You Go First

On Monday, Breitbart reported the following:

“This food crisis is real, and we must find solutions,” World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on a WEF trade panel last Wednesday.

The WEF has published a starter list to help consumers change their diet with “new and innovative options that have started making their way to the global market only recently.” These include:

      • Algae: combining their carbon-negative profile with sustainable sourcing, algae have the potential to change the food system for the better while being good for your health, thanks to their essential fatty acids and high vitamin and antioxidants content. Although may not appeal to the most squeamish consumers, algae actually possess a meat-like, umami flavour that makes them an ideal replacement for meat. They can also be dried and minced to obtain healthy salt-like condiments and dressings.
      • Cacti: many varieties of cacti are edible and contain high amounts of vitamins C and E, carotenoids, fibre and amino acids. Cacti stems have long been part of the Mexican culinary tradition and are now starting to enter the international market through new, delicious concepts.
      • Uncommon grains: if you don’t feel like revolutionizing your diet with unusual ingredients, you can opt for a more gradual change by diversifying your sources of carbohydrates. Despite the existence of 21 different families of grains, at the moment rice, wheat and maize make up more than 50 percent of global cereal consumption. Opting for diverse grain varieties (like amaranth, fonio or buckwheat) will not only provide you with more nutritional value, but also help improve soil health and preserve biodiversity.

The WEF has previously said switching en masse to a plant-based diet is essential to protect wildlife habitats and prevent the loss of numerous species currently facing extinction.

Hollywood has also been known to recommend the same message of changing eating habits to save the planet from “certain destruction.”

These are the same people who flew their private jets to Davos to lecture us on our carbon footprints. Do you honestly believe they will be eating algae and cacti?

There Are Always Strings Attached

On Monday, Just the News reported that there will be a rule change in federal education funding that will require schools to have certain LGBT policies in order to receive federal funding.

The article reports:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this month it will change how it interprets Title IX prohibitions on discrimination based on sex “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

That change means that schools that accept any kind of funding, including students receiving FAFSA or Pell grants or students who receive federally subsidized school lunch funding, will be subject to the new Title IX LGBT interpretation.

“As a result, state and local agencies, program operators and sponsors that receive funds from FNS must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation,” USDA said in a statement. “Those organizations must also update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”

This means that schools around the country will be forced to comply with a range of pro-transgender policies in things like sports, housing, locker rooms and bathrooms if they want to continue receiving federal funds. The effort began when President Joe Biden issued an executive order almost immediately upon taking office.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), federal money always comes with strings attached.

Remember, the Teacher Unions control the Democrat party through their donations.

Open Secrets posted the following charts illustrating how money talks:

Again, the strings attached to federal funding could be used to hold up a suspension bridge. Many school districts need to take a look at what it costs to jump through the  hoops to receive federal funding versus the money received.

It Hasn’t Worked Yet

On Sunday, The Daily Caller reported that the three times that President Biden has released fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve the price of gasoline has gone up. I don’t think his solution is working.

The article reports:

Biden ordered a 50-million-barrel SPR release in November, a 30-million-barrel release on March 1 and a 180-million-barrel release on March 31, saying the “historic” actions would ease pressure felt by Americans at the pump. But marketplace and government data analyzed by The Daily Caller News Foundation paint a different picture.

On Tuesday, the average price of gasoline reached an all-time high of $4.59 per gallon, according to AAA data, while domestic oil prices remained above $110 a barrel, far higher than their 2015-2021 average of $53.15 per barrel and 2021 average of $68.14 a barrel, Federal Reserve data showed.

Release 1: Nov. 23, 2021

Oil price: $76.75 a barrel.

Gasoline price: $3.40 per gallon.

The article concludes:

Finally, Biden announced the largest release to date on March 31, ordering the DOE to release 180 million barrels of oil from the SPR between April-September. The president said the move would provide a “historic amount of supply for a historic amount of time” and act as a “six-month bridge” to the fall.

“The action I’m calling for will make a real difference over time,” he said during remarks titled “Actions to Lower Gas Prices at the Pump for American Families.”

Biden then predicted gas prices would fall 10-35 cents a gallon.

However, the price of oil declined substantially from $107.82 a barrel on March 30 to $100.28 per barrel on March 31. Oil prices remained near that level through April and early May before increasing again and hitting $114.20 per barrel on May 16.

Gasoline prices followed a similar trajectory as oil prices, declining through April before skyrocketing in mid May and hitting multiple all-time highs.

Those of us who studied economics at some point are familiar with the law of supply and demand. Most Americans understand that if the government opens up drilling in America, we can again be energy independent and enjoy the benefits of that independence. Aside from lower prices at the gas pump, businesses are more likely to relocate to places that have cheap, dependable energy. We saw that during the Trump administration. The Biden administration’s war on fossil fuel has cost Americans dearly at the gas pump, in international relations, and in the ability to attract manufacturing jobs to America. The Biden administration is destroying America’s middle class and the American economy in the name of an industry that has not yet been proven to work. As Americans face rolling blackouts this summer, I hope many of them will reconsider some of their recent voting habits.

Very Few People Actually Believe This

The Biden administration has continually passed off the rapidly rising gas prices as “Putin’s price hike.” This description ignores the fact that gasoline prices began rising steadily right after President Biden took office. On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the real cause of the rising gasoline prices.

The article reports:

The White House often describes higher prices at the pump as “Putin’s price hike,” but prices were going up steadily after President Joe Biden took office. The price already increased by 55%, rising from a U.S. average of $2.11 when Biden took office to $3.51 the day before Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, according to Forbes.

“The ‘Putin’s price hike’ is laughable – and you can tell because no matter how hard they try to advance this particular little bit of propaganda absolutely nobody but White House spokespeople use the word,” John Cochrane, a Hoover Institution senior fellow, told the Caller.

“The administration wants to blame anybody but itself for the challenges of the American economy. [‘Putin’s price hike’ is] a good talking point because there’s a sliver of truth in it,” President of the American Institute for Economic Research, William Ruger, told the Caller in an interview.

The current U.S. average price of gas sits at $4.59 per gallon and prices in California have reached as high as $7.25 per gallon.

The article notes that although inflation is part of the problem, the problem is also due to the Biden administration’s war on oil and gas.

The article notes:

“At least early on in the price run-up, drilling activity was comparatively muted. Cancelled leases, cancelled pipelines, proposed regulations to penalize lenders that financed fossil-energy businesses all dampened production responses that would be putting oil and gas on the market today,” Kreutzer said.

…Biden stymied future production of gasoline by canceling the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halting the sales of a drilling area in Alaska and two in the Gulf of Mexico, and banning new oil and gas leasing on public lands.

“If the global supply of oil is low, we should ask who canceled the Keystone Pipeline on his first day in office, why fracking is banned in many states, and so forth. Hobbling U.S. energy investment has been the deliberate policy of the administration from the first day in office,” Cochrane said.

“The administration should have accelerated approval of pipeline permits, instead of blocking and cancelling them. It should not have cancelled leases that had already been issued. It should not be using regulatory agencies like the Security and Exchange Commission and appointments at the Federal Reserve to hobble investment in oil and gas production,” Kreutzer (Institute for Energy Research senior economist David Kreutzer) said.

Elections matter, and energy policies matter.

Is There Anyone In Government Who Cares About The Taxpayers’ Money?

On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about the Internal Revenue Service’s issuance of improper pandemic tax credits.

The article reports:

This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the IRS for issuing almost $1 billion in improper pandemic tax credits — and rebuffing an inspector general’s recommendations to recover the erroneous payments.

The tax collectors issued potentially $898 million in improper Recovery Rebate Credits (RRCs) to ineligible individuals, including potential nonresident aliens, according to a final audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

The CARES Act authorized Economic Impact Payments in varying amounts depending on income and filing status. Any eligible individual who did not receive the stimulus payment could claim the missing amount on their tax return as an RRC on their taxes in 2020 and 2021.

“As of May 27, 2021, the IRS had processed 26.3 million tax returns with RRC claims totaling $39.2 billion,” according to the TIGTA final audit report. “Of these, the IRS issued potentially improper RRC payments totaling $898 million. These include $79.8 million in the RRC that should have been paid to eligible individuals and $818.5 million in the RRC that was paid to ineligible individuals.”   

The IRS declined to review or take steps to recover approximately two-thirds of the erroneously disbursed amounts, the inspector general revealed.

…Declining to review such ineligible claims processed after May 27, 2021, Corbin said the recovery effort “would require the IRS to divert limited resources to review these returns when such a small percentage, five one-hundredths of one percent, are projected to be affected by the issue.”

Democrats increased the IRS budget by 6% in the recent omnibus spending legislation, and an additional 10,000 agents were expected to be hired. 

How much money would taxpayers save if the additional agents were put to work tracking down erroneous pandemic payments rather than harassing ordinary Americans who might have made an honest mistake on their tax returns?

Good News About A Shooting That Was Prevented

On Friday, Townhall posted an article about a graduation party in Charleston, West Virginia.

The article reports:

“Police said a woman who was lawfully carrying a pistol shot and killed a man who began shooting at a crowd of people Wednesday night in Charleston,” location Fox 11 reported about the incident. “Dennis Butler was killed after allegedly shooting at dozens of people attending a graduation party Wednesday near the Vista View Apartment complex. No injuries were reported from those at the party. Investigators said Butler was warned about speeding in the area with children present before he left. He later returned with an AR-15-style firearm and began firing into the crowd before he was shot and killed.”

Thank God it wasn’t a gun-free zone. Notice that the woman was lawfully carrying and acted to save lives.

We need to remember that taking away guns from Americans who legally have the right to own them will not impact the amount of guns in the hands of criminals. Criminals will not be interested in following any new gun laws we manage to pass.

A website called mass-shootings.info reports the following:

Many of the states on this list have strict gun laws–New York and California in particular. Because criminals tend not to abide by the law, strict gun laws don’t decrease gun violence. Criminals are less likely to attack people in areas where concealed-carry permits are common. Criminals want the upper hand–they want to be the only ones with the guns. We need the Second Amendment to keep all of us safe.

 

 

This Should Be Called Treason

On Friday, Gregg Jarrett reported that during the Trump administration as President Trump was attempting to negotiate with Iran, former officials of the Obama administration “engaged in a secret meeting with Iran.”

The article reports:

A group of senior Obama administration officials met with Iran in 2018 as “part of an effort to undermine the Trump administration’s diplomatic push to isolate the hardline regime, according to an internal State Department document” reports The Washington Free Beacon.

“The document is the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive” writes The Beacon. The memo states then-President Trump and his administration were working to increase economic pressure on Iran in 2018, but the delegation of U.S. former ambassadors held a secret, “off-the-record” meeting with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif at his residence in New York City.

The seven-page memo was assembled during the meeting with Zarif, during which Zarif claimed that Trump’s policies have fomented anti-U.S. fervor in Iran and pointed to the popularity of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Trump two years later in a drone strike.

“I was as popular as Soleimani, but now I am at 47 percent and his is up,” Zarif said, according to the memo. “He is closer to 80 percent. People of Iran once preferred engagement, now opted for resistance as the only reality. That is what the polls are telling us now and it is the reality of the region.”

The article quotes The Washington Free Beacon:

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was not aware of these meetings while leading the State Department, said the memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry’s efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel powwows with Iranian officials.

“This memo reflects even more than we already knew about former State Department officials continuing on as if they were still in office,” said Pompeo, who is now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ. “Trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It’s worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials—two years after Obama left office—were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America.”

Everyone involved should be tried for treason.

Getting The Numbers Right

On Wednesday, NPR reported that there have been 27 school shootings this year. Reason posted an article on Thursday explaining why that number is misleading and inaccurate.

The article at Reason reports:

The problem here is that three very differently defined terms are being used somewhat incautiously and interchangeably: school shooting, mass shooting, and mass school shooting. Uvalde was a mass school shooting; the 26 previous tragedies at schools this year were not.

…The difference is significant. Education Week, which tracks all school shootings, defines them as incidents in which a person other than the suspect suffers a bullet wound on school property. Many of the 26 previous shootings involved disputes between students in parking lots, or after athletic events, and all of them resulted in one or zero deaths. These deaths are still incredibly tragic, of course. But they are fundamentally unlike what happened in Uvalde.

Uvalde is a mass school shooting. This is defined in different ways too: an incident in which at least four people (some counters make it three) are shot and/or killed. The Gun Violence Archive counts incidents in which at least four people were shot. Under this definition, many incidents of street crime and domestic violence count as mass shootings, even if no deaths result. A stricter tally of mass school shootings, conducted by criminologists for Scientific American, only includes incidents where the shootings resulted in at least four deaths. Using their criteria, the number of mass school shootings in the U.S. since the year 1966 is 13. These crimes claimed the lives of 146 people in total.

Obviously, 13 incidents in the last 56 years is a very different statistic than 27 incidents in the last few months. The two figures are so far apart because they measure separate things. One-off gun incidents are a serious problem in the U.S., and those taking place at schools are no exception. Mass casualty events, on the other hand, constitute less than 1 percent of all gun deaths. Suicides and non–mass-casualty murders—usually carried out with handguns rather than assault rifles—constitute the overwhelming majority of gun crimes.

I can’t  help but wonder if NPR is purposely misleading Americans. What happened in Uvalde is horrific, but it is sad that many political operatives are using the events there to further an agenda that will take away the rights of innocent Americans.

A Lawsuit I Am Glad To See

On Wednesday, The Epoch Times posted an article reporting that John Pierce Law has filed a lawsuit suiting eighteen major airlines contending that vaccine mandates were an infringement on their constitutional, religious, and medical liberties.

The article reports:

The lawsuit against Atlas Air was filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, with over 100 plaintiffs pursuing litigation.

“Fundamentally, this case is about whether Americans should be required to choose between their livelihoods and being coerced into taking an experimental, dangerous medical treatment,” reads the lawsuit (pdf).

Plaintiffs are mostly unvaccinated pilots, flight attendants, as well as other Atlas staff.

“It is also about the safety of America’s airline industry. Should pilots—under federal regulation required to be among the healthiest workers in the United States—who have taken an experimental ‘vaccine’ that is now shown to have potentially deadly, long-term side effects, be allowed to fly massive aircraft in our skies? While those who have (smartly) refrained from such a course be forced out of their jobs?” it states.

Atlas Air is one of the industry’s largest cargo carrier companies and the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 747 aircraft.

The law firm was founded by Att. John Pierce, who founded the National Constitutional Law Union. He previously represented George Papadopoulos in connection with the 2016 “Russia Hoax,” reaching a dismissal of the DNC’s case and helping secure a presidential pardon. He is also currently representing defendants being charged in connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

The article notes:

Josh Yoder, a major airline pilot and a spokesperson for Freedom Flyers who recently supported the trucker-led “The People’s Convoy,” says that there has been harassment, threats, intimidation, vaccine injuries, and even “suicides that have come out of these mandates.”

“We’re not doing class action. We’re doing individual litigants. And the reason we’re doing it that way is because so many people have been harmed and people have experienced different levels of harm. We have the unvaccinated who have been harassed, threatened, and intimidated into getting vaccinated. Then we have many people as well who got vaccinated against their will, who were coerced and forced into doing it under threat of losing their employment,” Yoder said.

“And then, in addition, we have the vaccine-injured, and the numbers of vaccine-injured are growing by the day,” Yoder went on, “It’s just incredible what’s happening with pilots.”

Pilots have to maintain a flight physical in order to maintain their licenses.

The Epoch Times recently reported that a pilot for American Airlines, one of the top 3 largest airlines in the country, suffered a cardiac arrest between two flights, about 6 minutes after landing.

The article concludes:

According to a group of attorneys, doctors, and other experts—and a pilot who says his career ended due to adverse reactions from a vaccine—the FAA has been breaking its own rule that states pilots should not fly after having taken medications that have been approved for less than a year, The Epoch Times reported in December.

As more and more information comes out about the potential side-effects of the Covid vaccine, I suspect we will see more lawsuits like this one. I hope so.

Rewriting The Constitution

On Wednesday, The Washington Examiner posted an article citing a recent quote by President Biden.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden opened his remarks announcing a police reform executive order by remembering the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting and calling on the Senate to confirm his nominee to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

“To state the obvious: I’m sick and tired of what’s going on,” Biden said. He said the Senate could help ensure existing federal gun laws are enforced by confirming Steve Dettelbach as ATF director. Biden’s previous nominee, David Chipman, was withdrawn last year amid Senate opposition.

…But the president also argued the Second Amendment had limits, saying “you couldn’t own a cannon” when it was ratified and that there were gun control measures that could be passed that would address the violence without infringing on constitutional rights.

“The Second Amendment’s not absolute,” he said.

Well, not so fast. The Second Amendment is part of The Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution because some of the original thirteen colonies refused to sign on to the Constitution unless the Bill of Rights was added (North Carolina was one of those colonies). The Bill of Rights was added to limit the power of government and protect the rights of Americans. The Second Amendment does not grant the right to bear arms to Americans–it prevents the government from taking away that right. Any executive order or law that limits the rights of Americans to bear arms or that creates a gun registry is unconstitutional. The Second Amendment does absolutely affirm the rights of Americans to bear arms.

Has it occurred to President Biden that the gun wasn’t the problem–a very disturbed young man who wanted to kill children was the problem. If he had not had a gun, he would have found another way. The Boston Marathon bombers used a pressure cooker. The 9/11 terrorists used box cutters and airplanes. The weapon is not the problem–the person holding it is.

The Real Statistics On School Shootings

What happened in Texas this week is horrific. There were a number of mistakes made that allowed the incident to occur, but that will be sorted out later. It was a horrible event, and everyone’s heart goes out to the parents, grandparents and other family members impacted by the incident. The immediate calls for gun control are simply political grandstanding. Until we deal with mental illness among teenagers, we will not have a solution to gun violence.

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article that provides some historical context to what happened this week.

The article posted a list of school shootings where four or more people are killed since 2000. Here is the list:

2022: 1
2021: 1
2020: 0
2019: 0
2018: 2
2017: 1
2016: 0
2015: 1
2014: 1
2013: 1
2012: 2
2011: 0
2010: 0
2009: 0
2008: 1
2007: 1
2006: 1
2005: 1
2004: 0
2003: 0
2002: 0
2001: 0
2000: 0

A school shooting is a serious thing, but it doesn’t look as if it is a common occurrence.

The article continues:

So mass school shootings are rare, a total of 14 incidents in more than 22 years. In a nation of 320 million, many more people die from bee stings, lighting strikes, and so on; yet, for understandable reasons, school shootings command national attention. But their very rarity makes it hard to know what to do about them, especially since most school shooters expect to die, which makes them more or less impossible to deter. How do you prevent something that happens, in crude terms, once every 480 million man-years?

The “solutions” proposed by Democrats are laughable, obviously intended for political gain rather than practical benefit. Banning “assault rifles,” while likely unconstitutional, would do zero good. In close quarters, handguns are better than rifles, even short-barreled rifles like AR-15s. In the worst school shooting rampage so far, at Virginia Tech, the murderer used handguns. And when the ill-fated ban on “assault weapons” expired in 2004, the homicide rate went down, not up.

But there are things we can do. Would-be mass murderers may be crazy, but they aren’t stupid. They nearly always strike in gun-free zones, including schools, because they want to be sure they are the only one with a firearm. Gun-free zones are an idiotic concept and should be abolished. And if every public school in America fired a diversity consultant and hired an armed guard, they would be vastly safer. Who stands in the way of such practical reform? Mostly the teachers’ unions, which bitterly resist improvements in school security, thus selling out, as they consistently do, the interests of American children.

After noting that the number of school shootings increased after the Covid shutdowns, the article notes:

The only plausible explanation for this increase is that covid-related shutdowns of schools and businesses exacerbated mental health issues in vulnerable young people. There is a great deal of data confirming such an effect, and in the extreme case, shutdowns evidently have have led to a dramatic increase in “active shooters.” Let’s not make that foolish mistake again.

Those solutions aren’t perfect, but they are practical and would reduce the already microscopically-low incidence of mass school shootings.

This certainly represents a more rational approach than taking guns away from law-abiding citizens.

If You Believe This…

On Tuesday, The Washington Times posted an article ‘explaining’ how a “typo” in an email led investigators in 2016 to believe that false allegations linking former President Trump to Russia’s Alfa Bank came from the Department of Justice rather than from Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The article quotes testimony from the trial of Michael Sussmann.

FBI Agent Curtis Heide, who along with agent Allison Sands authored the internal communication, said the inaccuracy, sent out just weeks before the 2016 election, was simply a mistake.

“We may have conflated the Office of the General Counsel and the Justice Department,” Mr. Heide said on the witness stand. “I don’t know how that information got in there.”

On Monday, jurors in the criminal trial of Mr. Sussmann were shown the electronic communication sent in September 2016 by top bureau officials to field agents marking the opening of the case. The communication said the investigation was based on a “referral” from the Justice Department, rather than a tip from Mr. Sussmann.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported the following:

I was skeptical that the Sussman prosecution would tell us much that is new, but some significant nuggets have come out. Like this one: “FBI brass were ‘fired up’ about now-debunked Trump-Russia ties.”

FBI leaders, including then-Director James Comey, were “fired up” about a potential connection between the Trump campaign and Russia — which ultimately was proven false, text messages and court testimony revealed Tuesday.

On Sept. 21, 2016, two days after Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann gave then-FBI General Counsel James Baker info about a supposed digital back channel between the Trump Organization and Moscow-based Alfa Bank, agent Joe Pientka texted colleague Curtis Heide: “People on 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”

So there was zero evidence of any connection between presidential candidate Donald Trump and the Alfa Bank, or any other Russians of note, and all one of Hillary Clinton’s lawyers had to do was waltz into the Bureau with some fabricated “data” and FBI Director James Comey and others were “fired up.” The lust to defeat the interloper Trump and elect Hillary Clinton is palpable.

It’s a shame that they were not nearly so ‘fired up’ over the security problems involved in Hillary Clinton’s secret server.

Will Anyone Be Held Accountable?

“Will anyone be held accountable?” That is the question of the ages. Will anyone be held accountable for the use of government agencies to undermine the Trump presidency? Will anyone be held accountable for the security leaks caused by Hillary Clinton’s use of a secret server? Will anyone be held accountable for the fact that our schools are less protected than our banks (why aren’t there armed policemen in our schools as school resource officers)? Will anyone be held accountable for the fact that there was considerable illegal ballot trafficking in the 2020 election?

On Thursday, Sara Carter posted an article about search warrants that were served to an employee at a Yuma, Arizona nonprofit organization.

The article reports:

Search warrants were served to an employee at a Yuma, Arizona nonprofit organization in connection to illegal ballot trafficking.

The ballot trafficking scheme was investigated in True The Vote and Dinesh D’Souza’s recent documentary “2000 Mules.” The documentary makes the claim that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen by illegal ballot trafficking done through nonprofit organizations.

The ballot trafficking scheme was discovered by residents in Yuma County, and the documentary features the undercover investigative work of David Lara and Arizona State Senate candidate Gary Snyder as well as the investigations of Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips.

…Sources tell The Gateway Pundit a group from Phoenix with the Attorney General’s office executed the search warrants. Additionally, The Gateway Pundit reports:

The nonprofit facilities were not raided. However, Tony Reyes, the Executive Director of Comité de Bien Estar, confirmed to The Gateway Pundit that Comité de Bien Estar’s Membership Coordinator, Gloria Torres received search warrants at the nonprofit office, and law enforcement is looking for evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.

Maybe someone will be held accountable.

What Are We Paying For?

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the $40 billion that we are giving to Ukraine.

The article notes:

I think Scott Ritter jumped the gun in calling the $40 billion dollar Ukrainian aid bill a “game changer.” Once you take time to parse the details you quickly realize the media is misleading the American public on the reality of the $40 billion dollars ostensibly designated to buy weapons and equip Ukraine with a cornucopia of lethality. Mark Cancian at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (aka CSIS) provides an excellent breakdown of what was actually appropriated. Here is a quick summary:

$19 billion for immediate military support to Ukraine

$3.9 billion to sustain U.S. forces deployed to Europe

$16 billion for economic support to Ukraine and global humanitarian relief

$2 billion for long-term support to NATO allies and DOD modernization programs

…The $19 billion is carved up into smaller packages:

  • $6 billion for training, equipment, weapons, logistic support, supplies and services, salaries and stipends and intelligence support to the military and national security forces of Ukraine (and the specifics of the expenditures remain to be determined).
  • $9 billion to replenish U.S. weapons stocks already sent to Ukraine.
  • $4 billion for the Foreign Military Financing Program (this allows a foreign country like Ukraine to buy brand new weapon systems).

The article also notes:

Given these facts, Ukraine can only hope to receive $6 billion in military assistance in the immediate future. That is a sizeable chunk of change but there is no requirement that it be spent primarily on weapon systems that are effective against the Russians.

No matter what aid is provided to Ukraine in the coming weeks, the Russians enjoy a decisive advantage in their control of the air space, their precision missile and rocket systems and their robust electronic warfare capabilities.

Drone technology is a game changer. It can fly at any time without risking a pilot being shot down or killed. It can conduct reconnaissance and surveillance of enemy troop locations and movements, which provides the attacking force with precise geo coordinates to destroy enemy troops with missiles or rockets.

It does not matter if the U.S. shares complete Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance about Russian forces because Ukraine does not have the weapon systems to act on that information using lethal force. Ditto if Ukraine has its own powerful ISR systems. It does not have the air power or the missiles to attack the Russian forces. In fact, Russia’s air defense systems have been quite effective in shooting down those planes and missiles Ukraine tried to use.

We are throwing money down a bottomless pit.

Information We All Need

On Tuesday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about Monkeypox. The article provides a brief summary of the things the public needs to know.

Here are some excerpts:

In total, 92 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed so far, with another 28 suspected cases, according to the World Health Organization. Most of the cases in the U.K. and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who were gay, bisexual, or had sex with men.

…All of the cases that have been confirmed through a PCR test were infected by the strain native to West Africa, but only one case has a direct tie to the region. The first to be confirmed in the U.K. was a person who had traveled from the U.K. to Nigeria and back. The person was immediately isolated upon return, and “the risk of onward transmission related to this case in the United Kingdom is minimal,” the WHO said. But that still leaves open the question of where the dozens of other cases came from.

A leading adviser to the WHO, Dr. David Heymann, told the Associated Press that sexual transmission at two raves in Belgium and Spain appear to have been major catalysts for the spread of the virus in Europe.

…There is not currently a vaccine made specifically to prevent monkeypox infection, but smallpox vaccines have proven to be at least 85% effective in preventing monkeypox. Experts also believe that administering a smallpox vaccine after a monkeypox exposure may help prevent the disease or make it less severe.

The article concludes:

Infectious disease experts said this outbreak is very different from COVID-19, which caught the U.S. public health infrastructure off guard. Unlike symptoms of COVID-19 infection, symptoms of monkeypox are visual and cases are easier to trace. Monkeypox is also far less transmissible than COVID-19. And unlike COVID-19, monkeypox is not an airborne pathogen.

“Contact tracing COVID-19 is a nightmare, and I don’t want to say it’s a piece of cake, but it’s a much more straightforward proposition [to trace monkeypox],” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

The Food and Drug Administration has also approved several antiviral medications to treat smallpox and diseases like it.

“That’s why I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll be able to contain it because the overall level of transmissibility is low, the incubation period is longer, and in about two weeks, the characteristic rash makes contact tracing easier, and we already have vaccines and antiviral drugs ready to go. … [COVID-19 is] really just the opposite of monkeypox,” Hotez told the Washington Examiner.

At least there is some good news.

What The Disinformation Bureau Is Really About

The Disinformation Bureau has not gone away. On May 18, CNS News reported the following:

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that DHS is pausing its Disinformation Governance Board so that there can be an “assessment” by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, but “DHS is still going to continue the work.”

“DHS said today that they’ll be pausing the Disinformation Governance Board. Did the White House play a role at all in perhaps expressing frustration in how it was rolled out or express any involvement in how, whether or not it should be paused, and then also some experts have said that it was set up to fail the way it was rolled out.

In case you have forgotten, Jamie Gorelick was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae–before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant. She has a very interesting biography.

The article notes:

“Look, the Department of Homeland Security, they began their statement repeating that the board had been intentionally mischaracterized, which is a little bit of what you were asking me, and they were explicit about what it does and does not do,” Jean-Pierre said.

“It was never about censorship, policing speech, or removing content from anywhere. Its function was to keep homeland security officials aware of how bad actors, including human smugglers, transnational criminal organizations and foreign adversaries could use disinformation to advance their goals,” she said.

If you believe that, I have some waterfront property in Arizona I can sell you.

On May 23, PJ Media reported:

Nina Jankowicz, the self-proclaimed “Mary Poppins of Disinformation” who was up until recently supposed to become the chief of Joe Biden’s Orwellian and ominous Disinformation Governance Board, can’t seem to stop herself from stepping on rakes. She has complained, now that the Board has been “paused,” that the Board itself was a victim of “disinformation,” which casts into question how effective it could possibly have ever been, if Jankowicz couldn’t even manage to counter false statements about what it was supposed to be doing. On Monday, she made matters even worse by remarking off-handedly that the Board was meant to do something that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had said it would not be doing: countering “disinformation” not just from foreign sources, but from Americans.

Jankowicz tweeted that she was “thinking a lot the past few weeks about the paper I co-authored in the US Army War College Quarterly in 2020,” and she provided the link. “It lays out a government strategy,” she continued, “for dealing with disinformation based on 3 Cs- capability, coordination, and cooperation.” She added: “Since this piece was published in summer 2020, the spread and effects of disinformation on American society have only worsened and become entrenched in domestic politics (as the last few weeks of my life have shown).” And: “This is the type of work I had hoped to do at DHS, and the type of work the USG sorely needs to invest in. This is the type of work that I have built my career on—not a few contextless tweets. And this is the type of work I will continue in the public sphere.”

America now has a Ministry of Truth.

Challenging Admission Policies

On Sunday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

  • University of Michigan professor Mark Perry told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he filed a Title VI complaint over a program application at the University of South Carolina that was restricted to students of certain race and ethnicities. 
  • Following his complaint, the application was updated stating the program is  “Open to all Rising High School Juniors and Seniors in South Carolina,” but highlighted students “who are in support of the advancement of business students from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply,” Perry told TheDCNF. 
  • “They’re so corrupt and they’re so unprincipled, that they do this all the time,” Perry said. “They might not even realize they’re violating federal civil rights laws or they know that it’s illegal, but they do it anyway because they’ve done it in the past (and) they’ve always gotten away with it because no one has ever challenged them.”

On Monday, The Carolina Journal reported:

The N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Virginia Lt. Gov Winsome Sears, each the first black lieutenant governor of their respective state, have joined forces to pen a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Asian-American students suing Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill. Carolina Journal was present at the Lieutenant Governor’s Mansion on May 19 at a press conference where the North Carolina Asian American Coalition (NCAAC) thanked Robinson for his support.

The students in the lawsuit accuse the institutions of discriminatory admissions practices, where they are held to a higher standard during consideration because of their race. The Robinson/Sears Amicus brief was filed May 9th.  

“While it can be argued that these policies had a role in helping many Americans overcome the persistent effects of historical and past discriminations in higher education, those effects are becoming less impactful the further we travel from the dark days of state-sanctioned discrimination,” said Robinson at the event. “Instead, they now function to unfairly discriminate against and deny opportunity to other ethnic and racial groups. Discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity is immoral in all of its forms, and we can do better. We must do better.”

The nonprofit group Students for Fair Admissions filed the original suit in 2014, but when it was ruled in November 2021 that Chapel Hill could continue to use affirmative action in their admissions, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  

College admissions should be based on merit. If a student is admitted because of race or ethnicity and does not have the ability to do college work, the student is being set up to fail. No one gains by doing that. I hope the lawsuit is successful and we go back to rewarding people who work hard and stop rewarding people or punishing people for something they have no control over.

How To Drain The Swamp

On Monday, The Conservative Playbook posted an article detailing an actual plan to drain the swamp that is Washington, D.C.  Please follow the link to read the entire article. It contains some really good ideas.

The article reports:

Donald Trump promised us that he’d drain the Swamp. As a real estate developer, you’d think that he understood how that should be done. The State Department is known as “Foggy Bottom” because it is in what was originally a fetid swamp. Land had to be reclaimed by filling to “drain” that swamp. Disney World near Orlando is built on swamp land, as any golfer will discover after a rainstorm. Much of that land became usable after swamps were filled in. And the beat goes on.

The bureaucratic mire in DC is full of predatory beasts, noxious insects, and other unseen hazards. Directives from the White House are apt to be ignored, since there is no one translating those directives into marching orders for the lower floors of government owned buildings. This leaves the denizens of departments to their own devices, none of which are the slightest bit concerned with anything beyond the office water cooler.

Thus, if the concerns of the cubicle align with the editorial page of the Washington Compost, then all is well, and the office sports pool becomes the most urgent part of the day.

If the Secretary of Department X decides to go full MAGA, little or nothing will actually happen, since most of his underlings frankly don’t give a damn. They are protected by Civil Service rules, and can’t be fired short of the next millennium. In other words, it’s hopeless.

…If you can’t get rid of all the feral animals inside a bureaucracy, what can you do? Ask Donald Trump how he dealt with swamp land on his golf courses or building sites! You don’t drain the swamp. You get rid of it! That’s right, you fill it in so it’s not a swamp anymore. And just in case this picture isn’t clear enough, watch the TV series “Swamp People.” The water in the swamp goes up and down, but even when it’s down, it’s still a swamp. With the next rain, it’s full again. And it doesn’t matter how many alligators you pull out of the swamp. There are hundreds new for each one harvested.

The only way to drain a swamp is to fill it in. Let that sink in.

The article cites ways to fill in the swamp and regain the country the Founding Fathers envisioned. Please follow the link to the article and read the details.

Eliminating The Terrorists One By One

On Monday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog reported that IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodayari was killed yesterday.

The article reports:

IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodayari was assassinated yesterday Sunday in broad daylight outside his home by two men on a motorcycle who rode off into the sunset. Iran blamed the assassination on “elements linked to the global arrogance,” which the Times of Israel’s story translates as “the term for the United States and its allies including Israel.”

I think Iran is fingering Israel, but they don’t want to let the Great Satan off the hook either. The mullahs have their assassins working on Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, if not President Trump himself. The Jerusalem Post notes: “The IRGC also reported that Khodayari was involved in the security of the Shiite holy places in Damascus and that he had a close relationship with Qasem Soleimani, an IRGC commander who was killed in a US airstrike in 2020.”

The ToI story adds one more translation: “Reports identified [Khodayari] as a ‘defender of the sanctuary,’ a reference to Iranians who carry out Tehran’s operations in Syria and Iraq within the Guard’s elite Quds Force that oversees operations abroad.” The Jerusalem Post covers the techniques employed in the assassination here (also linked above).

The Jerusalem Post also notes: “According to Iranian sources, Khodayari was responsible for attempts to abduct and assassinate Israelis in Cyprus, Turkey and Colombia, N12 reported.” There’s a war underway. However, I’m quite sure the United States has quit fighting back President Trump left town. The Post’s analysis separately concludes “Assassination of IRGC official shows Israel has shifted gears.”

If America chooses to sit on the sidelines while Israel deals with terrorist attacks, Israel will successfully deal with those attacks on her own. It would be nice if America helped, but not necessary. The Israelis have a way of getting things done on their own.

The article notes:

Unsourced reports in the Israeli media state that Khodayari had planned kidnappings and other attempts to attack Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide. Israel Hayom has more here.

I guess those plans are at least temporarily on hold.

Who Is Actually Guilty Of Mass Shootings?

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article citing the statistics on who is actually committing mass shootings. It’s not white supremacists.

The article reports:

Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9 percent have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. Many of the anti-immigrant attackers, such as the Buffalo murderer, hold decidedly environmentalist views that are more in line with the Democrat agenda.

Other groups commit mass public shootings disproportionately more than whites do. While non-Middle Eastern whites make up about 64 percent of the population, they make up 58 percent of the mass public shooters. Another 9 percent are carried out by people of Middle Eastern origin, who make up only 0.4 percent of the country’s population. That makes Middle Easterners the most likely ethnic or racial group to carry out mass public shootings.

Blacks, Asians, and American Indians also commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population. Hispanics commit them at much lower rates (11 percent lower) than their share of the population.

It is interesting to me that Hispanics are the least likely to commit mass shootings. Is that related to the fact that in many cases, Hispanics have a fairly solid family foundation. What is the percentage of two-parent families in the Hispanic population versus other populations?

The fact that Middle Easterners have the largest number of mass public shootings in relation to their population should not  be a surprise. Many Middle Easterners who have come to America have not assimilated into the country and do not understand our culture. Many are also taught that killing infidels is a duty and will get them into paradise.

The article continues:

Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views. But you would never know this from watching TV police dramas or listening to Biden’s constant claim that white supremacists pose the biggest threat of domestic terrorism.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed in testimony in April that white supremacy is the top terrorism-related threat to the homeland. But when pressed, Mayorkas couldn’t name a single white supremacy case that his department referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

White supremacists with guns are not the threat that our government would have us believe. It’s not just that white supremacy is rare. So too are gun crimes. The number of gun crimes has been falling dramatically, and they now make up less than 8 percent of violent crimes in America. Yet we constantly hear the opposite from politicians who support gun restrictions.

All of the current rhetoric coming from our political class has one purpose–to convince Americans that giving up their guns will make them safer. Those who study history understand that nothing could be further from the truth.

The ACLU Actually Supports Civil Rights

On Thursday, Just the News posted the following:

Last week, attorneys for the ACLU wrote a letter to Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York objecting to the court declining to unseal the search warrant application and related judicial documents filed in connection to the raid of the home of investigative journalist James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas.

In November, federal prosecutors obtained and executed warrants to raid the homes of three Project Veritas journalists, including O’Keefe, and seize their electronic devices. O’Keefe was handcuffed by FBI agents during the search of his home and required to stand in the public hallway of his apartment building dressed in his underwear, according to court documents.

In December, the magistrate judge assisting Torres in the case declined requests to unseal the search warrant materials, arguing the government’s stated interest in protecting both the integrity of an ongoing grand jury investigation into Project Veritas and the privacy of uncharged individuals named in the documents outweighed the public’s interest in accessing the information.

The magistrate judge’s opinion led the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) to file a motion calling on the court to unseal the materials.

The ACLU’s new letter expresses support for the RCFP’s objection, noting that a significant amount of information about the government’s investigation has been made public since the magistrate judge issued her order.

If you remember, the FBI search of the home of James O’Keefe happened about the time it became known that James O’Keefe had been offered a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary (see story here). The raid on James O’keefe at his home appeared to be another example of the federal government attacking someone they perceived as a possible enemy or person who might release negative information about people (or relatives of people) in the Biden administration.

The article at Just the News concludes:

Through the Microsoft search warrants, which were unsealed in March, the government seized nearly 200,000 Project Veritas emails and other files, many of which were unrelated to the Justice Department’s purported reason for initiating the warrants.

The Justice Department has contended there’s probable cause to believe Project Veritas was involved in stealing the diary and transporting it — a claim denied by the sources, who have consistently said it was abandoned at the Florida house, and O’Keefe’s legal team.

Calli (O’Keefe’s attorney, Paul Calli,) has accused the FBI and Justice Department of a witch hunt targeting a media organization openly critical of the Biden administration, arguing the government is violating the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the Privacy Protection Act.

“The ACLU has taken a righteous and principled stance regarding the government’s desecration of the First Amendment,” Calli told Just the News. “Project Veritas is grateful for the support of the ACLU and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.”

Calli added, “Sadly, partisan political activists like those at the New York Times, and others in the for-profit, credentialed, cloistered, legacy media, as well as blogs like the Columbia Journalism Review, have not woken to the threat to all journalists.”

Calli has previously told Just the News that the government doesn’t want to unseal the search warrant materials for Project Veritas because federal prosecutors and FBI agents lied and misled in them to obtain warrants from judges.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

The politicization of the Justice Department in America will eventually become a problem for both political parties. It is good to see the ACLU getting involved in this case.

What Is The Real Result Of The Covid Vaccine?

On May 3 (updated May 22), The Epoch Times posted an article about the COVID-19 vaccine.

The article reports:

  • According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, more than 1 million excess deaths — that is, deaths in excess of the historical average — have been recorded since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, and this cannot be explained by COVID-19. Deaths from heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia and many other illnesses rose during that time
  • Across the world, death rates have also risen in tandem with COVID shot administration, with the most-jabbed areas surpassing the least-jabbed in terms of excess mortality and COVID-related deaths
  • According to Walgreens data, during the week of April 19 through 25, 2022, 13% of unvaccinated persons tested positive for COVID. Of those who received two doses five months or more ago, 23.1% tested positive, and of those who received a third dose five months or more ago, the positive rate was 26.3%. So, after the first booster shot (the third dose), people are at greatest risk of testing positive for COVID
  • U.K. government data show the all-cause mortality rate is between 100% and 300% greater among people who got their first COVID shot 21 days or more ago. The risk for all-cause death is also significantly elevated among those who got their second dose at least six months ago, and mildly elevated among those who got their third dose less than 21 days ago. As of January 2022, all who got one or more doses at least 21 days ago were dying at significantly elevated rates
  • Other data also show that COVID mortality rates are far higher in areas with high vaccination rates, and risk-benefit analyses reveal the jabs do more harm than good in most age groups

This is frightening. These statistics should be enough to stop the administering of the COVID-19 vaccine immediately.

The article notes:

Ever since the announcement that the COVID “vaccines” would be using novel mRNA gene transfer technology, I and many others have warned that this appears to be a very bad idea.

Numerous potential mechanisms for harm have been identified and detailed in previous articles, and we’re now seeing some of our worst fears come to bear. “Fully vaccinated” individuals are both more likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 and more likely to die, whether from COVID or some other cause.

As reported by investigative journalist Jeffrey Jaxen in the April 22, 2022, Highwire video above, data from Walgreens’ COVID-19 tracker[6] reveal that COVID-jabbed individuals are testing positive for COVID at higher rates than the unjabbed. What’s more, people who got their last shot five months or more ago have the highest risk.

As you can see in the screenshot below, during the week of April 19 through 25, 2022, 13% of unvaccinated tested positive for COVID (with Omicron being the predominant variant). (The data reviewed by Jaxen are from the week of April 10 through 16.)

Of those who received two doses five months or more ago, 23.1% tested positive, and of those who received a third dose five months or more ago, the positive rate was 26.3%. So, after the first booster shot (the third dose), people are at greatest risk of testing positive for COVID.

The article concludes:

While we may indeed need better pharmacovigilance, there’s really no doubt at this point that the COVID jabs are ill-advised for most people. I believe that in the years to come, people will look back at this time and vow to never repeat it. In the meantime, all we can do is look at and assess the data we do have, and make decisions accordingly.

If you have not already gotten your COVID shot, please don’t.

Who Was There?

The World Economic Forum is the group many people believe is planning “The Great Reset,” which will lead us into one-world government. Unfortunately, many Americans  have been drawn into this circle of influence.

A website called usasupreme posted a list of the Americans who recently attended The World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Here is the list:

American Attendees of the World Economic Forum 2022:

Gina Raimondo Secretary of Commerce of USA
John F. Kerry Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States of America
Bill Keating Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
Daniel Meuser Congressman from Pennsylvania (R)
Madeleine Dean Congresswoman from Pennsylvania (D)
Ted Lieu Congressman from California (D)
Ann Wagner Congresswoman from Missouri (R)
Christopher A. Coons Senator from Delaware (D)
Darrell Issa Congressman from California (R)
Dean Phillips Congressman from Minnesota (D)
Debra Fischer Senator from Nebraska (R)
Eric Holcomb Governor of Indiana (R)
Gregory W. Meeks Congressman from New York (D)
John W. Hickenlooper Senator from Colorado (D)
Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland (R)
Michael McCaul Congressman from Texas (R)
Pat Toomey Senator from Pennsylvania (R)
Patrick J. Leahy Senator from Vermont (D)
Robert Menendez Senator from New Jersey (D)
Roger F. Wicker Senator from Mississippi (R)
Seth Moulton Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
Sheldon Whitehouse Senator from Rhode Island (D)
Ted Deutch Congressman from Florida (D)
Francis Suarez Mayor of Miami (R)
Al Gore Vice-President of the United States (1993-2001) (D)

The article concludes:

“The Annual Meeting 2022 will embody the World Economic Forum’s philosophy of collaborative, multistakeholder impact, providing a unique collaborative environment in which to reconnect, share insights, gain fresh perspectives, and build problem-solving communities and initiatives,” explains the group, whose efforts to exploit COVID-19 for its “Great Reset” has come under intense scrutiny.

It would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on the political careers of these people in the future.