Monthly Archives: August 2022

Coming After America’s Freedom

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I don’t believe that President Biden always thinks before he speaks, but I have learned that what he says off the cuff is a preview of what he would like to do. Therefore, I am very concerned about some of his recent remarks.

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

President Joe Biden said Tuesday while in Pennsylvania that “brave right wing Americans” who claim the Second Amendment is meant to fight back against a tyrannical government would be obliterated by the military.

Biden was speaking in Wilkes-Barre while promoting gun control and bolstering police forces across the nation. Biden pushed for a federal ban on so-called “assault weapons” and took aim at Republicans during his speech, invoking the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“As one of the most – one of the most conservative justices in history, Justice Scalia, once wrote like, quote, ‘like most rights, the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited’,” Biden said. “They’re not unlimited right now.”

“You can’t go out and buy an automatic weapon, you can’t go out and buy a cannon, and for those brave right wing Americans who say its all about keeping America independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country you need an F-15. You need something a little more than a gun.”

The implication here is that the military could be used to fight against Americans. That is not only unconstitutional, it is scary.

The article concludes:

Biden has called on Congress to pass a ban on “assault weapons and high capacity magazines” shortly after a mass shooter killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. Biden tried to assure Americans that “this is not about taking away anyone’s guns” or “vilifying gun owners.”

“The Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute,” Biden had said.

Actually, all the President has done is vilify gun owners and threaten to take away their guns. We need to pay attention to this and make sure we elect people who will protect our rights.

Things We All Need To Know

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On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article containing information about electric cars that somehow isn’t being mentioned in the new articles touting the new vehicles.

Here is the list (please follow the link to the article to read the details):

1. EVs are powered by fossil fuels.

2. The batteries of EVs rely on cobalt.

3. A study released earlier this year by an environmental group showed that nearly one-third of San Francisco’s electric charging stations were non-functioning.

4. Supporters of the California law admit there will be a 40% increase in demand for electricity, adding further strain to the grid and requiring increased costs for power and infrastructure.

5. According to one researcher, the strain of adding an EV is similar to adding “1 or 2 air conditioners” to your home, except an EV requires power year-round.

6. Today, 20 million American families, or one in six, have fallen behind on their electric bills, the highest amount ever.

7. Utility companies will need to add $5,800 in upgrades for every new EV for the next eight years in order to compensate for the demand for power.

8. The average price for an electric vehicle is currently $66,000, up more than 13% in just the last year, costing an average of $18,000 more than the average combustible engine.

9. A 2022 study found that the majority of EV charging occurs at home, leaving those who live in multi-family dwellings (apartments) at a real disadvantage for charging.

10. The same study also noted that many drivers charge their EVs overnight when solar power is less available on the grid.

On Tuesday, The Blaze reported the following:

A Florida man went viral after he posted a car dealership quote showing it would cost nearly $30,000 to replace the battery in his electric vehicle.

Rob O’Donnell posted the quote, obtained from Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral, on Twitter last week. The quote includes the cost of the battery (nearly $27,000), the cost of labor ($1,200), and taxes for the repair (more than $1,700).

In total, it would cost O’Donnell $29,842.15 to replace the battery in his 2012 Chevrolet Volt. The car itself is worth far less.

I think Americans need to consider all of the above before they rush out to buy an electric car.

Finally!

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On Tuesday, Legal Insurrection reported that the Oberlin College case is finally over.

The article reports:

Hopefully the long, hard road Gibson’s Bakery has traveled in its fight with Oberlin College has come to an end.

The Ohio Supreme Court just refused to accept jurisdiction over Oberlin College’s appeal (the Court also refused to hear the Gibsons’ appeal seeking to reinstate the full punitive damages award). It was a 4-3 decision, and it means the Gibsons now can collect approximately $36 million.

We received the following comment from Lee Plakas, lead trial counsel for the Gibsons:

Statement:

On behalf of the Gibson family and the trial team, Truth Still Matters, David can still overcome Goliath.

We and the Gibson family are gratified that all judges on the court of appeals and the majority of the Ohio Supreme Court recognized the rights of individuals rather than the bullying tactics of the big institutions.

We received quotes from the Gibsons and the trial team:

“Oberlin tried to frame this case with claims and issues that weren’t on trial. This has never been a case about a student’s first amendment rights. Individuals’ reputations should never be sacrificed at a false altar of free speech. The Gibsons and the entire State of Ohio should appreciate that the jury, a unanimous Ninth District Court of Appeals, and a majority of the Justices on the Ohio Supreme Court recognized that the deplorable conduct of Oberlin College could not be camouflaged by misleading claims of free speech.”

“The jury recognized Oberlin College’s bullying tactics. The students admitted their misconduct, but Oberlin College could never admit that they were wrong. They presumed that they could bring the Gibsons to their knees. The power of truth has enabled the Gibson family to survive Oberlin’s onslaught.”

This case should never have dragged on this long. The goal of the college was to drag the case out so that the Gibson family could no longer afford to fight. This is the equivalent of a person in a poker game with no high cards driving up the bidding until the other players can’t keep up. It is wonderful to see the good guys win.

 

Who Belongs To The Club?

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“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies… is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
― Carroll Quigley

Keep that in mind as you watch the early maneuvering for the 2024 Republican nomination. I suspect President Trump is the choice for most Republicans, but he is NOT the choice of the uni-party, and they are gearing up for the race.

On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the Republican Club’s beginning to set the stage to remove President Trump from the running. The article focuses on the financial backing of Nikki Haley, a possible contender for either President or Vice-President.

The article reports:

For a deep dive into the financial construct Nikki Haley put together {Go Here} reference the CTH archives from November 2019, when she registered the Stand For America SuperPAC.  For an overall summary of what she has been doing {GO HERE} and see the internal citations assembled a few weeks ago.  Haley’s superpac donor files have been leaked and the funding pattern is similar to Ron DeSantis, only Nikki Haley has more rich democrats.

There is little doubt the people around Nikki Haley have been positioning her for a 2024 presidential run for approximately three years.

Ms. Haley is following the traditional GOPe map that all republican candidates follow; including the assembly of donations to fund her political ambitions.

Ironically, in late 2019 CTH noted she was registering her financial mechanisms from New York.  Snarkily, we pointed out the location.

It is the New York location of her financial enterprise that has now become her problem.  Someone in New York government leaked the tax filings from her SuperPAC to Politico.  The irony here is a little funny.

The filing is for the year immediately following the creation of the PAC, 2019/2020, filed in 2021.  This list does not include recent donors. Ms Haley’s lawyers tried to block the release of her donor names by Politico.  It didn’t work.  Politico lawyers fired back that her donors are a matter of high public interest.  That’s how the information comes out.

The article concludes:

The Bush clan and professional political cocktail circuit was rebuked in 2016, so we can anticipate their strategy in 2024 will be with those strategic lessons at the forefront.

DeSantis = Closest to MAGA domestically, ergo most valuable to Wall Street for globalist economics.

Noem = MAGA-lite, with a twist of Koch.  Club influencer.  She’s in the race, guaranteed.

[ Watch out for the club to push a DeSantis/Noem ticket.]

Haley = Purebreed Decepticon.  UniParty Establishment favorite. Endorsements from Bush and Cheney likely.

Cruz = Controlled opposition. Useful to draft Haley or Noem into the club lane in exchange for DOJ AG position.

WHAT TO WATCH FIRST – Pay attention to the club meeting this winter (Dec ’22) and the decision on how to line up and modify the 2024 primary election dates by state.  AFTER the dates and sequence are established, then overlay the state delegate changes, if any, from “winner take all” or allocated “proportionally.”  These are club decisions with major ramifications.

The RNC club is a private organization.  They select the rules for the election.

They also knew about the DOJ plan to raid Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, months before the FBI showed up.

The Club is the uni-party. We do not need any more of their leadership. Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

Unacceptable Behavior By Search Engines

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On Monday, The Federalist reported that Google and Yelp have both agreed to stifle search engine results for life-saving pregnancy clinics.

The article reports:

Despite the fact that nearly 2 in 3 Americans support public funding for life-saving pregnancy centers, many of which offer free or discounted pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and other care to women in need, both Google and Yelp have decided to harness their censorship power to implement the “fake clinic” framing touted by Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Two months after congressional Democrats demanded Google block search results for crisis pregnancy centers, the Silicon Valley giant also announced it would add labels to pro-life clinics explicitly stating that they do not offer abortion services.

Is this the policy of organizations that truly care about women’s health?

The article concludes:

“It’s well-reported that crisis pregnancy centers do not offer abortion services, and it’s been shown that many provide misleading information in an attempt to steer people seeking abortion care to other options,” Yelp’s VP of User Operations Noorie Malik said in a statement. “With this new consumer notice we’re aiming to further protect consumers from the potential of being misled or confused.”

Shortly after news that the Supreme Court planned to overturn Roe v. Wade broke, Yelp and Google offered to subsidize travel for its female employees to get abortions. Google, which already has a long history of banning and throttling pro-life advertisements, even promised to delete the location history of anyone who visits an abortion facility.

Abortion is not healthcare. There are actually very few instances where the dangers of abortion are less than the dangers of continuing a pregnancy. Abortions do have risks, and the pro-abortion community has done a very good job of hiding those risks. To create obstacles for women who are searching for crisis pregnancy centers is certainly not in the best interests of women or of society.

How To End The Tyranny Of The Woke In Our Schools

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Since the U.S. Department of Education was created, academic scores in America have gone down. Somehow our children and grandchildren are not learning reading, writing, and arithmetic any more. It’s more important to have them use the right pronoun than for them to know what a pronoun is. On Sunday, The Western Journal posted an article that might give us a clue to solving this problem. The article tells the story of a woke Illinois middle school teacher talking in a video about lying to parents about their children.

The article reports:

In her self-congratulatory video, the smug leftist went on and on about how she purposefully excludes parents from being informed when students claim to be “transgender.”

Constantly grinning from ear to ear, the teacher told her social media audience, “I respect their name and their pronouns, and I use them in class, but because their parents don’t know — I even say this to the students — I say, ‘I’m gonna have to use your legal name and pronouns when addressing your parents, okay?’ And this usually, again, strengthens the bond, the trust bond between me and the kid.”

Before we go on, note that last bit about “strengthening the bond” between her and the kids. This is evidence that she is purposefully driving a wedge between parents and kids and attempting to eliminate parental influence in education.

The article includes a possible solution to teachers that are doing this in the classroom:

At the end of her video, though, this woke teacher did say something that just might give sane people some hope.

The teacher glumly noted that one of her leaders said, “Hey, there might be a law that comes down that says eventually you could get sued for doing that.”

And on a note that might make the parents of her students cheer with delight, the teacher concluded saying that if such a law is ever passed, “Well, that will be the day that I exit teaching.”

The sooner the better, I’d say.

Still, this is the perfect path toward eliminating this garbage. Sue them. Sue them. And sue them again until this dangerous behavior by woke teachers ends, and teachers like this one begin to “exit teaching.”

Once precedents are set that affirm teachers have no right to eliminate parents from education, the better it will be for the nation’s children who will finally be able to get back to learning instead of being subjected to left-wing indoctrination.

This teacher did reveal the rot infesting our public schools. But she also helped us see a way toward surgically removing it.

Parents need to reclaim their rights as parents.

Let’s Not Follow California’s Example

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On Thursday, California Air Resources Board approved a regulation banning new sales of gas-powered vehicles. On Saturday, Red State posted an article about one of the consequences of that law.

The article reports:

On Friday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and legislators in the Republican-controlled lower chamber vowed to take action to block the CA rules from coming to fruition in their state. Governor Youngkin addressed Virginians in a statement.

“In an effort to turn Virginia into California, liberal politicians who previously ran our government sold Virginia out by subjecting Virginia drivers to California vehicle laws. Now, under that pact, Virginians will be forced to adopt the California law that prohibits the sale of gas and diesel-fueled vehicles. I am already at work to prevent this ridiculous edict from being forced on Virginians. California’s out of touch laws have no place in our Commonwealth.”

In a statement, House Speaker Todd Gilbert added:

“House Republicans will advance legislation in 2023 to put Virginians back in charge of Virginia’s auto emission standards and its vehicle marketplace. Virginia is not, and should not be, California.”

The article notes that the law putting Virginia on California’s standards is set to take effect in 2024, but the California law banning gasoline vehicles does not take effect until 2035, so there is some time to work this out.

The article also notes that can manufacturers will no longer be making the Dodge Charger and the Dodge Challenger. Meanwhile, there is no an electric Mustang. I object.

Repaving Parking Lots Is Climate Change?

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Just the News is reporting today that of the $740,000 the U.S. Department of Agriculture is sending to Pennsylvania for “critical infrastructure to combat climate change,” $500,000 will be a given as a grant to repave four parking lots in the Town of Bloomsburg in Columbia County.

The article reports:

The USDA Rural Development program provides taxpayer money for all sorts of programs, from infrastructure to health care to environmental and economic concerns in the rural parts of America. In fiscal year 2022, it provided almost $1.5 billion for local projects.

Its latest announcement noted 16 projects in Pennsylvania, but the lion’s share of the funding will go to four parking lots in Bloomsburg.

“These 16 projects represent Pennsylvania’s diverse rural economy and will strengthen its resilience,” USDA State Director Bob Morgan said in a news release. “The Biden-Harris Administration has created a roadmap for how we can tackle the climate crisis and expand access to renewable energy infrastructure.”

That roadmap has a strong emphasis on cars.

The article concludes:

While a federal program, Pennsylvania also provides agricultural grants and subsidies. Critics have called the spending corporate welfare that does not produce economic growth or jobs, as The Center Square previously reported, but supporters argue the spending is necessary.

Energy-related projects are at most 33% of the USDA’s latest funding announcement. The majority of funds “to combat climate change” in Pennsylvania went, instead, to a car-related infrastructure project.

Corporate welfare has become a way of life in Washington. It’s time Americans voted out the big spenders and elected some people who at least have a basic respect for the pocketbooks of the voters.

 

Is Anyone Comfortable With This?

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On Sunday, The U.K Daily Mail posted the following headline, “FDA set to authorize updated COVID-19 booster shots for newer Omicron strains without completed human tests: Agency will assess new jabs based on mice research and older vaccines.”

The article reports:

New COVID-19 booster shots are set to be authorized this week by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will be available to most Americans before human testing has even been completed.

The shots have been modified to target the latest Omicron variant, but won’t have finished testing in humans when the FDA makes the decision. Instead, the FDA is relying on data from other sources – like research in mice and older vaccines, the Wall Street Journal reported.

‘Real world evidence from the current mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, which have been administered to millions of individuals, show us that the vaccines are safe,’ FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a tweet last week. 

This is insane.

The article notes:

WILL THEY WORK BETTER?

No one knows. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an FDA vaccine adviser, said the antibody jump from that earlier BA.1-tweaked candidate was ‘underwhelming.’

‘What the administration is asking us to do is to accept this bivalent vaccine as significantly better’ than another dose of today’s vaccine, he said. ‘It would be nice if there were data to support that.’

But while FDA hasn’t made a final decision, Marks said there’s evidence that the updated boosters are safe and that waiting for more study of their effectiveness would risk another mutant appearing before they could roll out.

They ‘essentially refresh the immune response,’ he said. ‘Granted, it’s still a bit of a guess how long it will last but, this is doing our best.’

Given how outdated the current shots are, an update makes sense, said Dr. Walter Orenstein of Emory University, a former vaccine director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While he’d like to see more data, he plans to get the new booster.

 A large percentage of Americans have had Covid. They have natural immunity. The shots did not prevent people from getting or spreading Covid, so why in the world should they get the booster. The current variant of Covid is not a danger to most Americans. The only reason to continue with the nonsense of creating vaccines that don’t work is financial, and that is not a valid reason to inject people with an untried vaccine.

When Politics Surpasses Compassion

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Today, The Patriot Daily Wire is reporting that Russia is flaring $10 million worth of natural gas rather than send it to Germany. Meanwhile, Germany is struggling to store enough natural gas to get through the winter.

The article reports:

As Germany struggles to store enough natural gas to get it though the coming winter, Russia has cut the flow of gas through the Nord Stream I pipeline several times. As of the end of July, the pipeline was only transporting about 20% of the supply Russia had agreed to in contracts.

…So what happened to all of the gas that Russia stopped sending to Germany? Well, some of it is being flared off near the start of the Nord Stream I pipeline along the border with Finland. Estimates suggest Russia is just burning $10 million per day worth of natural gas possibly just to send a message.

The article quotes the BBC:

As Europe’s energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas, according to analysis shared with BBC News.

They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m (£8.4m) worth of gas every day.

Experts say the gas would previously have been exported to Germany.

Germany’s ambassador to the UK told BBC News that Russia was burning the gas because “they couldn’t sell it elsewhere”…

The first signs that something was awry came from Finnish citizens over the nearby border who spotted a large flame on the horizon earlier this summer.

The Russians are claiming technical problems for the failure to fulfill their contract.

The article concludes:

Given that Russia has been lying about technical problems for months now, the claim that this is another technical problem seems unlikely, especially since they’re making a point of flaring this gas near the border where it can be seen rather than where it was produced. Putin is sending a message that he’d rather burn the gas off into the air than deliver it as promised. This is a big, glowing middle finger to the Germans.

When America was energy independent, we could make up the shortfall in natural gas being sent to Germany. Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not value energy independence and shut down the things that make it possible very quickly after taking office. If America wants to play a major role in world politics, we need to reestablish our energy independence quickly.

This About Sums It Up

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On Friday, The Babylon Bee posted a list of the 9 biggest revelations from the Trump affidavit.

Here is the list:

We’ve gotten a chance to read the whole thing. Here are the 9 biggest revelations from the document:

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    2. ███ █ ████ ███!
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    5. █ ██ █ ██████ ████████. (███) ███-████.
    6. Therefore, ██ ████ ███ ██████ █ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ████████, █████ ███ ██ ███ pumpernickel █████ ██ ███; ████ ████ ████ ██████ █ ██ ██ ██ █████████████████
    7. ███ █████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████ ██████ ███ ████ █ ████ ███████, according to ████ ███████.
    8. ██████ ██ █ ██████████ █████ █████████ ██ █████ ██ ███████████ ████ ██. █████.
    9. ██ ███ potato ██ ████████ Brian ███████ ██ █ ████.

Well, there you have it. Which is your favorite?

Some Level Of Fairness

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On Saturday, Red State reported that a federal judge has granted President Trump’s request and has issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

The article points out that some on the left are upset about this ruling:

You know you are over the target when the left-wing legal “experts” on the bird site start frothing at the mouth. Someone should ask them what they are so afraid of. How is transparency and accountability in this process a bad thing? Given the disputes over the records, it only makes sense that a hopefully neutral third party would be allowed to arbitrate between the two sides. The NARA is not all-powerful. It does not lord over the executive branch, and just because they say something doesn’t make it true or the law.

The article concludes:

No one can be certain where this goes from here, but my suspicion is that this was more about generating bad headlines for Trump than actually building a criminal case against him. I actually came to that conclusion very early on following AG Merrick Garland’s presser on the matter. I just don’t see the DOJ ignoring the Hillary Clinton precedent regarding the handling of government records, and even if they tried to go that route, there are people on record saying the declassification order existed. It would lead to total chaos if Trump were charged (and presumably convicted given the DC jury pool) with a crime that the government gave Clinton a pass on, and she didn’t have the use of presidential powers as a defense.

Still, another part of me feels like they have to go all the way here. If the DOJ stops short, it only further exposes the raid for what it so obviously was. The administration has painted itself into a corner, and that may bring about some more bad decision-making before this is all said and done.

Stay tuned. I personally think the FBI and DOJ got out over their skis on this, but there is still a danger here that constitutional rights will be overlooked and bad things will happen. Remember, the January 6th prisoners are still in jail.

 

Is Anyone Surprised?

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On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted an article about Joe Rogan’s recent interview of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg stated that he was approached by the FBI and told to be aware of Russian propaganda before the New York Post published the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The article reports:

“I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was, we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg said.

“So our protocol is different from Twitter’s. What Twitter did is they said, ‘You can’t share this at all.’ We didn’t do that,” Zuckerberg continued. “What we do is we have, if something was reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also use third-party fact-checking program, because we don’t want to be deciding what’s true and false. And for the — I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it; you could still consume it.”

Zuckerberg said that the reduced distribution on the platform meant that the story was ranked lower in people’s newsfeeds “so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.”

On Thursday The Western Journal reported:

His (Zuckerberg) admission of FBI involvement in Big Tech censorship follows whistleblower claims of an organized operation to prevent a meaningful investigation of Hunter Biden before the 2020 presidential election.

NewsBusters polling suggests that as many as 9.4 percent of Biden voters in swing states would’ve reconsidered their vote if they had had full knowledge of the Hunter Biden controversy.

We have ceded a tremendous amount of power to social media. Maybe it is time to take some of that power back and make sure social media is an open, unbiased place to express opinions.

While We Weren’t Paying Attention…

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While most Americans have been watching the political theater at home, the Biden administration has been continuing negotiations on an Iran deal supposedly to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, The Patriot Daily Wire reported:

Mossad Director David Barnea called the new nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and the West “a strategic disaster” that is “very bad for Israel” on Thursday, The Times of Israel reported.

Barnea emphasized that the emerging deal, mainly resulting from talks between Iran and the United States, is “ultimately built on lies” as he implored international leaders not to rush into signing on.

The Israeli intelligence leader said of the possibility that Iran obtains nuclear weapons that Mossad “is preparing and knows how to remove that threat.”

“If we don’t take action, Israel will be in danger,” he added.

Barnea’s strong statement comes as the U.S. and Iran inch close to implementing a form of the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) passed under former U.S. President Barack Obama.

European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell recently said that the U.S. could respond as soon as this week to a final draft proposal that would restore a form of the 2015 JCPOA accord.

“I hope that this response allows us to end the negotiations,” Borrell declared. “That’s my hope, but I cannot assure you that this will happen.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price signaled similar optimism to the E.U. on Monday but acknowledged that “there are still some outstanding issues that must be resolved.”

Israel is our strongest and most loyal ally in the Middle East. They are also the best informed as to what is actually going on with Iran’s nuclear program. It is well-known that Iran is the major fund source for terrorism around the world. A nuclear deal that gives them billions of dollars will help fund that terrorism as well as help fund their nuclear research. Any deal with Iran will probably be broken by Iran secretly or openly, and we will find out about it when they announce that they have a nuclear bomb and a delivery system or when they demonstrate that bomb by destroying Israel.

There are two principles that need to be considered when negotiating with Iran, which is a Muslim caliphate. The first is taqiyya, which essentially means that it is okay to lie to advance the cause of Islam. Remember that the goal of Iran is to recreate the former caliphate that was the Ottoman Empire. The second is hudna. Basically hudna is a cease fire called by an Islamic entity to give that entity time to rearm or gain some advantage. Both of these principles are in play in our current negotiations with Iran.
Our State Department is either ignorant of these principles or is choosing to ignore them. Neither should be acceptable to Americans.

 

 

A ‘Get Out The Popcorn’ Moment

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On Wednesday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

Tea Party Patriots Action filed a federal complaint against the judge who approved the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home.

“Judge [Bruce] Reinhart has a conflict of interest and a pattern and history of hostility to President Trump,” said the filing (pdf).

The lawsuit then listed several examples including purported Facebook posts that show Reinhart had criticized Trump while praising the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Reinhart also reportedly donated to former President Barack Obama and to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush when he was running against Trump in 2015, the lawsuit said, citing publicly available reports.

The article concludes:

The Tea Party lawsuit also cited a case involving Hillary Clinton in which Reinhart had recused himself, arguing that he should have done so with the FBI search warrant.

“The entire episode of the unprecedented search of the former president’s home, authorized by a political appointee of President Trump’s successor, and approved by a federal magistrate who has been outspoken in his opposition to and loathing of President Trump threatens the principle of ‘equal justice under law’ and the confidence of the American people in an unbiased judiciary,” the complaint said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and Reinhart for comment.

The raid on a former President’s home was unprecedented. If we as Americans sit quietly by and allow abuses of government power such as this to continue unabated, we can expect that those abuses will eventually be aimed at us. This raid should have been a wake-up call to all Americans. I hope it was.

How Does Loan Forgiveness Work?

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On Wednesday, CNBC posted an article about the tax impact of the student loan forgiveness. Obviously, the loan forgiveness is a cost to the federal government, but is there any financial return?

The article reports:

If you’re poised to benefit from President Joe Biden’s up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness, you may also be wondering if the erased debt will trigger a tax surprise come April.

The short answer is: It won’t, at least on your federal tax return. 

Biden on Wednesday announced that he will forgive $10,000 in federal student debt for most borrowers, limited to borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples filing together or heads of households.

He will also cancel up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, Biden said in a tweet.

The article notes how actually paying their student loans has impacted their taxes in the past:

Borrowers with federal or most private student loans are usually able to subtract up to $2,500 a year in interest payments they’ve made on their loans from their gross income, reducing their tax liability.

The deduction is considered “above-the-line,” which means you don’t need to itemize to qualify for the break. 

There are income phaseouts, and individuals who earn above $85,000 and couples who make more than $175,000 in 2022 are not eligible at all. Your lender is supposed to report your interest payments to the IRS on a tax form called a 1098-E, as well as provide you with a copy. You claim the deduction on line 20 of Schedule 1.

Most borrowers haven’t been eligible for the deduction in more than two years because they haven’t been making payments on their loans.

Since March 2020, the government has allowed most borrowers to press the pause button on their payments without interest accruing. “You can claim the student loan interest deduction based only on amounts actually paid,” Kantrowitz (higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz) said.

The article concludes:

If the debt forgiveness cleared your balance entirely, you’ll no longer be able to claim the deduction. Yet you should be eligible if you’re still left with student debt and resume your payments.

More than 12 million taxpayers claimed the student loan interest deduction in 2018, with tax savings of up to $550, according to Kantrowitz.

Just for reference, this is what has happened to college tuition since the government got involved. Since this chart was posted, there have been more increases.

Who Do Democrats Represent?

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We live in a representative republic (not a democracy). Theoretically we elect people to represent us in Washington. The people we elect are supposed to represent us. So who do the Democrats in Washington actually represent? The Democrat party used to be known as the party of the working man. They were friends of the unions and of the people who worked for a living. Now, not so much.

On Tuesday, the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) posted an article on their website about Democrats and the working people of America.

The article notes:

Beginning in earnest with Donald Trump’s election in 2016, working class voters in the United States have fled the Democratic Party in droves, quickly eroding a once solid base of support for the party. Amid this seismic shift in the electorate, many elected Democrats and mainstream media pundits have over the past several months desperately tried to prop up this narrative of Democrats as the party of everyday Americans – even as the policies emanating from Washington have grown increasingly opposed to their interests.

Following the 2016 election, many in media circles seemed to believe that Trump’s performance with blue-collar and working class voters in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio must have been a fluke. Though 2018 was an electoral setback for Republicans in the House, 2020 quickly proved a continuation of the trend that began four years before. Analysis from The New York Times in 2020 on “The Two Americas Funding Trump and Biden Campaigns” found, for example, that in “ZIP codes above [the median household of $68,703], Mr. Biden outraised Mr. Trump by $389.1 million. Below that level, Mr. Trump was actually ahead by $53.4 million.” Additionally, the study also found that much of Biden’s “financial edge” came from deep blue states along the coasts – supporting the widespread perception of Democrats as the party of coastal elites. “The donations mirror voting patterns,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres noted at the time.

The reason why this shift is occurring is easy to see – on issue after issue, Democrats’ policies are hopelessly out of step with the experiences of working class voters. On day one of his administration, Biden took actions like canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and ending oil and gas leases on federal lands – policies favored by wealthy liberals, but which started a steady rise in energy prices that hit working class Americans particularly hard. Democrats’ $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” which was chock-full of woke priorities aimed at appeasing far-left activists, touched off an inflation crisis that has further devastated the financial lives of working class families. Instead of working to curb inflation, Biden and Congressional Democrats passed a bill dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act” that economists believe will do nothing but increase inflation, and which contains subsidies for electric vehicles and solar panels – more welfare for the wealthy. In just the past two years, every Democrat in Congress has voted for higher energy costs, ending coal, and unleashing an army of IRS agents on low and middle-income Americans.

You can only work against your voting base for so long before they turn on you.

The article concludes:

But this outreach effort has proven to be little more than lip service to the actual needs of working class voters. Far from re-calibrating their policy agenda as working class voters abandon them, Democrats appear poised to double down on their embrace of elite interests and a far-left social agenda, one that is completely at odds with the traditional values of most working class families. For Republicans, this presents a golden opportunity – if they can follow Trump’s lead and continue focusing on the issues that matter most to these voters.

We will see in November if Democrat voters continue to support the political party that consistently works against the legislation that would improve their lives.

Creating A Police State

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John Solomon at Just the News is one of the few investigative reporters left. On Tuesday he posted an article about the decisions that led up to the raid on Mar-a-Lago. One of the things he reports on was the role that the Biden White House played in the raid.

The article reports:

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The article contains information about the decision to waive executive privilege in the case of President Trump. I still believe this is about the deep state’s concern that President Trump has documents that will incriminate the FBI and DOJ in the Russia probe.

The article includes some comments by Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor emeritus and lifelong Democrat, about the waiving of executive privilege:

“I was very surprised,” Dershowitz said after reading the text of Wall’s letter. “The current president should not be able to waive the executive privilege of a predecessor, without the consent of the former president. Otherwise, [privilege] means nothing. What president will ever discuss anything in private if he knows the man who beat him can and will disclose it.”

While some courts have upheld the notion of a successor president waiving privilege for a predecessor, Dershowitz said the matter remains to be decided definitively by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The evidence is there that the Biden White House used the Department of Justice and the FBI as political weapons. The question is, “Is there anyone in Congress with the integrity to do anything about it?”

There Is No Honor Among Thieves

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On Tuesday I posted an article about the few good things in the Inflation Reduction Act. They were things that would prevent the fossil fuel industry in America from disappearing entirely under the extreme environmentalist agenda of the Biden administration.

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article raising the possibility that the items that made the deal with Senator Manchin possible might not happen.

The article reports:

The deal that took place between Manchin and Schumer, as well as Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, assured Manchin that there would be a separate method approved that would involve permits for energy infrastructure, including gas pipelines. There would also be new lease sales for oil drilling on federal lands. 

It doesn’t seem like everyone is on board, though. As POLITICO reported on Tuesday for Congress Minutes, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) says he’s “reserving judgement for now.” As the headline aptly read, though, “Tom Carper sure doesn’t sound sold yet on the permitting deal Chuck Schumer struck with Joe Manchin.” 

While Carper’s highlighted remarks begin sounding hopeful enough, there’s still room for concern. “I’m confident we’ll find some areas where we agree. There will probably be some areas where we don’t agree. I’m not sure the vehicle. I feel confident we’ll do that. … At the end of the day, I just don’t want us to make the changes in permitting that will undermine our ability to fight climate change,” he said. 

A newsletter from Inside Climate News last month explained a whole host of complaints that environmentalist groups had about the agreement. 

The remarks came after Carper presided over a pro forma session that same day. 

The article notes:

Making the agreement even more high stakes is that Sen. Manchin is threatening to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his permitting deal in a continuing resolution (CR). While Republicans have taken heat for threats to shut down the government, now it’s a Democrat who is doing so.

On Sunday, The West Virginia MetroNews reported:

As part of an agreement between Manchin and Democratic leaders, Congress will consider changes to the permitting process once lawmakers return to Capitol Hill next month. Related legislation will include steps to speed up approval of energy projects as well as the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile system capable of transporting natural gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia once complete. The project has been marred by legal challenges.

Manchin said the language will be in a continuing resolution to fund the federal government for when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

“This is something the Republican Party has wanted for the last five to seven years I’ve been with them,” he said.

“It either keeps the country open, or we shut down the government. That’ll happen Sept. 30, so let’s see how that politics plays out.”

Stay tuned.

 

The Damage Done

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Dr. Fauci announced recently that he was planning to retire in December. What a coincidence! If the Republicans take the House of Representatives and hold investigations into his behavior, he will be retired.

On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article about the legacy of Dr. Fauci. The article mentions a number of Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds–lying to the public, conflict of interest with companies making Covid vaccines, not reporting the ill-effects of the vaccine, championing shutdowns, masks, questionable vaccines,  etc.  But the article focuses on what it considers the greatest of Dr. Fauci’s transgressions.

The article explains:

Because of Anthony Fauci, Americans have a dwindling – if non-existent – level of faith in their public health institutions. When the next “expert” stands in front of the American people to deliver information, advice and warnings about a public health issue, most of us will be skeptical and wonder if what we are hearing has been politicized. And that’s Fauci’s fault.

Fauci is worse than the boy who cried wolf. He’s the boy who told fantastical tales about multiple wolves and wrongly advised on how to protect yourself from those wolves even after saying the wolves would cause you no harm. And now, the next time we hear about a dangerous wolf, our understandable reaction will be to ignore the warnings. And people will die.

Fauci did that. Because he let his ego and petty, political battles take precedence over his duty and responsibility to the American people and the truth.

Goodbye and good riddance.

The government is always reluctant to give up control over the people. The powers that were usurped during the Covid epidemic need to be turned back over to the people. We need to go back to the days of the government not being able to tell a business that it has to close for two weeks or an indefinite period of time. We need to go back to the days of visiting terminally ill relatives in the hospital. We need to back to having the privilege of deciding what shots we put in our bodies.

Lastly, we need to go back to the days of being the free country our Founding Fathers created.

Protecting The Civil Rights Of All Americans

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One of the main problems with the deep state that has entrenched itself in Washington, D.C., is that very few people have the resources to fight it. Right now it appears that President Trump is the only person bothering to fight back.

On Monday, The Western Journal posted an article about President Trump’s reaction to the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

The article reports:

Former President Donald Trump announced a lawsuit Monday seeking an audit and return of the items taken from his Mar-a-Lago home in an FBI raid earlier this month.

“We have just filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida strongly asserting my rights, including under the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, regarding the unnecessary, unwarranted, and unAmerican Break-In by dozens of FBI agents, and others, of my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump wrote in a statement.

He specifically singled out alleged requests from FBI agents to turn off security cameras during the raid.

“They demanded that the security cameras be turned off, a request we rightfully denied,” Trump wrote. “They prevented my attorneys from observing what was being taken in the raid, saying ‘absolutely not.’ They took documents covered by attorney-client and executive privilege, which is not allowed. They took my passports. They even brought a ‘safe cracker’ and successfully broke into my personal safe, which revealed…nothing!

“We are now demanding that the Department of ‘Justice’ be instructed to immediately STOP the review of documents illegally seized from my home. ALL documents have been previously declassified.”

The article concludes:

In conclusion, Trump called the FBI raid “illegal and unconstitutional.” He said he wanted the FBI to return the documents taken from his home “so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the future Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.”

“I will never stop fighting for the American people, our Country and the Rule of Law,” Trump wrote. “Make America Great Again!”

I believe (and have believed for a while) that the FBI and the DOJ are searching for whatever documents President Trump has related to the Russia hoax. Those documents at the very least cast the FBI and the DOJ in a very bad light–showing partisanship and a willingness to conduct a politically-based investigation into something they knew was false. If President Trump releases those documents and the information gets to the American people, that action will have a tremendous impact on how people view the FBI and the DOJ and possibly on how people view President Trump.

Whose Debt Is It Anyway?

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Today, The National Review reported that President Biden announced that he would be forgiving the student loans of many Americans.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden is set to “forgive” up to $10,000 in federal student debt for those making under $125,000 annually, and $20,000 for Pell grant recipients, transferring the cost of the loans to the American public, the White House announced Wednesday.

…Biden is also set to extend the federal student loan freeze for a final time until December 31.

Lawmakers, including Nancy Pelosi, have argued that Biden’s executive order, is unconstitutional and goes outside the rights of the executive branch.

Congress, not the president, is the only body that can cancel student debt, Pelosi said in July of 2021, arguing that “the president can’t do it.”

“Not everybody realizes that, but the president can only postpone, delay but not forgive” student loans, she added.

The Department of Education came to the same decision, arguing that the executive branch “does not have the statutory authority to cancel, compromise, discharge, or forgive, on a blanket or mass basis, principal balances of student loans, and/or to materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof.”

The article concludes:

The total estimated cost for Biden’s one-time cancellation is $300 billion, according to a study released Tuesday by the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania. The cost would increase to $330 billion if the program continues over the standard ten-year window, the study showed.

Republican lawmakers have sounded the alarm over Biden’s decision, saying that it will lead to inflation.

Payments for most student loan borrowers have been stalled since March of 2020, when Congress, and then former president Donald Trump, paused the payments due to predicted financial hardships stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden has extended the pause four times, and the freeze was expected to expire on August 31.

For once I agree with Nancy Pelosi. The President does not have the power to forgive student loans.

In December 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported the following:

To help pay for ObamaCare, Democrats simultaneously federalized the student loan market and projected fictitious savings, all while adding more than $1.2 trillion to the federal balance sheet. The amount keeps increasing like the debt clock. Liberals then cited the government “savings” to peddle the fallacy that the feds make money off student loans—a pretext they then used to sweeten debt forgiveness plans that have helped keep default rates artificially low.

The Education Department claims the national student loan default rate is 11.3%, yet only half of all debt is in repayment. Borrowers can seek forbearance or deferment if they are unemployed, return to school or claim financial difficulties. Or they can enroll in income-based repayment plans that let them discharge the debt after making payments equal to 10% of their discretionary income for 20 years. Those who work in “public service”—government or a nonprofit—can wipe out their debt in 10 years without a tax penalty.

Initially, only students who borrowed in 2014 or later were eligible for these generous loan forgiveness plans. Then President Obama retroactively extended the benefits to buy millennial votes. Over the last three years the share of outstanding federal direct loan dollars in income-based repayment plans has doubled to 40%. Costs have exploded.

Students signed a contract to repay those laws. By switching the college loans from private lenders to the government, the government acquired the power to interfere in that contract. However, the House of Representatives has the ‘power of the purse’–not the President.

I wonder if the people whose loans are forgiven will see through this effort to buy votes or if they will simply vote for Democrats because their loans were forgiven.

Will We Ever Get The Blindfold Back On Lady Justice?

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article with the following headline, “Biden White House facilitated DOJ’s criminal probe against Trump, scuttled privilege claims: memos.:

The article reports:

“I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall wrote Trump’s team in May.

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

Where was the FBI when it came to dealing with the illegal server and email account Hillary Clinton was using? Hillary Clinton was not President and did not have the authority to declassify documents. President Trump did have that authority at the time the documents were removed from the White House.

The article notes:

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

The article reports:

“We have requested the ability to review the documents,” Corcoran wrote National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern on April 29, copying Su on the letter. “That review is necessary in order to ascertain whether any specific document is subject to privilege. We would respectfully request that you restrict access to the documents until we have had the opportunity to review the documents and to consult with President Donald J. Trump so that he may personally make any decision to assert a claim of constitutionally based privilege.”

But a dozen days later, Wall informed Corcoran that she had the blessing of Biden to overrule those privilege claims and share all materials requested by the DOJ and FBI.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This is a breathtaking abuse of power on the part of the Biden administration.

Is The U. S. Constitution Actually A Good Thing?

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On Monday Breitbart posted an article about a New York Times opinion piece posted on Friday. I am not linking to The New York Times piece because it is behind the paywall.

Breitbart reports:

The “broken” and “famously undemocratic” U.S. Constitution “stands in the way” of “real” freedom and democracy, according to a New York Times op-ed by two Ivy League law professors.

The pair issued a call to “radically alter the basic rules of the game” by no longer requiring us to “justify our politics by the Constitution.”

A Friday New York Times essay, titled “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” and penned by law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, claims when liberals “lose in the Supreme Court” they often blame justices for misreading the Constitution, yet in reality, “struggling over the Constitution has proved a dead end.”

“The real need is not to reclaim the Constitution, as many would have it, but instead to reclaim America from constitutionalism,” the authors assert, as they attack the “some centuries-old text.”

The article shares the solution proposed by the professors:

Accusing “constitutionalism” of “leaving democracy hostage to constraints that are harder to change than the rest of the legal order,” the essay argues the way to seek “real freedom” will be a “new way of fighting within American democracy” with a “more open politics of altering our fundamental law,” suggesting that the Constitution be made “more amendable” than it currently is.

“One way to get to this more democratic world is to pack the Union with new states,” the authors write. “Doing so would allow Americans to then use the formal amendment process to alter the basic rules of [politics] and break the false deadlock that the Constitution imposes through the Electoral College and Senate on the country, in which substantial majorities are foiled on issue after issue.”

However, the authors state, Congress could “openly defy” the Constitution to “get to a more democratic order,” with the basic structure of government being “decided by the present electorate, as opposed to one from some foggy past.”

“A politics of the American future like this would make clear our ability to engage in the constant reinvention of our society under our own power, without the illusion that the past stands in the way,” they conclude.

The piece comes as many on the left continue to attack the epic founding governmental document.

Just for the record, we are not a democracy, we are a representative republic.

Why don’t we just put all of the people who want to get rid of the Constitution on a fairly large island and let them govern it using their ideas? We could take bets on how long it would take to reenact Lord of the Flies.