From my friends at Townhall:
Monthly Archives: December 2022
Cloward-Piven At Work
Study.com defines the Cloward-Piven theory as follows:
The Cloward-Piven Theory is a strategy devised in the 1960s to successfully provide welfare and attempt to solve political problems. The main steps of this strategy are to:
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- Overload a system
- Create mass panic and hysteria as the system is overloaded
- Oversee the destruction of the system
- Replace the former system with a new system
This is the basic outline for The Great Reset.
In a June 2020 article, The Hill describes The Great Reset as follows:
At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs.
The biggest obstacle to The Great Reset is America. We like our freedom and we like our prosperity. On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article that might illustrate how the Biden administration can easily overload the welfare system.
The article reports:
President Joe Biden’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially reopened legal immigration to foreign nationals with a history of using American taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.
In early 2020, the Trump administration finalized a federal regulation known as the “public charge” rule that made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards to permanently reside in the United States if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing programs.
Almost immediately after taking office, Biden threw out the finalized public charge rule imposed by the Trump administration, blowing open the door for welfare-dependent legal immigration to the United States, for which American taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.
First of all, why are laws being made by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats instead of Congress? Until we correct that, we are not really the representative republic that our Founding Fathers established. Secondly, why do we want to bring more people into America who will be welfare-dependent when we can’t even help the people who are already here. Until we find a way to get homeless veterans off the streets, we need to stop allowing people to come here simply to access America’s welfare system.
A Victory For Equal Access
For a few years, libraries across America have featured Drag Queen Story Hours for children. However, when actor Kirk Cameron asked to read his new children’s book at the Indianapolis Public Library’s main branch, he was turned down.
On Thursday, Breitbart reported what happened next:
“This was the largest event held at the library in its 137 years of existence,” Zac Bell with BRAVE Books, who is with the book’s publisher, commented. “The turnout was phenomenal! We were blown away.”
According to Bell, the Indianapolis Public Library “originally denied us the ability to book the reading. We sent them a letter that threatened legal action and they backed down.”
Meanwhile, Cameron and his publisher recently criticized libraries that will not allow a public reading of his book but offer “drag queen story hours” for children.
However, “No more will the family of faith be shut out from the public square!” Cameron wrote in a social media post Wednesday.
Kirk Cameron will be reading his book at New York’s Scarsdale Library on Friday.
This is what the event in Indianapolis looked like:
Thank you, Kirk Cameron and Brave Books for standing up for the rights of parents to have access to events that build up their children.
Limiting Freedom In The Name Of Climate Change
On Wednesday, The American Thinker posted an article about a new policy being put in place in Oxford, England.
The article reports:
This is one of those stories that you’re certain is from the Babylon Bee, and that is stunning in its implications when it turns out to be the truth. In this case, the truth is that, in accordance with UN and WEF climate recommendations, the city of Oxford (home to the famed university) approved plans mandating that citizens may not drive more than 15 minutes distance from their homes without permission. It’s called the “15 Minute City” and is intended to reduce auto emissions. Mostly, though, it will reduce liberty, which is what climate change madness has always been about.
In many ways, the 15 Minute City (which the WEF and UN approvingly tout) is an old, unexceptional idea: Even in big cities, people like vibrant neighborhoods that allow them to travel very short distances (walking, riding a bike, or driving) to fulfill their daily needs (food, clothing, haircuts, etc.). Indeed, there are lots of people who pick homes based on their proximity to amenities. They don’t want to spend their lives in their cars or on public transportation chasing from one thing to another. And that’s fine. Making choices based on lifestyle preferences is a perfectly sound, market-based way to go through life.
But the marketplace is not what globalists want. They want control. Certainly, that’s the case in and around Oxford, England. Word is trickling into America that both the leftist Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxford City Council have plans. Big plans.
On November 30, Vision News reported:
Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, secretly decided to divide-up the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts in 2021 soon after they were elected to office. None of the councillors declared their intention of imprisoning local residents in their manifestos of course, preferring to make vague claims about how they will ‘improve the environment’ instead.
Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras. And don’t think you can beat the system if you’re a two car household. Those two cars will be counted as one meaning you will have to divide up the journeys between yourselves. 2 cars 50 journeys each; 3 cars 33 journeys each and so on.
Under the new rules, your social life becomes irrelevant. By de facto Councils get to dictate how many times per year you can see friends and family. You will be stopped from fraternising with anyone outside your district, and if you want a long distance relationship in the future, forget it, you are confined to dating only those within a 15 minute walk of your house.
A single person’s life will be at the mercy of Communists in central office, dictating the same type of draconian rules we had to avert the last crisis, a mild flu virus so deadly 80% of people didn’t even know they had it.
If this policy is maintained in Oxford, it will eventually come to America.
The Scam Of Green Energy
On Wednesday, Daniel Horowitz posted an article at Conservative Review pointing out what we should have learned from the Christmas energy crisis in America.
The article notes:
What’s the modus operandi of our dystopian government? Creating a needless deadly crisis, blocking the effective way for dealing with it thereafter, and foisting upon the world instead a dangerous and ineffective way of dealing with it. That might sound a lot like COVID, but it’s largely what officials have been planning for a long time with energy, and now that the population is primed for lockdowns, disruptions, and total authoritarian control as a result of COVID, that is what they plan to do with our energy grid. All for a lie.
This was the coldest Christmas in a half-century in much of the U.S., with many localities setting records, including those not accustomed to the cold like Tallahassee, Florida. Many of us are disgusted at those limiting our natural energy in favor of novel, ineffective energy, thereby causing a doubling or even tripling of home heating bills. But we must also realize that if they had their way, we’d have no heating in our homes at all.
Just like the supposed source of COVID and how to deal with it were lies, our energy crisis is wholly contrived and built upon the lie of global warming. Typically, you would have to make sure we are 100% correct about the “science” behind such irrevocable economic and societal changes before committing civilization suicide by destroying the only reliable sources of energy we have. But in a post-“Great Reset” world, this is par for the course. In fact, the science behind global warming is just as flimsy as the science behind lockdowns, masks, and mRNA shots.
The article notes how inaccurate past climate-change predictions have been:
During the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, chief climate priest Al Gore asserted, “Some of the models suggest … that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.” Predictions like this upended our lives with more expensive and more decrepit vital products and services being produced for a generation under the false pretense of taming a crisis that never existed. It turns out that since 2012, the mass of Arctic sea ice is up 31% and Greenland is gaining, not losing, ice. Meanwhile, Antarctica, which was always gaining ice during the period when the Arctic was losing ice, subsequently lost ice last decade and is now regaining it. In other words, the science behind polar ice caps seems to be rooted in the same cherry-picked timing and data as the faux science behind global warming causing either fewer or more hurricanes.
Yet somehow, we are to believe the science is all figured out on how to tamper with global temperatures, just like it was with COVID. Rather than people being more primed to believe in government control after COVID, any thinking person should be even more suspect of official climate lies and the accompanying life-altering policy changes governments want to induce based on them. And boy, would these policy changes be life-altering.
Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is becoming even more apparent that the quest for green energy is not about the environment at all–it is about creating a society where a small group of people control the lives of everyone else.
Creating A New Pandemic
China is at it again. They are sending Covid-infected travelers around the world, spreading the disease again.
On Wednesday, Breitbart reported the following:
Italy’s decision to take extra precautions with Chinese travelers paid off on Wednesday as two flights from China landed in Milan and half of the passengers tested positive for Covid-19.
Italy was one of four countries that announced they would impose coronavirus restrictions on Chinese travelers because a massive wave of coronavirus infections is ripping across China, racking up millions of cases in a single day — but the tyrannical Chinese government decided to abandon almost all of its disease control protocols with almost no preparation for the consequences, loosen up travel restrictions, and begin handing out passports just in time for the Lunar New Year holiday.
According to ycharts, as of December 13, 2022, China has a Covid vaccination rate of 89.35 percent. If that is true, why are they having so much trouble containing the Coronavirus?
The article at Breitbart continues:
A massive spike in Chinese internet searches for travel reservations and vacation packages occurred on Tuesday as international travel suddenly became available after years of travel prohibitions and citywide lockdowns.
Italy was one of four countries to correctly deduce that China would not do a very thorough job of screening its outbound passengers for the highly contagious, vaccine-resistant sub-variant of the Omicron strain that has been spreading like wildfire through the vast and vulnerable Chinese population.
The article concludes:
“Travel services companies Trip.com and Qunar said international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their websites rose five to eight times after the announcement. Top destinations included Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Australia,” Sky News reported, fearing a “haunting repeat” of the 2020 worldwide pandemic.
The United States became the fifth country to impose special restrictions on Chinese travelers on Wednesday night, requiring negative Covid test results for travelers two and older beginning on January 5. U.S. health officials cited the lack of reliable data from China as one of the reasons for its travel policy.
We need to start testing now–January 5 will be too late.
Do The Votes Of Americans Matter?
On Wednesday, The American Thinker posted an article with the following headline, “The End of Free Elections?”
The article reports:
This week, leftists and RINOs admitted, under oath, that they changed the print settings, on election morning, so Republican votes would not be tabulated, on the one day most Republicans vote — and the Maricopa County judge said “…it wasn’t intentional.”
A Republican governor candidate who easily won by multiple points was denied her rightful election. Several million Arizona voters were disenfranchised.
Not a word from Republican leaders!
Wake up, America.
Leftists and RINOs have spent the last 40 years transforming election machinery to end your right to vote — and they are about to finish the job.
This week, the governor of Minnesota took the lead by planning to register, automatically, teenagers not old enough to vote. On election day, there will be tens of thousands of names, with little history, who can be voted by election commissions when needed.
Democrats are proposing laws making it a felony to question an election. Of course they are!
Kari Lake is appealing her case, but I am not optimistic.
The article lists a number of problems with voter rolls in various locations:
Try the 41 voters registered in a hotel in Missouri. How about the registered voters in the Harris County, Texas prison? Examples are so numerous we have a website to cover them.
When most, probably all, states have a float of anomalous voters from 5% to almost 20%, an election commission can control the election outcome for any close election. Elections are mostly close today.
We find “sleepers.” These are the silent voters who never voted before — even though they are on election rolls for a decade — but when needed they jump to life and vote. After the 2020 election, several states ran the query: show all voters, on the voter rolls four years or more, who never before voted, yet voted in 2020.
The response, delivered with Fractal technology, was in the hundreds of thousands.
Nobody claims these were fraudulent. Neither can anyone claim they were all valid — particularly since so many lived in hotels, churches, prisons, and scores of other addresses which cannot house a valid voter.
This happened in every swing state. The one constant: they never win elections for a Republican. Go figure.
The Fractal team and three state voter integrity teams in Nevada, Florida, and Wisconsin met late in 2022 after realizing that fake voters, found by the hundreds of thousands, in Republican and Democrat states, when challenged, were mostly kept on voter rolls.
The article concludes:
We cannot stop election commissions from changing print settings, but we can keep them mostly honest on election rolls by reconciling one government database with another and forcing the government to make them match — constantly.
We are on a journey to ingest the voter rolls and county tax rolls for 3,200 U.S. counties for 2024.
Let’s see how many counties want to tax that Mongolian restaurant as a residence since their voter registration rolls show 20 voters live there?
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We have to clean up our elections if we are going to remain a free country.
Where To Buy Used American Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan
On Wednesday, Front Page Magazine reported the following:
Our national security is in the best of hands. Not Biden. Maybe whoever in Afghanistan has an eBay account.
German researchers who purchased biometric capture devices on eBay found sensitive US military data stored on their memory cards, The New York Times has reported. That included fingerprints, iris scans, photographs, names and descriptions of the individuals, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many worked with the US army and could be targeted if the devices fell into the wrong hands, according to the report.
They cost under $200.
Where did it come from before eBay? That’s a good question. And officially there’s no answer. But one seems to have come most recently from Afghanistan.
Metadata on the device, called a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK II, revealed that it had last been used in the summer of 2012 near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Where was it sitting all this time?
The article notes that the information in these devices could lead the Taliban to people who worked with the Americans who were previously unknown to the Taliban.
The article concludes:
The how likely involves our “allies” or the Jihadis who overran the place after Biden’s humiliating retreat. Sure it could be a decommissioned military device, but those are supposed to be destroyed.
How eBay sellers obtained these devices is unclear. The device with the 2,632 profiles was sold by Rhino Trade, a surplus equipment company in Texas. The company’s treasurer, David Mendez, said it had bought the SEEK II at an auction of government equipment and did not realize a decommissioned military device would have sensitive data on it.
“I hope we didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
The SEEK II with the American troops’ information came from Tech-Mart, an eBay seller in Ohio. Tech-Mart’s owner, Ayman Arafa, declined to say how he had acquired it, or two other devices he sold to the researchers.
Arafa is a common Morrocan last name.
The media’s focus is on the fact that there was unencrypted data on the SEEK devices. But a bigger story is how those devices ended up for sale. Period.
Bad decisions have consequences.
Partial Relief For The Pending Border Disaster
On Tuesday, The Daily Wire reported that the Supreme Court had reached a decision to all Title 42 to remain in place indefinitely.
The article reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to keep the pandemic-era limit on immigration, referred to as Title 42, in place indefinitely, which allows officials to turn away migrants at the border to prevent the spread of COVID.
Customs and Border Protection officials warned lawmakers that approximately 50,000 foreigners were waiting to cross into the United States once Title 42 ended. However, according to The Associated Press, an order from Chief Justice John Roberts stayed a lower court’s ruling, which justices extended to give the court time to consider both sides’ arguments.
The article concludes:
Federal officials said ending the restrictions would likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.” However, they still asked the nation’s highest court to reject the request from 19 Republican state attorneys general to maintain the policy.
Leaders in border cities had been bracing for an influx of immigrants. Oscar Leeser, the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency on Saturday in anticipation of the end of Title 42. “Our asylum seekers are not safe,” the official said at a press conference. “We have hundreds and hundreds on the street and that’s not the way we treat our people.”
More than 80,000 migrants have entered El Paso in the last four months; approximately 678,000 people currently reside in the city, where temperatures can drop below freezing during winter nights. Leeser did not rule out the option of using a nearby military base to temporarily house migrants, adding that officials were discussing options with state and federal authorities.
Arguing over Title 42 is missing the point. The point is that in order to maintain our sovereignty as a country, we need secure borders. We currently do not have them. It is unsettling that a large percentage of the people crossing the border illegally are adult males between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They do not represent family life, and when things don’t work out for them economically, they will be a force to be reckoned with. The Biden administration is setting the state for the destruction of America. I don’t know whether or not it is intentional, but it is what is happening.
A wonderful video from the Babylon Bee:
The Ending Of The Vaccine Mandate That Didn’t End The Vaccine Mandate
On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the ending of the vaccine mandate for American’s military forces.
The article reports:
- The Biden administration has officially rescinded the military COVID-19 vaccination mandate, but ongoing litigation will continue and unvaccinated servicemembers may still be subject to discipline and discharge, experts explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- The Pentagon has 30 days to determine how to implement the mandate repeal.
- “There’s nothing to repair what’s already happened. There’s nothing to address the improper handling of medical exemptions, the violations for Religious Freedom Restoration Act and what the future looks like,” R. Davis Younts, a military defense attorney, told the DCNF.
The article continues:
While the Biden administration has officially reversed the military COVID-19 vaccination mandate, servicemembers who escaped discharge for refusing the vaccine still risk retaliation and could be booted anyway, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ongoing class action lawsuits thwarted the military’s efforts to discharge thousands of troops who objected to the mandate before the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law Friday, overturned it. However, servicemembers may risk reprisal even after the deadline passes for the Department of Defense (DOD) to implement the repeal, staining the records of thousands of servicemembers for the remainder of their careers, experts explained to the DCNF.
“There’s nothing to repair what’s already happened. There’s nothing to address the improper handling of medical exemptions, the violations for Religious Freedom Restoration Act and what the future looks like, whether it’s for religious reasons or other reasons,” R. Davis Younts, a military defense attorney, told the DCNF.
It doesn’t sound as if anyone is paying attention to the law.
The article concludes:
The military vaccine mandate has been the subject of strong debate between the DOD, which asserts that full vaccination status is critical to ensuring the readiness of the force, and Republican lawmakers, many of whom argue that the mandate has exacerbated an ongoing recruiting crisis.
“Secretary Austin supports maintaining the vaccine mandate. The health and readiness of our forces is critical to our warfighting capability and a top priority,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told the DCNF in a statement earlier in December.
The NDAA allows the DOD 30 days to work out how to roll back the mandate. The department is “currently in the process of developing further guidance,” DOD spokesperson Lt. Col. Garron Garn told the DCNF.
“We have no idea” what the DOD’s policy will be moving forward, Younts told the DCNF.
It doesn’t sound as if the DOD is willing to follow the law passed by elected officials. In that case, some DOD officials need to be removed.
It’s important to remember that many of the heart problems associated with the Covid vaccine have occurred in men between the ages of 18 and 28. That is the age of a large percentage of our military. Why are our leaders putting our military at risk?
If I Wanted To Rule The World…
If I wanted to rule the world, how would I go about it? The days of conquering armies swarming over continents are gone. The strategies of Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Adolph Hitler, etc. are no long applicable. So what would I do? And what would be the obstacles standing in my way?
Distance is not the determining factor that it was in years past. A well-placed electromagnetic pulse can do more to cripple an army or a population than an actual attack can. Disrupting supply lines can destabilize a population. Controlling money electronically, controlling the food supply, controlling access to medical care, and controlling the supply chain will end any illusion of personal freedom. Personal freedom and the willingness of a population to fight for that freedom is the major obstacle to one-world government ruled by a cadre of extremely wealthy and powerful people. With the advent of robotic technology, the number of people needed to serve the ruling elites is actually rather small. So let’s look at the past few years in view of these facts.
Fear is a powerful motivator. It can cause people to follow the directions of questionable medical authorities to receive an experimental vaccine that may or may not help them. Supposedly caring political leaders can send elderly people with a contagious virus into nursing homes which will infect the most vulnerable people among us. The elderly in the nursing homes are the people who remember what it was like to have to fight to defend our freedom.
The introduction of crypto-currency would make it very easy for the government to control the spending of every citizen. Your crypto-currency allowance could be linked to your carbon footprint to make sure you were not using excessive energy. Basically the government could implement the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) system China currently uses.
The biggest obstacle to one-world government is America. If the major money people—George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, etc., can destabilize American society to the point where we are not willing to fight for our freedom, they win.
As Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
We are at a turning point. Either Americans will stand together to fight the corruption that has overtaken our country or we will lose our freedom and our sovereignty. It’s up to us.
What Can We Do About Dishonest Elections?
On Monday, Townhall posted an article with the following headline, “The Dismissal of Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit Shows Voter Disenfranchisement No Longer Matters.”
The article reports:
The trial court judge in Kari Lake’s election lawsuit predictably threw out her case on Saturday, putting on a sham trial that on the surface looked fair to the general public that doesn’t know any better, but to legal minds was a travesty of justice. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson only gave her two days for a trial and issued his ruling immediately afterwards, even though he could have taken several days, and it was one of the biggest, most important cases in the country. Legal experts believe his decision was ghostwritten, they suspect top left-wing attorneys like Marc Elias emailed him what to say.
The standard should have been whether voters were disenfranchised, not all the additional hoops Thompson added. If inner city blacks had been disenfranchised, Thompson would not have added all those extra requirements, he would have made the law fit. Robert Gouveia, a rare attorney who isn’t afraid to speak up and who describes himself as watching prosecutors, judges and politicians, said the standard should have been whether there was voter suppression.
Instead, Thompson said Lake had to show an extremely vague, high bar in order to prevail, that an election official intentionally caused the printer changes in order to change the results of the election, and that it did affect the outcome. He explained away many of the disturbing election anomalies as accidents or mere coincidences. He ignored the vast majority of them; in a show of arrogance, his opinion was less than eight pages long.
Thompson completely ignored all the voters who saw the long lines and gave up trying to vote, as if they didn’t count. Considering probably well over half of the voting locations in Maricopa County were affected, not to mention they were almost all in heavily Republican areas, this was no small disenfranchisement. Many voters have come forward and told how they were unable to vote for this reason or similar, such as a man who couldn’t find parking in time due to the overcrowded parking lot.
The article concludes:
Compounding the problem, hardly any attorneys dare speak up about this, since they risk being targeted and disbarred. So they’re not writing about it or going on talk shows, and the best of the bunch have already been targeted so they’ve either already been disbarred or have to lie low. Nor are they taking on representation, leaving candidates like Lake to rely upon non-election attorneys. When the Cochise County Supervisors gutsily called for a hand count, they could find no attorney who dared represent them.
A friend described the situation, “We don’t have a justice system and voting is becoming pointless. Only Democrat votes matter in our country now.” Voter fraud experts believe the Democrats started targeting states years ago, like Washington and California, then moved on to Colorado. Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania are their latest targets. They intend to move on to states like Florida next if not stopped. Voter disenfranchisement has become the most important issue facing Republicans today, and if not stopped, we will become a one-party nation.
This is not a good place to be. Hopefully the case can be appealed.
The Twitter Saga Continues
In understanding any of what was going on at Twitter, it is a good idea to refer to a series of articles posted at The Conservative Treehouse describing Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. The basic premise of the articles about Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is that the business model for Twitter does not work unless various agencies prop it up. Twitter is the the U.S. government as Tik Tok is to the Chinese Communist government.
On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article about some of the things we have recently learned about the collaboration between Twitter and various government agencies.
The article reports:
The CIA was among a number of security state agencies, including the State Department and the Pentagon, involved in censorship at Twitter, according to the ninth tranche of Twitter Files released by Elon Musk, via journalist Matt Taibbi.
Following the bizarre statement released by the FBI, calling the Twitter Files reporting “misinformation” spread by “conspiracy theorists” with the “sole purpose of discrediting the agency,” Taibbi posted a new tranche revealing much more widespread government involvement in censorship than previously known — adding, “Why stop with one [agency]?”
The ninth release of Twitter Files displays aggressive efforts by the CIA and other agencies in the security state to force Twitter’s hand in censoring various political opinions and speech, through constant contact with the company’s executives, one of whom Taibbi reveals is ex-CIA himself.
Taibbi writes that the FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter, describing the bureau as a “doorman” for the other agencies to connect with Twitter.
“The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship,” Taibbi writes, “encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
The article concludes:
Taibbi explains how the government would push Twitter according to its theories about “foreign influence” that Twitter did not see borne out in its own data. Twitter would respond to the government’s “constant pressure” that there was no evidence for their assertions, however, Twitter still surrendered its independence.
“The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions,” Taibbi writes, providing a number of examples.
“‘Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I’ve generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,’ he says. ‘Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution’,” Taibbi reports, adding, “Translation: ‘more aggressive’ ‘government partners’ had closed Twitter’s ‘window’ of independence.”
The CIA did not respond for request for comment, Taibbi reports:
“The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.”
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We are running out of conspiracy theories–they are all turning out to be true.
Refusing To Acknowledge Achievement
On December 24th, Hot Air posted an article about Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology located in Fairfax County, Virginia.
The article reports:
Located in Fairfax County, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has long been ranked as one of the premiere high schools in the nation. It’s a “magnet” charter school that focuses on the sciences and STEM curricula. But for several years now you wouldn’t have guessed that based on the school’s record of students receiving National Merit awards. That’s because none of the students reportedly received those honors. Except that’s not true at all. The top students in the school did indeed receive National Merit awards, but two administrators at TJ have been withholding notifications of the awards from students. They reportedly did this as part of their “equitable grading policy.” And the parents of students who were not credited with those achievements are seeing red.
Refusing to reward accomplishment does not promote equity–it simply removes the incentive for students to try to achieve. If achievement is recognized, it provides motivation for struggling students to try harder.
The article concludes:
The student mentioned in the excerpt above took the PSAT and achieved a score that placed him in the top three percent of students in the nation, along with winning a National Merit award. But he couldn’t list that on his college applications because he was never informed that he received it. This year, after being caught, the school did eventually distribute the awards, but they waited until after the early college admission deadline had passed.
The principal of the school and the director of student services reportedly conspired to withhold the awards for years, impacting as many as 1,200 students. Under their “equitable grading policy” described above, almost no student will ever fail and they get a 50% grade just for showing up. This is being described as a “race to the bottom,” which definitely sounds accurate.
As we’ve seen with other charter schools in California, efforts have been underway to eliminate merit-based achievements. In the opinion of the progressives pushing such “reforms,” too many of the “wrong” types of students were getting the awards, most commonly students from Asian families. To correct what they see as an “unfair” system, they keep lowering the standards until everyone reaches equality. Tragically, it’s an equality of poor performance. This barely disguised racism should not be tolerated and it’s a mystery why Thomas Jefferson High School continues to employ the administrators who were responsible for this plot.
This is socialism in education–no one is allowed to be rewarded for their efforts and eventually the achievers stop achieving.
The Wrong Incentives
On December 22, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the impact America’s current welfare policies are having on unemployment and on our economy.
The article reports:
A massive labor shortage continues to hamstring the economy, with millions more empty jobs than unemployed job-seekers. All the while, millions of people remain on the sidelines, with the labor force participation rate significantly below the pre-pandemic norm. Why are so many potential workers sitting idle while jobs need to be filled?
Well, the astoundingly bloated nature of America’s welfare state offers one explanation, according to a new study . Conservative economists Stephen Moore, E.J. Antoni, and Casey Mulligan of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity analyzed what a typical four-person family, with two nonworking adults, could receive in welfare benefits, including both unemployment and healthcare subsidies, across the 50 states.
They found that in three states, Washington, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, this typical family can earn the equivalent of more than $100,000 annually without working, thanks to various government programs.
Meanwhile, in 14 states the benefits are equivalent to an $80,000 annual salary or more. In these states, welfare pays better than the typical job of a secondary school teacher or electrician, according to the study. In 24 states, languishing on welfare pays better than the typical salary earned by a firefighter, truck driver, or machinist.
Why would you bother to go to work when you could actually make more money staying home and doing nothing?
The article reaches the only logical conclusion:
“A key policy question these days that has befuddled federal lawmakers is why so many millions of Americans have not returned to the workplace in the post-Covid era,” the study’s authors conclude. “The U.S. is ‘missing’ more than three million workers of working age that could be working and were working prior to Covid but are not today. This study shows that one factor contributing to the dearth of workers is the generous benefits paid to families without workers.”
The takeaway here is clear. If we want our economy to recover fully from the COVID-19 pandemic and get roaring again, we have to reform our social spending programs so that we once again incentivize work, not welfare.
From my friends at Hot Air:
The Military-Industrial Complex Comes Roaring Back
One aspect of the Trump administration that has not been widely reported on is the fact that no new foreign wars were started during his Presidency. Generally the world was more peaceful than it is now. Defense contractors did not receive massive contracts in order to earn massive profits during the Trump administration. That may be one of many reasons why President Trump is so totally disliked by the Washington elites.
On Sunday, The Daily Caller reported the following:
- Congress has placed massive orders for weapons and equipment amid war in Ukraine and fears of aggression from other U.S. rivals, intensifying pressure on the defense industry to meet those orders.
- Business is booming for contractors today, but they will have to manage some ongoing obstacles to production if they are to meet demand, experts told the DCNF.
- “Congress has been leaning in this direction for several years, and it is the mood of the Washington consensus right now to throw money at defense,” Eugene Gholz, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former senior Pentagon official, told the DCNF.
The article continues:
Congress authorized a massive increase in spending on weapons and ammunition in 2023, signaling a willingness to continue providing defense contractors the funding they need to deliver on future Pentagon orders, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Department Of Defense (DOD) would receive a 9% boost in defense spending, with some of the largest increases occurring in weapons budgets, in 2023 as part of Congress’ yearly funding bill, which allocates a total of $858 billion for defense. Concern that the U.S. lacks the capacity to both support Ukraine and deter China from attacking Taiwan have intensified as the U.S. continues to send billions in aid to Kyiv, but contractors will have to negotiate production challenges in order to supply what Congress and the White House believe they need, experts explained to the DCNF.
…The war in Ukraine has severely depleted U.S. and European weapons stockpiles, generating heightened demand to replenish those reserves, while countries are seeking to grow and modernize their capabilities to guard against the effects of Russia’s war and the increasingly belligerent China and North Korea. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Dec. 16 the Ukraine crisis had exposed existing vulnerabilities in the defense industrial base that would need to be addressed.
“The diversion of existing stocks of weapons and munitions to Ukraine and pandemic-related supply chain issues has exacerbated a sizeable backlog in the delivery of weapons already approved for sale to Taiwan, undermining the island’s readiness,” the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission recently found. The backlog of deliveries to Taiwan has reached $18.7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For the second year in a row, the Pentagon has clocked an average 4.3% budget increase year over year after factoring in inflation, compared to 1% for the years from 2015 and 2021, according to an analysis the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments completed for The New York Times and shared with the DCNF. Defense spending is approaching levels not seen since the height of the wars in Iraq and Syria in real dollars.
We cannot afford to finance the war in Ukraine while we have homeless veterans and an undefended southern border in America.
When The Fact-Checkers Are Evidently On Vacation
Everything President Trump said was fact-checked at least three times. If he exaggerated about something, it was considered a lie. Somehow, when Joe Biden became President, the fact-checkers went on vacation. Since they are on vacation, I will do a little fill-in work for them. On December 24th, Townhall printed a list of “7 Bid Biden Lies of 2022.”
Here is the list:
1. “The economy is strong as hell.”
Somehow I don’t think many Americans who are struggling to pay energy bills and put food on the table would agree with that.
2. I “signed a law” to cancel student loan debt that passed “by a vote or two.”
This is simply delusional–there never was a law–it was an Executive Order that is in the process of being struck down by the courts.
3. “Jim Crow 2.0”
Any law that makes it more difficult to cheat is characterized by the Democrats as Jim Crow 2.0. There is no basis for this claim.
4. “No national plan to get Americans vaccinated.”
President Biden has also claimed that there was no vaccine when he took office. Both claims. are lies.
5. “You couldn’t buy a cannon.”
This was part of the claim that no constitutional right is absolute–a claim our Founding Fathers would totally disagree with.
6. Basically his whole resume
- Biden claimed he was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1965 — but that’s the year he graduated from the University of Delaware.
- Biden claimed he “really enjoyed teaching” at the University of Pennsylvania — but he never taught a class there.
- Biden claimed “a significant portion” of his house burned down in 2004 “with my wife in it” — but it was a small, contained kitchen fire.
These are simply outright lies.
7. The border is “secure.”
Pay no attention to the thousands of people who are walking across the shallow parts of the Rio Grande.
Where are the fact-checkers?
The Real Cost Of The Push Toward Unproven Green Energy
On Sunday, The Epoch Times posted an article what happened in America Christmas weekend because of the extreme weather. It should be noted that extreme weather in the winter (particularly in the northern parts of the country) is not all that unusual.
The article reports:
A number of U.S. utility companies called on customers to conserve electricity due to frigid weather on Saturday and Sunday.
Con Edison, which serves the New York City metropolitan area, asked its 1.1 million natural gas, 3.5 million electric, and other customers in New York City to conserve power. Temperatures in the Big Apple plunged to about 15 degrees F overnight on Saturday and Sunday morning.
“Conserving energy as much as possible now will help ensure adequate natural gas supplies for the rest of the weekend,” Con Edison said late on Saturday. “Owners of natural gas pipelines have reported that equipment problems caused by the cold weather and the heavy demand for natural gas are challenging their ability to provide adequate amounts of gas throughout the Northeast,” the utility company added.
Another, ISO New England, warned Saturday that it has “insufficient reserve supplies” and called on its members to “voluntarily curtail power” due to strain on the power grid, reported Bloomberg.
“We have declared a power caution for the region, and [are] calling upon reserve resources due to the unexpected loss of generation and imports,” ISO New England spokesman Matthew Kakley told Bloomberg News.
Duke Energy, which operates across several states, made a similar demand to customers earlier on Saturday, according to a news release. It cited tight supplies due to heavy energy use and exceptionally cold temperatures.
America has vast resources of natural gas (an environmentally clean-burning fuel) and is capable of building adequate pipelines and refineries to get that natural gas to where it needs to go to keep everyone warm and snug in the winter and cool and comfortable in the summer. What is the motivation of our political class in keeping Americans from using their natural resources to stay safe and warm?
There is no excuse for not being able to deal with extreme winter weather in one of the supposedly most civilized countries in the world.
Merry Christmas!
From my friends at Power Line Blog:
The Reverse Impact Of Releasing Donald Trump’s Tax Returns
The real lesson in looking at President Trump’s tax returns is that he lost money while he was President. Not only did his businesses lose money–he refused to take a salary. Contrast that with some of our recent Presidents who were middle class when they arrived at the White House and left as millionaires. Or contrast that with Congressmen who arrived in Washington as members of the middle class and left a few years later as millionaires.
On Friday, Hot Air noted the following:
He is already rich. So rich that he donated his salary every year that he was president.
All the ridiculous talk of emoluments, schemes to use the office to enrich himself seemed beside the point. Trump loves himself some money and will do ridiculous things to make it, but even if he did use his office to enrich himself he wouldn’t be stupid enough to have it show up on his tax returns.
And sure enough, his returns tell us little except that Trump seems to be the only human being on the planet who didn’t get richer while he was president. He lost over a billion dollars of net worth.
As with most Trump controversies, it was much ado about nothing. Nothing bad was done by Trump, and while lots of commentators are cherry picking years when Trump paid little in taxes due to business losses, they ignore the fact that over his presidency he paid a million dollars in taxes.
Trump never claimed that he liked paying taxes; he even bragged that he did everything he could legally to avoid the practice. As any red-blooded American should. The federal government wastes trillions of dollars and you are an idiot to simply donate to the government what isn’t legally required.
The article also notes:
I would be much more interested in seeing the financials of politicians who entered office without much wealth but have grown immensely wealthy during their tenure. By what mechanism, exactly, did they do this on their relatively modest salaries? What about their families, who also often find their fortunes improve during their tenure.
The idea that anybody who supports Joe Biden could care about any financial malfeasance by Trump is ludicrous. The Biden family is little more than a circle of grifters using Joe’s political connections to get rich. Bill Clinton entered office a relative pauper and together with Hillary is now worth north of $100 million.
That is quite an achievement for a guy who has never worked in business. “Public service” has been very good to the Clintons, I would say.
The article comes to the only really logical conclusion:
Not every grifter is a Leftist–there are plenty to go around–but nearly every Leftist is a grifter.
Still, I am not that interested in seeing their tax returns. I am sure their accountants are as good at manipulating numbers as well as Trump’s. What I would really like to see is somebody doing a correlation between the investments of politicians and the legislation they write and have access to.
That would be a great project for a forensic accountant.
The correlation between investments and legislation would be fascinating I am sure!
An International Propaganda Effort
On Wednesday, Fox News posted the following headline, “Biden admin is funding foreign reporters to write climate stories, emails show.”
The article reports:
The Biden administration funded a foreign “reporting tour” last year, sponsoring several overseas journalists who cover climate change, internal State Department emails showed.
In March 2021, high-ranking State Department officials discussed a proposal to sponsor foreign journalists to “have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change,” according to the emails obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital. In the email exchange, officials from Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry’s office and the Office of Global Change (EGC) praised the program as a “fantastic” and “great” idea.
“Jean Foschetti at the FPC mentioned this to me about a week ago,” a State Department official whose name was redacted wrote in an email on March 23, 2021. “Sounds like a great reporting tour idea; basically, the FPC will sponsor multiple foreign reporters to have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change. Can EGC and SPEC take a look and clear?”
“Thanks for sharing … I think this sounds like a fantastic FPC (virtual) reporting tour and I’m looking forward to the stories that will come out of this,” a second redacted official responded one day later.
The article continues:
The FPC reporting tour — titled “Combating the Climate Crisis Through U.S. Innovation” — ultimately took place during a two-week stretch in May 2021. The event was designed to “promote the Administration’s goal of prioritizing the fight against climate change through global efforts to reduce emissions,” according to the State Department.
“The FPC … offered this virtual program to enable journalists to remotely develop their reporting about the United States’ renewed approach to addressing the climate crisis and its innovation and research, particularly in the areas of reducing emissions and renewable energy,” the State Department states on its website.
While the State Department quietly announced the program in 2021, though, it failed to mention that it would be funded by U.S. taxpayer money or that the foreign reporters would be “sponsored.” It is unclear which reporters and outlets were sponsored by the State Department program.
The tour came as the Biden administration was moving forward with its aggressive green energy and climate push.
Evidently Twitter was not the only government-funded propaganda campaign. We need to put a stop to all green energy programs until we make sure that our current energy infrastructure can meet the growing energy needs of Americans. It should be pointed out that the unregulated flow of immigrants into America will also increase the energy needs of America. Windmills, solar panels, and electric cars are at the mercy of the weather–does the sun shine, is it too cold for windmills to turn, and how far will your electric car travel in zero degree weather? They may play a role, but they should not be major players until the technology is greatly improved.
It’s Time For Parents To Stand Up
On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Virginia democrats on the state legislature’s rules commission voted 5-4 on Monday to reject Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R.) plan to protect same-sex spaces and increase parents’ role in education.
The article reports:
If the plan is adopted, administrators and teachers would have to seek parents’ consent before referring to children by different names or pronouns. The plan would also preserve sex-specific sports teams, locker rooms, and bathrooms.
That sounds like common sense to me–parents need to know if their children are asking to be addressed by different names or pronouns. I also would like to keep teenage boys out of girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms.
The article continues:
The vote is the latest attempt by Virginia Democrats to block Youngkin’s transgender policies. Delegate Elizabeth Guzmán (D.) in October floated a bill designed to counter the governor’s policies, which would make it a crime for parents to ignore their children’s chosen name, pronouns, or sexual orientation. School districts in liberal enclaves across the state have pledged to flout Youngkin’s plan if implemented.
A spokeswoman for Youngkin said the governor did not support the commission’s decision.
The commission’s vote was largely formal. The model policy, which was introduced in September, will be finalized by Virginia’s Department of Education and does not require legislative approval. The policy improves upon guidelines put in place last year by disgraced former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.), which mandated that schools abide by names, pronouns, and bathroom choices that correspond with a student’s perceived gender.
The article concludes:
Harry Jackson, a parent of Fairfax County students who submitted a public comment, told the Free Beacon that it has been “terrifying to see the politicalization of the K-12 education in Virginia.”
“Parents do not know they are in custody battle with these activists,” he said.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a mother of three from Fairfax County who spoke during the public comment period, said that “a tyrannical minority has taken transgender policy so far that it is threatening freedom and parental rights.”
“Not only are parents’ rights to raise their children formally being dismantled, but many Virginians are afraid to even discuss it,” she told the commission. “We need to reset the scales, and I believe Governor Youngkin’s Model Policies will help us to do that.”
Youngkin was elected in 2021 after campaigning to defend parents’ rights in education. After taking office, he signed nine day-one executive orders to ban critical race theory from classrooms and investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County schools, among other measures.