not leading us toward peace–they are leading us to war. Please follow the link to read the entire Times of Israel article. This is not a smart move by the Biden administration.

In Genesis 12:3, the Bible says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The earth has been blessed by Israel–Israel has received more Nobel Prizes for scientific discoveries than any other nation. We put ourselves at risk when we work against the interests of Israel.

While Homeland Security Is Watching Parents…

Hot Air posted an article yesterday about Xiaoming Zhang, a civilian professor at the Air War College, headquartered at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Professor Zhang has plead guilty to making false statements to a federal agent. He faces a maximum of five years in prison for lying about his relationship with a Chinese official to a federal agent.

The article includes a portion of his resume:

Before teaching at the Air War College, he taught at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, USA and Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. On October 30, 2003, the Texas A&M University Press published his book “Red Wings Over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea.” On January 1, 2004, China International Press published his book “China’s Tibet.” (b)(c)
In 2010, Air University published his article “The Art of Military Discovery: Chinese Air and Space Power Implications for the USAF,” which he co-wrote with U.S. Air Force colonel Sean D. McClung. (d)
On February 1, 2018, the University of North Carolina Press published his book “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979-1991 (The New Cold War History).”

The article notes:

This isn’t a case of a naturalized American citizen being duped by the Communist Chinese. This is a case of espionage committed purposefully after Zhang realized the foreign official, a Chinese Communist, was gathering sensitive information from him. He knew, yet he continued the relationship. This is not the first such case of the Chinese government infiltrating college campuses, using relationships with American professors for information. Some professors are paid by the Chinese government and get into trouble when they fail to disclose financial ties. It is a national security risk and during the Trump administration, the China Initiative began. It is a program that targets economic espionage and intellectual property theft, especially at research labs and universities.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Unfortunately this is not an unusual situation. There are numerous foreign agents working in American colleges that need to be sent home. Unfortunately our Justice Department is more concerned about parents who want to know what their children are being taught.

 

Florida Gets It Right

A friend of mine posted the following chart on Facebook:

So let’s look at some of the policies of Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature that resulted in this success:

Florida has outlawed vaccine mandates

Allowing parents to make decisions about masking their children

Florida was also one of the first states to open after the ‘two-week’ shutdown

Florida prioritized vaccinating the vulnerable

Florida set up mobile locations to treat people in the early stages of the coronavirus

Florida made an effort to balance public health and economic needs. Obviously, they did a good job.

Your Children As Guinea Pigs

On Tuesday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the move to approve Covid vaccines for children.

The article reports:

The FDA panel has voted 17 to 0 to approve the Pfizer vaccine for 5 to 11-year-olds.  One of the FDA Panelists, Dr. Ruben, outlined his support by saying We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s the way it goes.” 

Another panelist noted that 700 young people under the age of 18 have died ‘with‘ COVID, or COVID related symptoms in the past two years.  With the full support of the FDA panel, the large scale rollout of the vaccine in young children will now head to the CDC for final approvals. 

The statement We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s the way it goes.”  concerns me a great deal. It seems to me that children should not be the medium that the vaccine is tested on to determine if it is safe–it should have been tested to prove it is safe before it is used on children.

The article includes the following chart which illustrates why children do not actually need to be vaccinated:

Why is there such a rush to vaccinate children, when they are at very little risk of serious complications from the coronavirus?

 

A New Tax Proposal

The Democrats are currently floating the idea of taxing unrealized capital gains. As is their usual modus operandi, the Democrats are saying that this new concept of taxation will only apply to billionaires. Of course it will.

Today The American Thinker posted an article about the idea.

Here are a few highlights from that article:

Our current secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, is busy trying to find a way to tax wealth without calling it taxing wealth.  She has eyes on taxing unrealized capital gains.  What this means simply is taxing people for money they have not earned or received.  That’s it in a nutshell.  That definition should leave even those who have never had a course in accounting or finance shaken.

Not only is Janet Yellen considering this, but the Democrat party is on board as well.  Democrats claim that it is needed in order to pay for their agenda.  You know — the one that President Biden says pays for itself.  The idea of taxing you for the income you have not made is also a policy speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi proposes.  Apparently, there is some confusion here.

Looking at this from my point of view, I recalled a picture of Casey Stengel, nicknamed “the ol’ Professor,” when he was the manager of the New York Mets in 1962 — a team considered the worst team to ever play in the major leagues.  He had his hat off and scratched his head with the caption: “Can’t anybody here play this game?

Think about how absurd this idea is. Imagine if an Internal Revenue Agent showed up at your house and said, we decided that you have to pay tax on the money you never earned. Aside from how insane that sounds on the surface, one need only ask: “If I didn’t receive or earn that money, with what do you expect me to pay the tax?” That, in a nutshell, is the entire problem.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It describes some of the lessons we can learn from history about creative accounting. If you honestly believe that the ultra-rich will not find a way to avoid this tax so that it has to be passed down to the middle class, then you have truly not been paying attention.

A Totally Botched Plan

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

During America’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan earlier this year, the Biden administration issued a directive that evacuation flights be filled to “excess” with refugees who had not been properly vetted before arriving in America, according to an internal administration communication disclosed on Tuesday by Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

“Total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available. Err on the side of excess,” reads an Aug. 16 email to U.S. officials involved in the exit from Afghanistan. “This guidance provides clear discretion and direction to fill seats and to provide special consideration for women and children when we have seats.”

This was (and is) a recipe for disaster.

The article concludes:

“We now know that we’ve got major problems of vetting of the people who were brought to this country, who were evacuated and brought to this country,” Hawley said. “So, you testified in September that those evacuated, about 6,000 American citizens, you testified in September that the [Special Immigrant Visas] were about 1,200 to 1,300, that leaves about 116,700 people, based on the 124,000 neo-number that you’ve been offering, 116,700 people who were not citizens, who were not SIVs, and we just don’t know much about who were those people?”

Kahl, in response to Hawley’s questions, said that about 84 percent of the Afghans evacuated by the Biden administration were deemed to be at risk under Taliban rule. “It’s a mishmash of a lot of different categories,” Kahl said.

It’s a little late to consider the problem of bringing people from a terrorist nation into this country without vetting. Meanwhile, many of those who helped us and many Americans trapped in Afghanistan are still hoping that they will be able to leave Afghanistan alive. There is no excuse for the chaos of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is also no excuse for the fact that no one has been held responsible or faced any consequences for the failures involved.

An Interesting Reversal

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about a recent statement by Patrick Moore, a Canadian environmentalist who previously served as president of Greenpeace Canada and director of Greenpeace International.

The article reports:

Polar bears would not exist today without climate change, and they may even be thriving because of current climate trends. That’s what the co-founder of Greenpeace (Patrick Moore) told scientists, economists, and academics who took part in an international conference challenging alarmist claims about global warming.

…During his talk, Moore described some of the events that helped gain notoriety for Greenpeace, such as the campaigns directed against nuclear testing and whale hunting dating back to the 1970s. He eventually felt compelled to leave Greenpeace when activists began to lose sight of their humanitarian mission while engaging in campaigns that were not rooted in sound science, he explained.

“At a philosophical level, Greenpeace had started with a strong humanitarian orientation to save human civilization from nuclear war,” Moore said. “That meant we actually liked people. That’s the peace in Greenpeace. The green, of course, was the environment. … I decided to fashion myself a sensible environmentalist basing my positions on science and logic rather than sensationalism, misinformation, and fear.”

The article concludes:

Moore also suggested there is good reason to view contemporary climate conditions as beneficial to polar bears. That’s because the reduction in sea ice during the summer months enables the sun to shine through the opening in the ocean in a manner that is beneficial to the marine life that supports the polar bear population, he said.

While commenting on energy policy, Moore called for the development of more nuclear power plants to help reduce fossil fuel use. He estimated that there are about 440 plants worldwide, but he would like to see something in the neighborhood of 4,000. Moore said he favors reducing fossil fuel use not because of carbon dioxide emissions, which he views as beneficial, but because fossil fuels should be conserved for energy needs that only those energy sources can supply.

“Fossil fuels are the most important energy for making civilization,” Moore said. In fact, he added, fossil fuels are “causing us to live longer and live better.”

It is interesting that Moore currently is a director for the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit group that includes scientists devoted to highlighting the benefits of carbon dioxide. He has written a book titled Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. I suspect his return to actual science has not been well received by those at Greenpeace.

 

 

Don’t Count On This To Prevent The Passage Of The Bill

The Epoch Times posted an article today about the ongoing negotiations among the Democrats about their massive spending bill. We have been hearing for months that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will save us from this bill. It is possible that Senator Sinema will vote against it, but don’t bet money on Senator Manchin. Historically he only votes against the Democrats when it doesn’t matter.

The article reports:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has come out against a revenue scheme proposed by his party that would have allowed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to gather information on the inflows and outflows of American citizens’ bank accounts.

The measure initially came to light as a part of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. In an attempt to head off concerns from moderates, Democratic leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers have desperately marketed the bill as being completely paid for with no substantial effect on the deficit or national debt.

…Speaking at a Tuesday meeting of the Economic Club in Washington, Manchin vehemently opposed the program.

Manchin agreed that the IRS should be somewhat strengthened. Under the reconciliation bill, insisted Manchin, “The IRS is going to be able to do the job that they’re supposed to be doing.”

But Manchin ruled that his party’s snooping scheme did not fall into the category of what the IRS should be doing. “[The IRS was] never able to go into bank accounts,” he noted.

Manchin related a conversation he’d had with President Joe Biden about the program: “I said ‘Mr. President, I don’t know who put this out or how it got screwed up but they said basically, ‘We’re gonna start looking at $600 transactions.’ Even if it’s $10,000, okay, that’s only $800 or $900 [of activity per month].”

Manchin said that he asked the president, “Do you understand how messed up that is? To think that Uncle Sam’s gonna be watching transactions?”

“I said ‘I don’t know how this happened, but this cannot happen. This is screwed up.’”

The article concludes:

The party is now considering a new tax on unrealized capital gains that would target only individuals with $1 billion or more of income per year or individuals with $100 million of income for three consecutive years. Manchin, Sinema, and other moderates have not yet given a nod of approval to this most recent measure.

BEWARE!!! Any tax levied on individuals with $1 billion or more of income will eventually be levied on individuals with $1 or more of income (because individuals with $1 billion or more of income can afford to hire the tax lawyers to avoid the tax) and the government will still want the revenue. Also taxing unrealized capital gains has never been done and is a really bad idea. What happens if those gains become losses? Do you get your tax money back? What a nightmare.

Reinventing January 6th

The Democrats seem to be intent on resurrecting and reinventing the events of January 6th. They continue to investigate while avoiding any evidence that might actually lead to the truth, and there is even a movie that emphasizes the Democrat narrative.

Yesterday The Patriot Daily Wire shared a recent Tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This is the Tweet:

Just for the record, none of that is true.

The Patriot Daily Wire reports:

Undoubtedly, the pro-Trump crowd at the Capitol engaged in a politically motivated riot. Beyond that, however, there is not much else to say. Despite claims to the contrary, the evidence has shown those present were not insurrectionists or terrorists.

None of these facts have stopped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from claiming otherwise, however. In fact, in a tweet published on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez made the claim that the Jan. 6 riot was a “terror attack” that left “almost 10 dead.”

…In truth, there were four deaths that occurred during the Jan. 6 riot, not “almost 10.” All four of the dead were pro-Trump demonstrators.

Both Kevin Greeson, 55, and Benjamin Phillips, 50, died of heart attacks; Roseanne Boyland, 34, died of “acute amphetamine intoxication” and Ashli Babbitt, 35, died from a gunshot wound to her left shoulder, according to a KOKI-TV report of the D.C. medical examiner’s findings.

Two of the four deaths were of natural causes, a third died from an accidental drug overdose and the fourth — Ashli Babbit — was shot by Captiol police. And, again, all four were among the pro-Trump crowd.

So why are we still talking about this, and why is there so much emphasis on a false narrative? It’s called politics. As we experience supply chain disruptions, unlimited illegal immigration, and inflation, the Democrats needs a winning issue. If they can convince American voters that Republicans (especially Trump supporters) are lawless neanderthals, they might be able to hold their own in the coming gubernatorial and congressional elections. It’s that simple.

There is a very insightful article about January 6th posted in the Hillsdale College magazine Imprimis. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The Imprimis article concludes:

Hayek’s (Friedrich Hayek, who wrote The Road to Serfdom) overriding concern in The Road to Serfdom was to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. In a new preface to the book’s 1956 edition, Hayek noted that one of its “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”

“This means,” Hayek wrote, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.”

Note the power of that little word “if.” It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer.

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

Bingo.

Beware the rewriting of the history of January 6th.

Numbers Don’t Lie

The coronavirus has probably been with us for about two years now. We have shut down, we have vaccinated, we have socially distanced, and we have masked, and the virus is still with us. The hospitalization and death rates seem to be decreasing, but the virus is still with us. Is is because 100 percent of the people are not vaccinated? Evidently not.

On Saturday, The American Spectator posted an article titled, “Irish Quandary: Who to Blame When Everyone’s Vaxxed?” That is a really good question.

The article reports:

During his Thursday town hall meeting with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, President Joe Biden blithely dismissed the most basic assertion of those who have chosen to resist a COVID-19 vaccination. “Freedom? I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID,” scoffed Biden. “No, I mean come on — freedom.”

In his literally mindless way, Biden said out loud what health officials everywhere have been implying since the vaccines became widely available. Those who are not vaccinated are killing their more responsible peers.

In the Republic of Ireland, however, health officials are running out of people to blame. This has becoming embarrassingly obvious in County Waterford. As reported in the Irish Times, the nation’s establishment newspaper, two of the three most COVID-infected electoral areas in Ireland are located in the county “with the highest rate of vaccination in the country.” In Waterford, a remarkable 99.7 percent of adults over the age of 18 is fully vaccinated.

The Waterford news caught my attention because the first American “Cashills” hail from County Waterford. My great-great-grandfather came to America in 1847, “Black 47” as they called it, the mid-point of a potato famine that saw more than one million Irish die from starvation or disease and another million flee the country. For all their travails, the Irish were a hardy, freedom-loving people then. With some notable exceptions, they are neither anymore.

I suspect that is also about the time my Irish ancestors came to America.

The article reports some startling numbers:

The arbitrary evolution of Irish COVID policy over the past 18 months has made it clear that public health officials and government policy makers have no idea what they are doing. If proof were needed, County Waterford provides it. According to data published on October 21, Waterford City South has the nation’s highest 14-day incidence rate at 1,486 cases per 100,000 and Tramore-Waterford City West has the third highest at 1,122 cases per 100,000. This is despite internal travel bans and the county’s more than 90 percent vaccination rate.

Although Waterford is running three times the rate of the nation writ large, Ireland as a whole is not faring particularly well, especially given its draconian restrictions. In the seven days preceding October 21, Ireland reported 2,026 new cases. To put that number in perspective, wide-open Florida had 2,262 cases during that same period with a population more than four times greater than the Irish Republic’s.

The article concludes:

Indeed, to dissent on just about any COVID-related issue comes at a price. The case of former University College–Dublin professor and Irish Freedom Party chair, Dolores Cahill, is instructive. Prior to her emergence in the anti-vaccination movement, Cahill had been considered “superstar” of Irish scientific research.

Cahill’s standing in polite society began to unravel in March 2021 when she was induced to resign her Freedom Party chairmanship after “making unsubstantiated claims at an anti-lockdown rally.”

In August 2021, readers of the Irish Times learned that a bench warrant had been issued in London for the arrest of the “prominent Covid sceptic and anti-vaccination campaigner.” Among other offenses Cahill was charged with holding “a gathering of more than six people in any place.”

By October 2021, the same month that the Waterford numbers were making a hash out of all official vaccination claims, the Irish Times was trashing the now “former” UCD professor as a “conspiracy theorist” and “one of the main purveyors of anti-vaccination misinformation.”

As the County Waterford numbers make clear, Irish health officials and policymakers do not know what “misinformation” is. They do, however, know what power is, and they will do what they must to hang on to it, freedom be damned.

Maybe vaccines are not the answer?

Considering All Aspects Of Electric Cars

Zero Hedge posted an article today about one of the negative aspects of switching to electric cars.

The article reports:

Last month, a massive fire broke out at a German bus depot, destroying 20 electric buses. First responders weren’t prepared nor properly trained in extinguishing lithium-ion fires. The fire prompted one German official to question the zero-emissions vehicles as the “spontaneously” combustion of the batteries “is completely unaddressed,” according to RT News

“The risk of these fires, including in other locations such as bicycle basements or large apartment blocks, is completely unaddressed,” Heinrich Duepmann of Germany’s Electricity Consumer Protection Association told RT. “Also, insurance companies are not yet tackling the issue.”

Duepmann said the fires are “not regulated,” and fire barriers between electric busses and ones that run on diesel will be constructed to reduce the risk. 

The article notes an incident in Baltimore, Maryland, last month when after an automobile crash involving a Tesla, it took firefighters more than two hours to put out the fire that ensued.

The article concludes:

Baltimore County Volunteer Firefighters Association was so fed up with the incident because they’re not equipped nor have the proper training to handle such fires. They tweeted, “Let’s hope @elonmusk can work with the fire service and together we can develop a better response.” 

But it’s not just Baltimore firefighters who are not adequately trained in battling lithium-ion fires as more and more electric vehicles enter the roadways. There are firehouses across the country that are not prepared.

The only weapon that firehouses have is water and to let the fire burn out, but that could take hours. 

A few months ago, 20 tons of water were used to extinguish a Tesla fire in Taiwan. For some context, it only takes 3 tons of water to put out a gasoline car fire. A Texas fire chief told The Independent that a Tesla fire needed 40 times more water to control the blaze in a separate incident.

What becomes evident is first responders aren’t prepared for the brave new world of green transportation and the occasional battery fire. This has been proven around the globe as electric car companies, such as Tesla and VW, among others, should brief local governments on how to tackle lithium-ion fires. 

We may eventually get to a point where green energy makes sense, but we are not there yet.

Sometimes A Tragedy Is Simply A Tragedy

My sympathies go out to the family of the cinematographer who was accidentally shot on the set of the movie “Rust.” My sympathies also go out to Alec Baldwin. He fired the gun trusting that the special effects people had done their jobs correctly. As someone who had a well-known brother-in-law in special effects, I know how critical safety is to that profession.

Why my husband and I moved to North Carolina from Massachusetts, one of the first things I did was take a gun safety course. The gun culture of North Carolina was unfamiliar to me, and I felt that I needed to learn about gun safety. I learned some very basic rules about gun handling:

1. Treat every gun as if it were loaded.

2. Always be sure of your target and what’s behind it.

3. Visually and manually check to make sure the gun is not loaded–never assume anything.

4. Never aim at anything that you don’t intend to shoot.

I realize that some of those principles may not apply on a movie set, but had the special effects people followed these principles, I doubt the accident would have happened. What happened on the movie set of “Rust” was tragic, but steps can be taken to prevent future tragedies. The obvious first step would be to outlaw any live ammunition on movie sets.

My sympathies go out to the people impacted by this accident. I hope that everyone impacted can learn from the incident and be more aware of safety issues in the future.

This Is Not A Surprise To Anyone Who Has Been Paying Attention

One America News is reporting the following today:

U.S. President Joe Biden’s global energy security adviser said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is getting close to using natural gas as a political tool if Russia is holding back fuel exports to Europe as it suffers an energy crunch.

“I think we are getting close to that line if Russia indeed has the gas to supply and it chooses not to, and it will only do so if Europe accedes to other demands that are completely unrelated,” Amos Hochstein, Biden’s adviser, told reporters, when asked if Putin was using gas as a weapon.

Hochstein said gas prices in Europe have been driven higher not just by events in the region but also by a dry season in China that has reduced energy output from hydropower and increased global competition for natural gas.

Still, while a number of factors have led to the European gas crisis, Russia is best placed to come to the aid of Europe, he said.

“There is no doubt in my mind, and the (International Energy Agency) has itself validated, that the only supplier that can really make a big difference for European energy security at the moment for this winter is Russia,” Hochstein said.

He said Russia can increase upstream production of gas, and should do it quickly through existing pipelines.

Under the Trump administration, America was approaching the point where its natural gas exports would be a counter to the energy blackmail Russia has historically practiced. Ending America’s energy independence will be looked on in the future as one of the biggest mistakes made by the Biden administration.

What Happened In California

On Friday, Front Page Magazine posted an article by Daniel Greenfield. Mr. Greenfield generally focuses on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism, but stumbled upon the following information during an Uber ride from the airport. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. I will post some of the highlights.

The article reports:

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

…The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players. But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority’s Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

The article then goes on to detail California’s efforts to switch all of its trucking to electric trucks.

The article notes:

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California’s DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With “green” trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

…Biden called for ports to operate around the clock, but that’s not going to magically bring back thousands of trucks or truckers. California Democrats still haven’t changed their regulations and without that, there’s no incentive or even legal structure that would allow trucks to operate.

Laws have consequences.

This May Be A Problem For The NATO Alliance

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949. The alliance was originally formed to stave off the possibility of the Soviet Union annexing more of Europe. In 1952, Turkey and Greece were added to NATO. Greece left NATO in 1974 when Turkey invaded Cyprus and NATO did not react (Cyprus was not a member of NATO, so no response was triggered). Greece rejoined NATO in 1980. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became President of Turkey in 2014 and has been moving Turkey toward an Islamic dictatorship since he took power.

Yesterday The Hill reported that President Erdogan has called on his foreign minister to banish 10 ambassadors from Western countries, including the United States, after they called for the “urgent release” of a Turkish philanthropist, Reuters reported.

The article reports:

Earlier this week, ambassadors from the embassies of 10 countries called on a resolution for the case of Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for several years after facing charges both in 2013 and 2016 for allegedly financially backing the 2013 protests and for his supposed involvement in a 2016 attempted coup.  

Those charges have been disputed by Kavala, and he was originally absolved of his 2013-related charges; however, earlier this year, the 2013-charges were reinstated along with charges from the 2016 incident, according to Reuters. 

“Today marks four years since the ongoing detention of Osman Kavala began. The continuing delays in his trial, including by merging different cases and creating new ones after a previous acquittal, cast a shadow over respect for democracy, the rule of law and transparency in the Turkish judiciary system,” according to a statement issued on Monday through the U.S. Embassy in Turkey.

“Together, the embassies of Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States of America believe a just and speedy resolution to his case must be in line with Turkey’s international obligations and domestic laws,” the statement continued. “Noting the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights on the matter, we call for Turkey to secure his urgent release.”

Erdoğan claimed in his speech Saturday that the countries will “know and understand Turkey,” adding that “the day they do not know and understand Turkey, they will leave,” according to Reuters.

This is something to watch to see if President Erdogan’s actions have an impact on Turkey’s relationship with NATO. Since becoming President, Erdogan has drawn closer to the Muslim world and pretty much cut his friendly ties to Israel. I truly believe that it is President Erdogan’s intent to reestablish the caliphate that was the Ottoman Empire (with Turkey at the head). That will be interesting as Iran also plans to reestablish that caliphate with Iran at the head. Stay tuned.