Monthly Archives: November 2021

Pettiness On Parade

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Mayor de Blasio will be leaving office soon. His term in office has not been without some pretty major scandals (generally ignored by the media). In March 2019, The Federalist Papers reported that the Mayor’s wife, Chirlane McCray, was given $850 million for a mental health program she was spearheading. The second major scandal involved the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.

The article reports:

The program, ThriveNYC, has fallen far behind its goals and appears to be a massive failure for the city.

But even in spite of that the city has decided to increase the budget of the program which is expected to spend $5 billion in the next five years.

The program was set up to screen 78,000 new mothers for post-natal depression. What actually happened between 2016 and 2018 was that slightly more than 28,000 patients were screened and 570 were offered help. Narcan kits were also handed out, but there are no statistics saying how many were used. When an attempt was made to acquire a budget, they received two budgets with very different numbers. No one seems to know exactly how the money was spent.

There was also the matter of the horses in Central Park (article here). In early 2014, Mayor de Blasio announced that he was going to put a high priority on removing the horse-drawn carriages from Central Park. After all, asking horses to pull carriages in a world of automobiles is cruel. Animal rights groups backed him up. Well, not so fast. It seems that Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties, has an interest in removing the horses–Edison Properties owns multiple properties in the area where the stables for the horses are located. New development of those lots could be quite profitable.

Now to today’s scandal. Mayor de Blasio wants to break the Trump organization’s contract to run the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx by Nov. 14 – a move that could cost the city over $30 million. As if the city didn’t have enough financial challenges.

Red State reported yesterday:

Former President Donald Trump got a reprieve from the city’s efforts to evict his company from the Ferry Point golf course.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Debra James granted the Trump Organization a temporary stay from Mayor de Blasio’s effort to break the company’s contract to run the Bronx course by Nov. 14 – a move that could cost the city over $30 million.

After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, de Blasio ended contracts for Trump’s company to operate the Central Park Carousel, the Wollman and Lasker ice rinks in the park, and the Bronx golf course.

The city’s Parks Department quickly picked new operators for the ice rinks and eventually found a new company to run the the carousel. It also awarded a new license for the golf course to a Georgia-based company, Bobby Jones Links.

The Trump Organization sued over the golf contract, maintaining in court papers that the deal was nixed over politics.

Judge James granted a stay…

Stay tuned for more foolishness out of New York City.

 

When The Surveillance State Comes For Ordinary People

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On Thursday, The Blaze reported that parents in the Scottsdale Unified School District have discovered that a school board member was collecting information on those parents who opposed the teaching of critical race theory. (If the schools are not teaching critical race theory as many on the political left are claiming, why are they compiling information on those who oppose it?)

The article reports:

The dossier was compiled on Google Drive and contained a list of parents who objected to teachings about CRT; it included photographs of both the parents and their children.

Parents who had been calling for the recall of Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg are now demanding he resign over the secret dossier, to which he had access.

“I am calling for the immediate resignation of our board president Jann-Michael Greenburg,” said Amy Carney, a mother of six, who is now running for a seat on the Scottsdale Governing Board.

“We cannot allow anyone in a leadership position to secretly compile personal documents and information on moms and dads who have dared speak out publicly or on social media about their grievances with the district,” she added.

The existence of the files was accidentally discovered by a parent:

The dossier was discovered when Greenburg sent a screenshot of his desktop to a parent that displayed the address of the link to the Google Drive.

Amanda Wray told KTVK-TV that she saw photographs of her children on the dossier and was horrified.

“When I first saw the contents of the Google Drive and I saw my 8- and 10-year-old’s photos, that was terrifying. And like, what’s he doing?” said Wray.

“But he has pictures of my vacation home, property records,” she added. “I’m not a political opponent, I’m an involved parent and that is threatening to me and it makes me wonder why and what he was planning to do with those photos.”

The district said in the letter that Greenburg could only be removed if he was recalled, if he resigned, or if he was voted out in the next election.

Attorney Alexander Kolodin told the Arizona Free News that Greenburg and his father could face criminal charges related to intimidation.

This is not appropriate in America. Unfortunately there are those who believe that any political opposition to the political left’s agenda needs to be countered in any and every way possible. There needs to be room for dissenting opinions in America. The school committee member keeping the dossiers needs to be punished severely for his activities.

 

Who Is In Charge?

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse reported that Secretary of State Blinken has signed an agreement stating that Qatar will formally represent U.S. interests in Afghanistan. Interesting choice.

The article reports:

It is appropriate, given the severity and urgency of the issues we face, that we not mince words. Qatar is the formal Middle East government that supports political Islam through the organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood, aka “the brotherhood.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the fabric covering the umbrella of political Islam. The umbrella ribs are the different factions of Islam reflecting varying degrees of extremism or authenticity. As a result, all of the various factions of Islamic extremism, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, ISIS-k etc., are given legitimacy through the political front of The Muslim Brotherood which faces the aggregate west.

The nation state of Qatar is the primary financing agent for The Brotherhood, and all nations who engage with Qatar on a geopolitical level are essentially engaging with The Brotherhood. Conversely, if a nation state wants to engage with any of the various Islamic groups -each containing various levels of authenticity (ie. extremism)- they can do so through Qatar which acts as an official government intermediary on behalf of The Muslim Brotherhood.

EXAMPLES: •When President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expelled the radical leaders of The Brotherhood from Egypt, they went to Qatar.  •When President Donald Trump asked the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to confront radical Islamic extremism, the Arab nations confronted Qatar.  •When Qatar was forced to expel the five most radical leaders of The Brotherhood they went to Turkey.  [Turkish President Recep Erdogan is aligned in common principle with The Brotherhood.]  •When the U.S. released captured Islamic extremists from Gitmo (al-Qaeda in Afghanistan), they were transferred to Qatar.  •When the the Taliban took back control over Afghanistan, the al-Qaeda leaders from Qatar went back to Afghanistan.

These examples showcase the fulcrum of Qatar as it relates to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which is -by extension- the political face of extremist/authentic Islam.  Another example would be Hillary Clinton (Sec of State) and Leon Panetta (CIA) using Qatar as the financial center and transport hub for covert U.S. missile shipments into Libya (Operation Zero Footprint), that lead to the attack in Benghazi after the U.S. politics shifted due to al-Qaeda giving the missiles to their Brotherhood allies in Afghanistan and Syria to attack U.S. troops.

The article concludes:

While this sounds purposefully opaque, which it is, to those who do not know the geopolitical background, such an agreement makes buckets of sense.  Barack Obama has always supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and Barack Obama’s network is currently in charge of the administration represented by the face of Joe Biden.

Other ideological supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood/Qatar include: John Kerry, John McCain, Adam Kinzinger, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Liz Cheney, the CIA, Evan McMullin, Huma Abedin, Mike Morrell, Hillary Clinton, John Bolton, the U.S. State Department, the Brookings Institute (Lawfare, etc.), the government of China, the government of Turkey, and The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In return, Qatar funds the Democrats and Republicans who operate within all of the ideological DC institutions (ie. Clinton Global Initiative) that support the Muslim Brotherhood either directly or through the process of willful blindness that Islam calls taqiya.

The Biden administration is paving the way for more worldwide terrorism. Under President Biden, America is not acting as a purveyor of peace in the world, but an enabler of terrorism.

 

Fake News Gets Even More Blatant

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Yesterday Townhall posted an article about the mainstream media’s attempt to cover up President Biden’s latest gaffe.

The article reports:

When President Joe Biden spoke at Arlington National Cemetery during Thursday’s Veterans Day ceremony, his words once again became the story instead of what he was attempting to highlight. 

As Townhall highlighted on Twitter, Biden — in the course of telling a story — tried to tell an anecdote about Satchel Paige in which Biden referred to him as “the great Negro at the time.”

This is the video:

Mediate decided that the President did not refer to Satchel Paige as a Negro despite the video being available pretty much everywhere.

Mediate tweeted the following:

Generally speaking, people believe what they want to believe, but this is simply over the top. When the media reports an obvious lie that can be easily disproved, it’s time to stop paying attention to that media.

Following The Science?

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made to the Health and Human Services Department.

The article includes the response from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

So the letter states that the CDC has no information on whether people who have recovered from Covid have become infected again or have transmitted the disease to other people. It seems to me that in the world of looming vaccine mandates, that might be important information.

The article links to a substack article which states the following:

You would assume that if the CDC was going to crush the civil and individual rights of those with natural immunity by having them expelled from school, fired from their jobs, separated from the military, and worse, the CDC would have proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual.  If you thought this, you would be wrong.

My firm, on behalf of ICAN, asked the CDC for precisely this proof (see below).  ICAN wanted to see proof of any instance in which someone who previously had COVID-19 became reinfected with and transmitted the virus to someone else.  The CDC’s incredible response is that it does not have a single document reflecting that this has ever occurred.  Not one.  (See below.)

In contrast, there are endless documents reflecting cases of vaccinated individuals becoming infected with and transmitting the virus to others.  Such as this study.  And this study.  And this study.  And this study.  It goes on and on…

But it gets worse.  The CDC’s excuse for not having a shred of evidence of the naturally immune transmitting the virus is that “this information is not collected.”  What?!  No proof!  But yet the CDC is actively crushing the rights of millions of naturally immune individuals in this country if they do not get the vaccine on the assumption they can transmit the virus.   But despite clear proof the vaccinated spread the virus, the CDC lifts restrictions on the vaccinated?!  That is dystopian.   

At some point, Americans are going to have to realize that this is not about the vaccine or the virus and begin to reclaim their freedom.

Maybe We Should Check On This Before We Proceed

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The following appeared in my Facebook group (Right Wing Granny) today. I will admit I know very little about this, but I thought I would share it so that people who understand these things would see it. This needs to be investigated before we start constructing wind farms offshore.

FINALLY the federal ocean windfarm licensers are looking into what happens to ocean water currents – hence the lobster larvae and other wildlife using those currents- when an offshore windpark’s multiple turbines consistently reduce the speed of the wind that strikes a given sea surface. https://penbay.org/…/boem_studies_offshore_windimpacts…
As BOEM now writes, soliciting proposals for wind research:
“Offshore wind facilities have the potential to alter the local and regional physical oceanographic processes that drive larval and sediment transport. “
” Hydrodynamic and particle tracking models will be utilized to assess how the introduction of commercial scale offshore wind energy facilities affect local and regional hydrodynamics under average seasonal conditions.”
And well they should. As noted as far back as 2008 by oceanographer Goran Brostrom, “wind shadows” form over several square miles of sea surface per operating wind tower, destabilizing the water current structure with sudden upwellings and downwellings, as well as thermal changes that accompany such vertical water movements. The whole mess can wreak havoc on the natural current’s riders as it and they pass through a veritable gauntlet of fixed or anchored windfarms.
Unfortunately this proposal will limit itself to “Offshore Wind Impacts on Oceanographic Processes: North Carolina to New Jersey”.
Surely we of the Gulf of Maine ought to have these studies done and pronto! For enormous floating wind fields are proposed as global investors dream of yanking terawatts of energy from the Gulf of Maine’s water current structure.
Shouldn’t we know what is going to happen to such processes as the Maine coastal current before we fool with it.?

The Tax On Everything

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Inflation is a tax on everyone on everything. It has a negative impact on the economy and on the mood of the voters. It reared its head after the Biden administration made some key decisions (limiting drilling in America, shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, reckless spending, etc.). Issues & Insights posted an article today explaining that the inflation we are seeing now was not only predictable, it was predicted.

The article reports:

We’re not big fans of economist Larry Summers, but in this case, he should be in line for a Nobel Prize for predicting exactly what is happening with inflation today … and who is to blame for it.

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation climbed at an annual rate of 6.2%, the biggest such jump in three decades.

And that’s despite repeated predictions from other “experts” that the spike in prices earlier this year was “transitory.” Even now, they are flummoxed. As the Washington Post put it Wednesday, inflation is “lasting longer than policymakers at the Fed and White House anticipated.”

But no one, we repeat, no one, should be surprised by the latest turn of events.

Go back and listen to what Summers was saying at the start of the year, and it’s eerily prescient.

Summers publicly and repeatedly warned that President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion “rescue” plan —which was Biden’s first big “achievement” that passed without a single Republican vote — would spark an inflationary spiral.

The article includes the following graph:

The article concludes:

But Summers had the most to lose by so publicly sticking his neck out. He’s a die-hard liberal who’d served in the Obama administration. He knew that raising a stink threatened the new president’s big-spending agenda. And, unintentionally or not, he called the lie on Biden’s claim that “leading economists” all agreed on the need for another massive COVID stimulus.

Now that Summers’ prediction is coming true, will any of his detractors apologize? Will any admit that Biden’s $1.9 trillion spending spree — which is now being followed by a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and, quite possibly, a multi-trillion dollar welfare expansion — was a colossal mistake? Will they acknowledge that Biden is principally to blame for the inflationary spiral the economy appears to have entered?

Don’t count on it. Biden is running around the country claiming that still more deficit-financed spending will somehow cut prices. Everyone else is busy looking for other scapegoats. Anything so as not to hold Biden, or themselves, accountable for the damage being done.

Unfortunately inflation will probably be with us until we can either change Congress or change the administration.

 

What Promise?

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Remember when the Biden administration promised that President Biden would have no knowledge of the people purchasing Hunter Biden’s artwork.

In July 2021, MSN reported the following:

A New York gallery owner will facilitate sales of Hunter Biden’s original artwork, an arrangement meant to diffuse concerns over buyers paying top dollar to win influence with the president’s son, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The gallerist, Georges Berges, will independently set prices on the artwork of President Joe Biden‘s son and keep the identities of buyers confidential, including from the president and administration officials. Berges will be the sole person authorized to collect, reject and agree on offers. Berges has agreed to reject any offer that seems unusual, including offers above asking price.

Yesterday The New York Post reported:

It was a family affair Wednesday when Hunter Biden finally showed up at the Manhattan art gallery where his novice paintings are being offered for up to $500,000 each amid concerns about influence-peddling by the president’s son.

Biden, 51, carried his 1-1/2-year-old son Beau on his shoulders as he, wife Melissa Cohen and daughter Maisy Biden were escorted by owner George Berges into his eponymous Soho storefront for a party more than two weeks after the exhibition opened to a mere trickle of prospective buyers.

About 60 guests gathered for the belated event, including President Biden’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and reality TV star Meghan King of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

The article at The New York Post concludes:

Other attendees at the Hollywood show included Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — the president’s nominee to be ambassador to India — as well as musician Moby and artist Shepard Fairey, who created the iconic “Hope” poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The White House has said that the identities of any buyers of Hunter Biden’s art will be kept secret to prevent them from holding sway over President Biden’s administration — claim that’s been widely derided by experts including Walter Shaub, who ran the Office of Government Ethics under then-President Barack Obama.

“There is no ethics program in the world that can be built around the head of state’s staff working with a dealer to keep the public in the dark about the identities of individuals who pay vast sums to the leader’s family member for subjectively priced items of no intrinsic value,” Shaub tweeted last month.

“If this were [Donald] Trump, Xi [Jinping] or [Vladimir] Putin, you’d have no doubt whatsoever that this creates a vehicle for funneling cash to the first family in exchange for access or favors. Nor would you doubt that the appearance of monetizing the presidency was outrageous.”

I guess ethics rules don’t apply to the Biden family.

Sowing The Seeds Of War In The Middle East

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The Biden administration has drastically changed President Trump’s Middle East policies. President Trump worked to form alliances between Arab countries and Israel. Those alliances were based partially on economic gains for the countries involved, but those alliances were also based on a mutual fear and distrust of Iran. Iran is the major funding source of terrorism in that region and around the world. The Biden administration has chosen to undo a lot of the good work done by the Trump administration.

CBN News posted an article today about the shift in policy.

The article reports:

Relations between the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) and the Biden administration have shifted dramatically from the former administration of President Donald Trump.

Palestinian leaders hope to make the most of this new relationship and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh wants the world to know he’s satisfied so far with what he’s hearing from Washington.  

“Our relationship with the new American administration has been going very well based on the promises that were made by the Biden administration,” Shtayyeh told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.

Just for the record, when the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister is happy with the direction things are going, chances are you are going in the wrong direction.

The article continues:

Shtayyeh said those specific promises include restoring funding to the UN agency devoted to Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), opposing Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria – what’s also referred to as the West Bank, and maintaining the status quo in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, which only permits Muslims to pray at the holy site.

A State Department official told CBN News that senior U.S. officials have been consistent in their private discussions with P.A. officials and their public comments “on all of these issues.”

“Regarding assistance, the United States is currently providing about $450 million in assistance to the Palestinian people—all of it consistent with United States law,” the official said, adding that “we intend to provide an additional $75 million in development and economic assistance in the West Bank and Gaza over the next year.”  

The official also said the State Department has “made clear both privately and publicly” that it supports maintaining the status quo on Temple Mount and that “it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. This certainly includes settlement activity.”

Let’s look at some of the direction of these changes in American policy. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has not been a neutral player in disputes between Israel and her Arab neighbors. (article here). Funding the Palestinian Authority means funding terrorism (article here). Preventing Jews from praying on the Temple Mount (the status quo) is also not a move that creates peace or trust. Teaching young children in Gaza to become martyrs to reclaim Jerusalem and drive the Jews into the sea is also not a recipe for peace (article here).

At some point the Biden administration and those who support the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East will realize how unrealistic that idea is. The ‘Palestinians’ do not want a two-state solution–their leaders have turned down the offer numerous times. The ‘Palestinians’ want a one-state solution where they drive the Jews in Israel into the sea. That is really sad when you consider that Israel is a democracy that allows Arabs full rights within their country. The Arabs in Israel have more freedom and a higher standard of living than anywhere else in the Middle East. You would think that the Arabs  would be trying to emulate Israel instead of trying to destroy it.

 

Unfortunately She Fits Right In With The Program

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about Saule Omarova, who has been nominated to serve as comptroller of the currency by President Joe Biden.

The article includes a past quote from Ms. Omarova::

“Here what I’m thinking about is primarily the coal and oil and gas industry. A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order, at least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change,” Saule Omarova — who the Senate is considering to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — remarked in a clip uncovered Tuesday by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative research group.

The comments were originally made during a March talk Omarova gave as part of the Jain Family Institute’s “Social Wealth Seminar” series.

The article notes:

“At the end of the day, these are people’s lives, people are going to lose their jobs because she’s going to support policies that are there to drive them out of work,” AAF Founder Thomas Jones told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

“It’s people who are not going to be able to send their kids to college, who will not be able to make their mortgage payment because Saule Omarova has a classical Marxist view where she wants the government to run all sectors of the economy and part of that is implementing the Green New Deal,” he continued. “And you can only do that by destroying the oil and gas industry.”

She fits in perfectly with the goals of the Biden administration.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the war on everyone even remotely connected to President Trump. That article made some very good points about President Trump’s desire to put America first and the globalists’ idea of destroying America’s freedom and prosperity. The Biden administration is obviously on the side of the globalists.

The Conservative Treehouse article notes:

After eight years of the Obama team attempting to destroy nationalism in favor of globalism, their response to Trump’s “America First” popularity made sense. Donald Trump was positioned to deconstruct almost a decade of Obama-era policy which was specifically intended to diminish American value, economically and socially.

The far-left was in a state of panic; however, it was a panic felt by both the Republicans and Democrats in Washington DC. Politicians within the UniParty were direct financial beneficiaries from the Wall Street multinational corporate strategies which underpinned Obama’s economic outlook.

That’s why there was so much opposition to candidate Trump from the GOP establishment. That’s also why so many Republicans abandoned their re-election efforts in 2018 in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s successful election outcome in 2016. Masks were dropping at an alarming rate inside the RNC as well as traditional GOP media and GOP politicians on Capitol Hill.

Wall Street was essentially unable to manipulate the America First economic policy agenda of President Trump. Their lack of influence applied to all aspects of policy from Climate to Trade and in U.S. geopolitical strategy.

Evidence of their inability was found in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce being locked out of the White House trade and policy discussions. That is why you currently see the U.S. CoC in alignment with, and funding the campaigns of, congressional Democrats.

It was Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone, who changed the economic outlook of the Republican party from Globalism to Nationalism. The economic policy is essentially the cornerstone of what we now call the MAGA agenda. Trump gave voice to the forgotten blue-collar workforce, the middle class and the silent majority of the American electorate.

This MAGA coalition cuts through gender, race, creed and national origin. The MAGA agenda lifts up all workers at a much more significant rate than any previous economic policy. The results were obvious and only took a few months to begin surfacing as the U.S. economy was unleashed to the benefit of the working class.

The battle we are currently in is between those who want to destroy America’s working class and those who want to strengthen America’s working class. One of the major signs of a healthy economy is a healthy middle class. When the middle class is eliminated, you have only the elites and the lower class. Unfortunately there are many in Congress who want to be the elites while ignoring the voice of America’s middle class. Those members of Congress need to be voted out of office quickly.

When Lawlessness Begins At The Top

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President Biden has a unique style as President. Laws that should be voted on by Congress are simply passed by edict. On January 24th, CNN reported that President Biden had signed 30 executive orders in his first three days in office. There was no attempt made to get any of his policy changes through Congress. Unfortunately, other Democrats have followed his example of ruling by edict rather than ruling by law.

On November 1, The Carolina Journal posted an opinion piece titled, “How long will we allow a dictator to rule?” That is a really good question both on the federal and state level. Some of the actions of President Biden are impeachable offenses, but impeachment will never happen as long as the Democrats control the House of Representatives. Some of the actions of Governor Cooper are impeachable, but until the Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives develop a spine, impeachment will not happen in the state.

The opinion piece reminds us:

On March 10, 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper declared what became an unlawful state of emergency that has now lasted over 19 months with no end in sight. For those who think the term dictator is hyperbole, consider the following. To date, he has issued 83 executive orders that have limited the free exercise of religion by forbidding gatherings, the right to free speech by curtailing the operation of government, the right to peaceably assemble unless you were doing so for one of his favored causes (e.g. BLM protests), the right to personal property by forcing business closures or restrictions, and the right to bodily autonomy with mask and vaccine mandates, all without legislative input, due process, or equal protection. In addition, Cooper has issued a record 64 vetoes, more than all other N.C. governors combined (35), while politically intimidating Democratic members of the legislature to prevent a veto override. Finally, under state law, “A state of emergency declared pursuant to this section shall expire when it is rescinded by the authority that issued it.” Therefore, Cooper has absolute rule as the head of the executive branch, can block any bill he does not like from the legislative branch, and has the protection of a Democrat majority on the State Supreme Court in the judicial branch.

We the people are responsible

Having learned the lessons of tyranny under British rule, our state forefathers and their successors intentionally made our governor one of the weakest in the nation. In the first N.C. state constitution of 1776, the governor was elected by the legislature for one-year terms with very little authority. But like the nation of Israel in the Old Testament who wanted a king, over time, we too wanted to be like other states. Since then, we began popular elections in 1836 with single two-year terms, expanded to single four-year terms in 1868, allowed governors to serve two successive terms starting in 1971, first passed the Emergency Management Act in 1977, and was the last state in the union to give our governor veto power in 1997.

We the people are sovereign

According to Article I, Section 2 of our state constitution, “All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.” Therefore, as a government instituted by the consent of the governed, we do not have to accept this state of tyranny, nor should we.

Recently the North Carolina legislature passed a bill that would limit the duration of a declared emergency and therefore the governor’s power to continue to abuse the declared emergency. As expected, the governor vetoed the bill.

The opinion piece concludes with a possible solution:

Now before you dismiss the idea due to the lack of a two-thirds majority of senate Republicans needed to convict, you need to know that state law on impeachment has one critically important wrinkle from the presidential impeachment process. As Dallas Woodhouse pointed out in his recent article on the State Supreme Court recusal issue, once a state official is impeached by a simple majority vote in the House, state law stipulates that “every officer impeached shall be suspended from the exercise of his office until his acquittal.” In other words, once the Republican-controlled House votes to impeach Gov. Cooper, Lt. Governor Mark Robinson would become acting governor until the Senate trial is over. And that is how we end this. We impeach Cooper, have Robinson end the state of emergency, and sign the Emergency Powers Accountability Act Rep. Bell mentioned, and the dictatorship is over.

I realize some will consider this the nuclear option and one that should be avoided at all costs. But how much more of our freedom must we lose? Must more lives be ruined? How many more children must be abused before we draw the line? Failure to resist tyranny is an open invitation for more. We the people are sovereign, and we will live under this dictator for only as long as we are willing.

I think it’s time that we the people put some pressure on our elected Republicans to end the current dictatorship.

 

When The Grass Roots Wakes Up

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The mama and papa bears who have children in public schools are rapidly waking up. The warped history of America being taught, the push toward creating transgender students, and the sexual assaults that have occurred due to ridiculous bathroom policies have awakened parents. The lockdowns of last year opened parents’ eyes to what their children were being taught. Now parents are standing up for their children’s right to a good education.

The New York Sun posted an article today about the backlash against the garbage being taught to our children in public schools.

The article reports:

Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week. They won some but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions. Where outside national groups, such as the 1776 Project PAC, stepped in with funding to help offset union power, the odds shifted and challengers did well.

The press portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but that’s only part of the truth. They were also struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions. For decades, the unions have maintained a tight grip on who gets elected. No wonder school district decisions — about budgets, masking, COVID closures, curriculum, and teacher contracts — protect teachers first. Never mind what’s best for pupils.

That needs to change. In Albuquerque, the winning candidate, Courtney Jackson, told a local newspaper, “the board of education should be the kids’ union,” not a puppet of the teachers’ union. Jackson decided to run after watching the board discuss when to end lockdowns. The discussion focused entirely on what teachers wanted, never addressing the childrens’ needs. “Their interests were not brought up once.”

In Guilford, Connecticut, a small seacoast town, the Guilford Education Association, representing teachers, ran the show. In a questionnaire for school board candidates, the union’s number one question asked candidates to pledge support for “collective bargaining rights.”

The article concludes:

Why the explosion in parental engagement this year? Parents sitting at the kitchen table listening to Zoom school saw what their children were being taught — and not taught. That’s what happened in Montclair, NJ.

In Montclair, the mayor, Sean Spiller, serves as president of the state’s largest teachers union but also appointed the school board — a blatant conflict of interest. The board negotiates the teachers’ contract. Last Tuesday, the town voted 70% to replace mayoral control with an elected board.

That’s an improvement, but electing the board won’t guarantee students become the priority. Not while teachers unions outgun local parents groups. Organizations like Moms for Liberty, now with chapters in 32 states, will make the difference.

Many school districts will elect board members sometime in the spring, instead of on Election Day. That’s by design to keep the public in the dark that an election is even happening and discourage turnout.

Parents and other concerned citizens have roughly half a year to gird for these upcoming contests. Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told a news outlet that “Parents are going to right this ship, and this election was only the beginning.”

It’s dangerous to wake a mama bear.

Working Hard To Make The Energy Crisis Worse

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I am sure I am not the only one who is impacted by the current cost of gasoline. Even as a retired person who does not have to commute to work every day, I cringe when I see that it is costing me almost twice as much to fill up my gas tank. I long for the days of mean tweets and lower gas prices. Well unfortunately the Biden administration is not particularly concerned about the impact of rising gas prices on the average America.

Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the Biden administration’s plans to shut down another pipe line. Another source mentioned that shutting down that pipeline would be a violation of a treaty with Canada, but I doubt the Biden administration is concerned with that.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is reviewing shutting a pipeline in Michigan after anonymously sourced reports said federal officials were quietly studying its potential environmental impact, a White House spokeswoman confirmed on Nov. 8.

When pressed by a reporter during a news conference, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre disputed reports saying President Joe Biden was going to terminate Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline, which stretches from Canada into Michigan. However, she conceded that the Army Corps of Engineers was reviewing the matter.

“Yes, we are. We are,” Jean-Pierre said. “I thought you were saying that we were going to shut it down, but that is not inaccurate. The Army Corps of Engineers is preparing an environmental impact [statement] to look through this.

“Any reporting indicating that some decision has been made, again, is not accurate,” she said, adding that an environmental impact statement “will help inform any additional action or position the U.S. will be taking on the replacement of Line 5.”

Line 5 is part of a pipeline network that moves crude oil and other petroleum-based products from Canada, transporting some 500,000 barrels per day.

The article also notes:

On Nov. 7, Politico reported that the administration was weighing the potential market effects of a shutdown of the pipeline in the face of Republican, Canadian government, and industry opposition. More than a dozen GOP lawmakers last week sent a letter to President Joe Biden, warning that the move would further cause gas prices to increase amid already-high prices.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has also sought to shut down one segment of the pipeline, ordering Enbridge to stop operations in May due to concerns about a section that runs under the Straits of Mackinac leaking into the Great Lakes.

But in October, the Canadian government, which backs Enbridge and Line 5, escalated the dispute and invoked a decades-old Canada–U.S. treaty.

Stay tuned and buy lots of blankets and warm clothes for the coming winter.

Do Harsh Coronavirus Measures Work?

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Fox News posted an article today that included the statistics on coronavirus cases in California and Florida. California has mask mandates and other mandates impacting the freedom of the unvaccinated. Florida has no mask mandates and has pretty much been open since the original ‘two weeks to slow the spread.’

The article reports:

Watcher (Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco) added that with low booster shot rates and waning immunity, “the end result is that we’ve plateaued in our improvements, both nationally and in California, and it’s likely we’ll soon see some significant upticks.”

“California has done very well over the past few months, but we still have too many unvaccinated people,” he added. “People are spending more time inside and being more active, and masking is going down.”

Florida, meanwhile, hit another new benchmark last week. The first hospital in the state to treat a COVID patient last year, Doctor’s Hospital, announced that for the first time since the pandemic, it has no virus patients in its care.

“This is great news! For two weeks and counting, Florida has had the lowest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the entire country – with no mandates, vaccine passports, or lockdowns. Overall, COVID hospitalizations have been declining for more than 70 days straight, and we’re at an all time low in terms of the number of COVID patients hospitalized statewide,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told Fox News on Monday when asked for comment about Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota.

The article also notes:

Cases in California are no longer falling, with the rate increasing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s red “high” level of virus transmission stemming from the delta variant, the outlet reported.

But Southern states such as Texas and Florida – where state leaders do not enforce face mask policies or support other strict mandates – are in the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level.

California’s vaccination rate is higher than states such as Texas and Florida, but that still hasn’t stopped the outbreaks. Sixty-two percent of California’s total population is fully vaccinated, while Florida reports 60% and Texas 54%.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the ‘science.’

 

Why Patriotism Is Important

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Duck Duck Go, my favorite search engine, defines patriotism as follows:

  1. Love of and devotion to one’s country.
  2. Love of one’s country; the passion which moves a person to serve his country, either in defending it from invasion or in protecting its rights and maintaining its laws and institutions.
  3. Love of country embodied or personified; patriots collectively.

A person who plays a part in the country’s military preparedness needs to espouse those values. Unfortunately, not everyone does.

Fox 13 reported yesterday that Elaine Marie Thomas, a metallurgist in Washington state, has pleaded guilty to faking the results of strength tests on steel used to make U.S. Navy submarines.

The article reports:

Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma that supplied steel castings used by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding to make submarine hulls.

From 1985 through 2017, Thomas falsified the results of strength and toughness tests for at least 240 productions of steel — about half the steel the foundry produced for the Navy, according to her plea agreement, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. The tests were intended to show that the steel would not fail in a collision or in certain “wartime scenarios,” the Justice Department said.

There was no allegation that any submarine hulls failed, but authorities said the Navy had incurred increased costs and maintenance to ensure they remain seaworthy. The government did not disclose which subs were affected.

Thomas faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in February. However, the Justice Department said it would recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case.

In a statement filed in U.S. District Court on her behalf Monday, her attorney, John Carpenter, said Thomas “took shortcuts.”

“Ms. Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised,” Carpenter wrote. “This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years.”

Thomas’ conduct came to light in 2017, when a metallurgist being groomed to replace her noticed suspicious test results and alerted their company, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., which acquired the foundry in 2008.

I am concerned that the Justice Department said it would “recommend a prison term at the low end of whatever the court determines is the standard sentencing range in her case.” The actions of this person could have resulted in the unnecessary loss of life of American military personnel. I think she deserves more than the minimum sentence. It is very fortunate that no lives were lost.

Shouldn’t This Have Been Done Beforehand?

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The Conservative Treehouse is reporting the following today:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that vaccine makers and U.S. healthcare officials are now attempting to find out why the mRNA vaccines are creating adverse events and heart conditions in healthy people. Call me crazy, but studying dangerous side-effects would seem to be a more prudent line of inquiry before injecting people, not after.

The article quotes The Wall Street Journal:

Wall Street Journal – […] Researchers aren’t certain why the messenger RNA vaccines, one from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech, and the other from Moderna Inc., are likely causing the inflammatory heart conditions myocarditis and pericarditis in a small number of cases.

Some theories center on the type of spike protein that a person makes in response to the mRNA vaccines. The mRNA itself or other components of the vaccines, researchers say, could also be setting off certain inflammatory responses in some people.  One new theory under examination: improper injections of the vaccine directly into a vein, which sends the vaccine to heart muscle.

To find answers, some doctors and scientists are running tests in lab dishes and examining heart-tissue samples from people who developed myocarditis or pericarditis after getting vaccinated.

The article notes that this has not slowed down the rush to vaccinate children, who are generally not at risk of dying from the coronavirus. In reality, were it not for the politics, the vaccine would have been taken off the market by now because of the questions about its safety.

States vs. The Federal Government

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Just the News reported  yesterday that twenty-seven states have joined the lawsuit filed against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate.

The article reports:

The mandate, which is being enforced by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), will require employers to ensure all their employees are either vaccinated by Jan. 4 or are tested weekly and wearing masks. If the businesses do not follow the mandate, they could face fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

All but one of the states that filed lawsuits, Iowa, have Republican attorneys general. Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana are the only three of the 27 states that have Democratic governors, and Iowa’s governor is a Republican.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly criticized President Biden’s vaccine mandate on private businesses on Friday, saying, “While I appreciate the intention to keep people safe, a goal I share, I don’t believe this directive is the correct, or the most effective, solution for Kansas.”

It is interesting that the push for vaccine mandates is occurring as the rate of infection from the coronavirus is slowing. In most parts of the country both the number of people contracting the virus and the number of people dying from the virus are decreasing.

The article lists the courts involved in the various cases:

Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah all joined a lawsuit in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued a temporary block on the vaccine mandate, citing the potentially “grave statutory and constitutional issues” raised by the plaintiffs. South Carolina is under the jurisdiction of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Utah is under the 10th Circuit.

Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia jointly filed their lawsuit in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Idaho is under the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Kansas and Oklahoma are under the 10th Circuit, and West Virginia is under the 4th Circuit.

Indiana has announced that it is filing its suit in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming have filed their lawsuit in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Alaska, Arizona, and Montana are under the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, New Hampshire is under the 2nd Circuit, and Wyoming is under the 10th Circuit.

Alabama, Florida, and Georgia are suing the Biden administration in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

It will be interesting to see how many of these courts reach the same conclusion.

Amazing

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Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

Vice President Kamala Harris asked NASA if it could use its satellites to track trees “by race” in various neighborhoods as part of “environmental justice” during a recent display on climate change, leading many to ridicule the vice president online and even giving rise to a “Black Trees Matter” hashtag.

Harris, who serves as chair of the National Space Council, visited Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Friday “to see vital climate science work.”

It seems to me that a very inexpensive solution to “tree inequality” would be to go into neighborhoods where there aren’t enough trees and simply plant some, but I guess that might not involve enough bureaucratic agencies.

The article includes many of the responses to Kamala Harris’ statements. Here are a few:

“I can’t get over the fact that ‘environmental justice’ and ‘tree equity’ are real phrases Democrats use,” wrote GOP strategist Matt Whitlock. “Reads like parody.”

…“I thought this was a Babylon Bee headline, turns out it’s our totally serious Vice President,” wrote Republican congressional candidate Leon Benjamin.

…“Too many White (Supremacist) Pines, not enough gender neutral Black Walnuts!” wrote a Twitter user, adding the creative hashtag: “#BlackTreesMatter.”

“Are we now headed towards #BlackTreesMatter?” asked another Twitter user.

…“Officer Harris is just trying to figure out whether trees are racist or not,” wrote yet another.

“Yes, the world’s most inauthentic, unnatural politician Kamala Harris made news yesterday by pressing NASA on its ability to sort trees by race as part of an ‘environmental justice’ push,” another wrote. 

“So the [vice] president Kamala Harris with NASA yesterday, able to ask any question about our universe, she asks if they are able to ‘track trees’ by race as part of ‘environmental justice,’” wrote one Twitter user.

“She’s going to keep dividing, nothing will stop them from creating a new, segregated society,” yet another wrote.

…“Breaking News: Kamala Harris realizes that Trees are inherently racist,” wrote another Twitter user.

“So people no longer have biological genders but trees, a plant, have races?” asked another. “If I didn’t know Harris is ok with PC on steroids I’d give her some slack & say she meant species.”

“When Trump tried to explain a real experimental UV disinfectant light therapy, the press turned that into him ‘telling people to drink bleach’ and ‘inject Lysol,’” wrote yet another Twitter user.

“Kamala Harris asking NASA to ‘track the number of trees by race’ is just good hard science,” a Twitter user mocked.

“This is what they mean by ‘TRUST THE SCIENCE,’” quipped another.

“Everything has to be about race with Harris…. Even the trees,” wrote  another Twitter user

The incident comes as Democrats’ $1.75 trillion entitlement spending bill includes billions for left-wing environmental activists’ pet projects, including planting more trees in low-income neighborhoods to create “tree equity.”

The tree equity provision is just one of a plethora of climate-related spending provisions in the bill.

I guess this proves that really anyone can grow up to be vice-president.

Further Shenanigans In New Jersey

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New Jersey has never been known for election integrity. I recently posted an article about some shenanigans in Essex County. Now there are some serious questions about the election of Republican Edward Durr as New Jersey Senate President.

Townhall is reporting the following today:

Leah has covered this New Jersey race extensively. It’s a state senate seat so it doesn’t get much attention but if you live in the Garden State, this is a huge upset. This is the New York Giants beating the Patriots in Super Bowl 42. New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney appears to have been beaten by a no-name Republican Edward Durr, who spent less than $100 to beat Sweeney. I’m deducting the $67 he spent at Dunkin’ Donuts. I’ve lived in New Jersey for most of my life. Sweeney owns South Jersey. He’s the labor union’s top guy there. He controls that campaign cash. No governor can get much down without his blessing either. To get clipped likes this, really highlights the miserable election night Democrats had this cycle. So, why hasn’t he conceded yet? Well, 12,000 ballots just magically appeared. Sorry, they were “recently found.”

The article concludes:

Now, no matter what happens, there will always be the aura of funny business in this election. And to no one’s surprise, it was the Democrats who started it.

As a child, I lived in Jersey City for a short period of time. I remember my parents telling me that the people walking through the cemetery with clipboards in late summer and early fall were collecting names off of the gravestones to be registered as voters in November. I don’t know if that was true, but it was definitely the urban legend of its time. I suspect there are a lot of major cities in America that would do well to clean up their voter rolls.

The Politically Incorrect Truth

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NFL Quarterback Aaron Rodgers has received a lot of criticism for refusing to take the coronavirus vaccine. On November 5th, The Federalist posted an article listing some of his comments on his refusal.

The article lists nine main points from an interview of Aaron Rogers on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

The nine points:

1. ‘You’re Selfish’ Smear Is Media Propaganda

2. Personal Health Should Be Private

3. ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ Is a Lie

4. The Left Politicized the Vaxx

5. The Vaxxed Are Still Infectious

6. ‘Health Is Not a One-Size-Fits-All’

7. COVID Recovery Offers Robust Immunity

8. Science Is Better Than Shaming

9. Overall Health Is Important Too

The concluding paragraph of the article notes:

Early data showed that obesity tripled a person’s risk of hospitalization, and 78 percent of those hospitalized with the Wuhan virus were overweight or obese.

The coronavirus does not seem to have a pattern. I have known very healthy people who became seriously ill, and I have known people who fit the pattern of high risk who contracted the virus and recovered without incident. To me, the bottom line is simple–all of us need to do whatever we can to be healthy. Any health decision should be made by the individual considering the advice of a personal physician. The government has no business forcing Americans to take a vaccine that has only been in use for a limited amount of time. We have no idea what the long term effects of the coronavirus will be. To take or not to take the vaccine needs to be an individual choice.

How Things Actually Work

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On November 5th, The Daily Signal posted an article about the proposed child care subsidies and universal pre-kindergarten.

The article reports:

Proposed federal spending on these two early-childhood programs add up to $400 billion through 2028, a large chunk of the newest framework of the so-called Build Back Better legislative package released by the Biden administration totaling about $1.75 trillion.

The universal preschool provision would fund and regulate government-approved pre-K available for all 3- and 4-year-old children in states that apply for the funding. The child care subsidies cap the amount that families would pay at no more than 7% of their income on day care by giving families certificates to pay for government-approved providers.

While these policies are undesirable for all parents and children for many reasons, one of the arguments from those who favor universal pre-K and child care programs is that the costs will be more than offset by the tax dollars paid by mothers who will then be able to join the formal labor force and who otherwise would not have.

Note that only government-approved providers will be subsidized.
I wonder if that will include church-related daycare. The argument that these programs would pay for themselves does not take into account the fact that many mothers would prefer to stay home with their children. Unless the program provided for that option, it could be considered discriminatory against stay-at-home mothers. The obvious question is, “Why does the government want to be the one to raise our children?”

The article concludes:

Gallup polling shows that half of mothers with a child under the age of 18 would prefer to stay home with their children if they could. And 57% of families prefer for a parent or relative to be the main source of child care.

These new programs stack the deck against those preferred options.

Speaking of what parents want, families of about 1.5 million school-aged kids decided they want more control of K-12 education and less government interference in schooling.

The recent winning gubernatorial campaign of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia pressed hard on the pain point parents have with their government-run schools. All of the evidence points to a desire for less government intervention in the lives of their children, not more.

Of course, any talk of child care programs should center around children. And the same 2008 Quebec study that government child care proponents tout for finding positive effects on the maternal labor force also finds significant negative health and behavioral outcomes for the participating children.

The notion that central planners have found a “free lunch” in child care and pre-K is not supported by the evidence. Universal pre-K and child care subsidies would be bad for children, families, and taxpayers.

The main beneficiary would be the teachers unions, who would have a steady new supply of union members, thanks to what would effectively amount to the K-12 system becoming a P3-12 system.

This is another example of follow the money. The teachers’ union funnels a lot of money into Democrat campaign coffers. They are looking for a return on that investment.

 

I Wonder What The Real Story Is

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported the following:

The FBI has conducted searches of at least two New York locations tied to the conservative investigative group Project Veritas, reportedly in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the youngest daughter of President Joe Biden.

“I awoke to the news that apartments and homes of Project Veritas journalists, or former journalists, had been raided by FBI agents,” Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said in a statement posted on his website on Friday. “It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed ‘crime’ of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly. Or at least, this journalist.”

The Biden family claims the diary was stolen in a burglary in 2020, but that may or may not be the case.

The article notes:

A right-wing outlet called the National File published dozens of pages of 40-year-old Ashley Biden’s purported diary in October 2020, with the handwritten pages covering a number of salacious, personal topics. The outlet said at the time it “has obtained what a whistleblower has identified as a copy of the complete diary” belonging to Biden’s daughter with first lady Jill Biden, as well as an audio recording of Ashley Biden, “admitting this is her diary.”

O’Keefe said Friday, “Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary. We had never met or heard of the tipsters. The tipsters indicated that the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room.

“The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then-candidate, Joe Biden. The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary.”

O’Keefe added, “At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof. We attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it. Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.”

So where is the diary now? Why is the FBI spending its time looking for a diary?