Monthly Archives: July 2023

Follow The Science

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On Thursday, LifeSite posted an article about some recent statements by Dr. John Clauser, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

The article reports:

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist has criticized alarmist climate predictions and said that he does not believe that there is a “climate crisis.”

During his speech at the “Quantum Korea 2023” event, Dr. John Clauser said, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis,” according to a report by Seoul Economic Daily that has been translated into English by the CO2 Coalition. 

The article continues:

Clauser added that “key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times” and accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of spreading misinformation. 

In his keynote speech addressed to young Korean scientists and students, Clauser said that “Misinformation is being spread by those with political and opportunistic motives.” 

The article concludes:

“There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.” 

The renowned physicist has criticized President Joe Biden’s climate policies and the fact that the 2021 Nobel Prize was awarded for work done on computer models predicting “climate change.” Clauser has criticized the faulty models used by the IPCC and others that he stresses ignore important factors. 

Clauser has developed climate models that emphasize the impact of cumulus clouds reflecting sunlight, which cover around half of the Earth on average. These clouds reflect around 90% of the sunlight back into space. Sunlight that reaches the earth in areas without clouds evaporates seawater which, in turn, produces cumulus clouds. 

“It produces clouds at an increasingly abundant rate when the cloud-cover fraction is too small and the temperature is too high and vice versa when the fraction is too large,” according to the CO2 Coalition. 

These clouds, therefore, act as “a very powerful input-power thermostat” that stabilizes the earth’s surface temperature. 

Temperature changes caused by the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are “nearly two orders of magnitude smaller” than the impact of the cumulus clouds, rendering it negligible by comparison, Clauser argues. 

On March 30, 2016, I posted an article which included the following quoted from an article in Investor’s Business Daily:

If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

Any questions?

Climate Hoax III

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

In one of my recent articles on this topic, I mentioned that the environmental extremists (Greenies) believe the earth has an “ideal” or “normal” temperature and that deviations are not only dangerous but are being caused by the actions of man. Let’s examine the actual facts about climate temperature.

According to the University of Utah Geological group, there have been at least five detectable ice ages (an accompanying warm periods) over the last 2.5 billion years. The last one occurred over 20,000 years ago and we have been in a warming period ever since. At the peak of the last ice age, the ice over New York City is estimated to have been two miles thick. The global cooling during these ice age cycles was up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder than today’s average temperature. During the interim warming periods the global temperature was up to 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. I suppose the cavemen were burning too much fossil fuels. So much for the idea that the earth has a fixed ideal temperature.

The existence of these cooling and warming periods was determined by core samples from the Antarctic ice cap and the ocean floor. Were man-made CO2 emissions the cause of these climate changes? No way Jose. Rather, it is hypothesized that these dramatic temperature changes were caused by natural processes such as (1) continental drift, (2) changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun, or (3) a tilting of the earth’s orientation from the vertical, or other unknown factors.

A more recent major global temperature change took place between 1300 and 1850 AD when the average global temperature dropped by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit particularly in Europe and North America. This resulted in crop failures and many deaths due to the extreme cold. Note that the Vikings discovered and colonized Greenland about 1000 AD and were able to grow crops and raise animals where now there are glaciers. There was a reason they called it “Greenland”! Note that these temperature changes occurred well before the Industrial Age and consequently before any significant burning of fossil fuels.

It should be obvious to any rational person (this necessarily excludes Greenies) that there are forces controlling earth’s climate that are outside the control of mankind. Of course, if you dislike modern civilization then it is easy to blame all the bad things on mankind. Just an example of how these people think, I was recently reviewing a website for a so-called heritage farm showing how people lived in the early 1800s. Pictures showed plowing and harvesting by mule power, water drawn by hand from wells and streams, and food cooked over wood fires. One of the reviewers made the statement: … “this is how God wants us to live”. Of course, the person making this absurd comment is living with all the modern conveniences that our advanced civilization provides. This person has no actual idea of the difficulties of life in the 1800’s. Probably never did any exhaustive physical labor or had to worry about where the next meal was coming form.

The solution to the irrational thinking of the Greenies would be to place them on an island where they would have to actually live with primitive nature. They would change their tune soon enough.

The unfortunate part of all this, is that some of our elected representatives are going along with these extremists and thereby contributing to the destruction of our modern civilization.

 

Busted!

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On Thursday, Red State posted an article about one of the latest lies that Christopher Wray’s FBI has been caught telling.

The article reports:

I love “Community Notes,” Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking and context-adding feature that has repeatedly busted politicians in their false or misleading claims. On Thursday, they were at it again, nailing FBI Director Chris Wray, whose agency tweeted Thursday that “The FBI is not and has never been in the business of policing or investigating speech by parents at school board meetings…”

Community Notes begs to differ, and they added a little “context” to Wray’s claim:

The FBI’s statement is misleading. On May 18, 2023, former FBI agent Steve Friend testified before the House Judiciary Committee that he and others were directed to surveil and document parents attending school board meetings.

But Notes isn’t just making wild claims—they helpfully provide a link to a C-SPAN video showing suspended FBI agent Steve Friend testifying in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in May. During his testimony, he said that the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force did indeed conduct surveillance of school boards. On Thursday, he flat-out called Wray a liar:

The article concludes:

The various House committees are slowly, in drip-drip fashion, revealing just how politicized this DOJ is, and it’s nice to see them get a little assist from Community Notes.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It shows how whistleblowers are being mistreated by the FBI and illustrates how badly our justice system has been perverted by the Biden administration.

 

The Words Change When Necessary

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Americans have no idea who Ray Epps was working for and probably will never know. The FBI and the DOJ have denied that he was working for them, but there are a number of other government (deep state) agencies that could have hired him. Evidently whatever agency that is no longer has his back. He is actually being faced with consequences for his actions on January 6th.

On Thursday, PJ Media posted the following headline:

And Just Like That, It’s No Longer an Insurrection

The article reports:

And just like that, the January 6 insurrection is no more. And the deconstruction story is really something. At the center of this narrative switcheroo is non-other than Ray Epps.

Before we get to that, let’s remember how we got here. It took only moments for the Democrat media complex to anoint the January 6 breach and riot at the U.S. Capitol Building an “insurrection.” As if beckoned by an unseen force, narrative builders dutifully lined up to receive the official wafer on their tongues, and voilà! “Trump supporters” who had never committed an act of violence at years of peaceful and crowded rallies were eligible for a 20-year prison stretch.

Shortly thereafter, the insurrection became a deadly insurrection when the same media reported, wrongly, that police officers were killed by rioters on January 6.

…Epps was vetted by the J6 Committee and declared not to be a federal agent. Epps claims he has been so damaged by the speculation in the media that he’s suing Fox News and Tucker Carlson for defamation for reporting on him. That dog won’t — or shouldn’t — hunt, but Epps and his attorneys see deep pockets and a future payday from a settlement, seeing as how Fox was willing to settle a case brought by Dominion Voting Systems.

Incredibly, the mainstream media have picked Epps as their pet protester, writing fawning treatments of this misunderstood man. For some reason, Epps is the only Trump supporter and J6 attendee that they’re willing to support. It’s unclear why.

…But with news of Epps’ lawsuits and the possibility that he really may face J6 charges, a story which, oddly, only surfaced with news of the lawsuit, the media have done an about-face on their pet protester and now refer to January 6 as “demonstrations,” “protests,” and Epps as a “protester,” “scapegoat,” and any notions that he could be a “Fed! Fed! Fed!” are dismissed as a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”

Epps’ attorney is a former Perkins Coie lawfare lawyer who now hangs a shingle in Wilmington, Del. He was one of the attorneys who brought the lawsuit against Fox News for “defaming” Dominion Voting Systems.

Follow the link to the story for further details. Isn’t it an incredible coincidence that Epps’ attorney formerly worked for Perkins Coie, the law firm that was wrapped up in the Russia Hoax, and now works in Wilmington, Delaware?

One Vote Makes A Difference

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On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the importance of one vote.

The article reports:

A new database created by the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that one single vote has altered the outcome of hundreds of elections.

First, the fraud.

The Heritage Foundation has a unique Election  Fraud Database that provides a sampling of proven election crimes from across the country. So far, the Heritage database has found over 1,400 cases of proven election fraud , and new cases are constantly being added. You can search by state or type of election crime.

The documented cases include people voting for a deceased relative, voting in multiple states in the same election, casting fraudulent absentee ballots, and even foreign nationals casting ballots. There are many ways a person can engage in wrongdoing in connection with an election, hoping to affect its outcome. If you spend time perusing the data, it’s hard to argue credibly that fraud hasn’t had a role in American political history.

Remember, the Heritage database only includes cases that went to completed adjudication, such as a criminal conviction or finding of civil liability. It doesn’t document instances of fraud that were never reported by election officials to law enforcement or that were never pursued by prosecutors.

Part of the problem is that too many prosecutors don’t want to prosecute election fraud . There are numerous reasons why.

We saw this when we both worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice . With few exceptions, the attorneys we worked with were openly hostile toward prosecuting election fraud. Even raising the issue of election crimes was considered controversial and evidence of “discriminatory” conduct, because they falsely claimed any such prosecution is “voter suppression.” After all, The New York Times tells its loyal readers in the civil service that election fraud is a myth. Biased advocacy organizations that our colleagues admired, such as the Brennan Center, also told them that voter fraud  is a myth .

The article concludes:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation ’s Tied Election Database catalogs 589 elections that have ended in ties in the U.S. The vast majority of these elections were within the last 20 years, although this is by no means a complete or comprehensive list. This database just scratches the surface.

These tied elections illustrate that one vote, legal or illegal, can determine the winner of a race.

No one wants an illegal vote to stop the true will of the people from being heard on Election Day. We should all care whenever an election crime happens. It dilutes every single legal vote. And sometimes it can determine the winner of an election.

One illegal vote cast is too many. States must get serious about prosecuting election crimes. Otherwise, there is no deterrence to stop people from committing them.

This is a solvable problem. All we need is elected officials with the will to solve it.

Climate Hoax II

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

In a previous article, I detailed some of the motivation behind the environmental extremists (Greenies) belief that mankind is facing an environmental catastrophe if we continue to use fossil fuels.

The factor the Greenies use to justify their position is CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Let’s take a look at whether CO2 levels are the threat they allege.

First of all, CO2 represents an extremely small percentage of the atmosphere at only .04%. Yet, somehow, the Greenies believe that any increase will be catastrophic and we must achieve carbon neutrality or we are doomed. They do this by alleging a so-called “greenhouse effect” caused by CO2 resulting in excessive warming of the earth. The reality of this pure speculation is that even in laboratory studies, the amount of warming from increasing CO2 levels diminishes as the concentration of CO2 is increased. Assuming this holds true in the real work, increasing CCO2 is not the existential threat the Greenies would have you believe.

Another major factor they do not report is that CO2 itself acts as a plant fertilizer. Meaning that, the greater the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere the faster plants grow thereby removing CO2. This balancing effect may account for evidence that plant life is expanding across the earth. In fact, studies have shown that increasing the CO2 pumped into an enclosed greenhouse greatly accelerates plant growth!

It is important to remember that all the predictions of catastrophic global warming are based on computer modeling–not actual real life observations. Some of the computer model predictions were made over thirty years ago. Let’s see how well the predictions have held up. Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama, summarized graphically how accurate CO2 climate models were able to predict actual global temperature. He found that all of the computer models over-predicted the actual global temperature change; some by extreme amounts. Do you every hear these facts reported in the media? Of course all we hear is a steady diet of fear mongering by the likes of John Kerry about how we have only a few years to achieve carbon emission neutrality or we are all going to die. He makes these statements, of course, as he is jetting around the work in his private plane! Good for me, not for thee.

What is shocking is how many government leaders are buying into this nonsense. Ireland, for example, is considering killing 200,000 cows because they give off too much CO2. Since humans also exhale CO2, perhaps we will be next.

As we are finding out with many government agencies, the truth is increasingly withheld from the public. If you question the government’s propaganda you are labelled a “climate denier”. What we need is more transparency about the truth. If we do not get it, we will indeed be living in the work in George Orwell’s novel “1984” and destroying our civilization.

 

The Government Is Messing With Our Food

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the push by state legislatures to allow companies to inject beef cattle with mRNA vaccines to protect against disease.

The article reports:

Jason Nelson, president and CEO of Whole Cows based in Waco, Texas, makes no beef about there being a global war against the cattle industry.

“I would say there is a war not only against beef, there is a war against Americans being healthy,” he said.

As a physically disabled and highly decorated combat veteran who served in two branches of the U.S. military, Mr. Nelson sees the war is being waged by globalists in the name of fighting climate change.

He said the goal of getting people to eat lab-grown beef and insects instead of red meat to reduce the carbon footprint is no longer within the realm of conspiracy theory.

These products are in your supermarket, Mr. Nelson said.

…At least five states have filed legislation opposed to mRNA in livestock and other consumer products.

The article notes:

In the military, Mr. Nelson said his job in special operations was analyzing big problems, connecting the dots, and identifying trends.

He sees a contracting global food supply only getting worse as the war against carbon shuts down farms and food producers across the planet.

Ireland’s government, for example, announced it may need to cull the nation’s cattle supply by 200,000 cows to meet climate goals.

“Ask the farmers in the Netherlands [where the government is shutting down farms] if it’s a conspiracy. Ask the farmers who’ve had their land bought by China or Bill Gates here,” Mr. Nelson said.

“It does not take much to cripple the food chain. Beef is, in my opinion, an icon. It provides everything from milk and cheese to leather goods to beef and everything else. If you want to talk about a mascot for food, the cow is it.”

Unless Americans elect people who will use common sense in balancing the needs of Americans and the ecology of the planet, we will see unnecessary, mandated, drastic changes in our diets in the near future.

Who Is Gal Luft?

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One of the witnesses against the Biden corruption family is a man named Gal Luft. On Monday, The New York Post posted an article about him and his claims.

This is a video of Gal Luft proclaiming his innocence. I have embedded it in case YouTube takes it down. It is long, but worth watching.

The New York Post reports:

Dr. Gal Luft, a key figure in House Republicans’ investigation of the Biden family’s international influence-peddling, faces federal charges of arms trafficking, operating as an unregistered lobbyist for China, and conspiring to flout US sanctions on Iran, according to a Manhattan indictment unsealed Monday.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say Luft, 57, a dual US-Israeli citizen who was arrested in Cyprus this past February and went on the run after being released on bail prior to his extradition, agreed in 2015 to let former Hong Kong official Patrick Ho send $350,000 each year to Luft’s think tank, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

In return, the indictment said, Luft agreed to “recruit and ‘educate’” a former high-ranking US official to “make public statements … which were in the interest of China.”

The official is not named in the indictment, but details about his work correspond to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who briefly worked for former President Donald Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election.

Ho similarly is not named in the indictment, but details in the court document match up to incidents in Ho’s life — most notably his arrest by US officials in November 2017 on bribery and money-laundering charges.

The article also notes:

Luft is further charged with lying about both those activities during the Brussels meeting with federal investigators.

“I was asked by a bona fide arms dealer, an Israeli friend, to inquire with a company I knew if they had an item and what would be the price of an item,” Luft told The Post last week. “This is where the conspiracy ended. No follow-up, no money, no brokering activity.”

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who was preparing to interview Luft when he disappeared, has said the Israeli remains a “potential witness” in the panel’s investigation despite his fugitive status.

“We definitely want to hear more about his allegations and we want to see the notes from the [Brussels] meeting,” Comer told Fox News Monday night. “They sent six FBI [and DOJ officials], according to Gal Luft, to Brussels to interview him. Obviously they were concerned about something he had to say. There’s some level of credibility here.”

Because the Department of Justice has been so totally compromised in recent years, I have no idea who to believe. However, it does seem strange that an important witness to the Biden family corruption is suddenly charged with serious crimes.

Merit-based Promotions?

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On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about the Republican-controlled House’s version of 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The bill has a number of provisions that the Biden administration opposes.

The article reports:

“The Administration strongly opposes the House’s sweeping attempts…to eliminate the Department’s longstanding [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Access] efforts and related initiatives to promote a cohesive and inclusive force,” the Biden administration said in a Statement of Administration Policy.

It seems to me that promotions based on merit promote a more cohesive and inclusive force. If people understand that they will be rewarded for their hard work, they are inclined to work harder. If someone knows that they will not get a promotion because they are the wrong color or the wrong sexual orientation, their attitude will reflect that knowledge.

The article continues:

The Biden administration specifically said it opposed Section 364, which would prohibit the defense secretary from appointing or employing a military or civilian employee whose duties include diversity, equity, and inclusion with a rank or grade above O-2 (military) or GS-10 (civilian).

It also said it opposed Section 523, which required the Department of Defense to issue policy that all military accessions, assignments, selections, or promotions must adhere to merit-based principles and that quotas are prohibited.

Those particular provisions were authored by Navy veteran and Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN), who told Breitbart News in a statement:

It’s incredibly dangerous that the Biden administration is opposed to merit based promotions. When our service members are in life or death situations, we need the best leaders, period.

The Biden administration also said in its statement that it opposed two other of Banks’ provisions, Sections 525 and 526.

Section 525 would prohibit punishment of service members based solely on refusal to receive COVID-19 vaccines and authorizes the reinstatement of individuals discharged for vaccine refusal.

Section 526 directs the military services’ Boards of Correction to prioritize requests to review the narrative reasons of discharge and re-entry codes of veterans for service members discharged for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Please follow the link and read the rest of the article. Actually, I think the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act sounds pretty good.

As Expected

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On Tuesday, Just the News reported that the Secret Service has refused to honor a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records regarding the cocaine found in the White House.

The article reports:

The U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday declined to honor a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for communications related to its investigation of the cocaine found at the White House, saying that to release those materials would compromise the investigation.

Bloomberg investigative reporter Jason Leopold posted the response from the Secret Service to his request, in which the agency stated that “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

The rest of the letter outlined Leopold’s options to challenge that determination but offered no other explanation for the agency’s refusal.

…The White House has largely declined to address the matter in public, prompting further scrutiny and indeed speculation that the culprit may have been someone of importance. The Secret Service has not publicly identified any suspects as of press time.

There are security cameras all through the White House. There is Secret Service personnel in various locations. The investigation should have been completed in a matter of hours. If you honestly believe at this point that no one has any idea who the cocaine belongs to, you are incredibly naive. Someone is being protected. I have no idea who is being protected, but someone is. The administration that claimed it would be ‘the most transparent administration’ in history is covering something up.

Moving Toward Election Integrity

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On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about H.R.4494, introduced by Republicans to promote election integrity, voter confidence, and faith in elections by removing Federal impediments to, providing State tools for, and establishing voluntary considerations to support effective State administration of Federal elections and improving election administration in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes.

The article reports:

The 224-page package contains nearly 50 standalone bills. It would, in part, give state and local elections officials access to the Social Security death list to help them glean the names of the deceased from voter rolls.

…The legislation would incentivize states enact election security measures similar to Georgia’s – require voter ID, conduct post-election audits and enact other checks on voter eligibility. If they did so, they could be eligible for more election funding through federally funded HAVA Election Security grants.

Under the package Congress would take the reins on Washington, D.C.’s election administration – requiring the city to ask for voter ID and banning non-citizens from voting.

…Since the 2020 election, Georgia, Iowa, Florida and Texas have enacted new election security measures like limiting drop boxes and tightening voter ID requirements, while California, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington have rolled back certain voting requirements. 

The Georgia law standardized voting hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It required two Saturdays of early voting instead of one and made two Sundays optional for early voting. It continued to allow absentee voting without offering a reason but requires a state-issued ID to request a ballot. The bill also banned political groups from handing out water and food to voters waiting in line at the polls and shortens runoff elections from 9 weeks to 4 weeks.

It  also limited ballot drop boxes, requiring them to be placed at early voting locations and only available while the precinct is open. 

After that law was enacted about 56.9 percent of registered voters showed up to vote in the 2022 midterm election – roughly the same percentage as four years earlier in the last midterm election. More people than ever cast ballots overall but the percentage stayed the same due to population growth. 

It is time to clean up our voter rolls and to make sure that the person casting their ballot is who they say they are. That is simply common sense. Unfortunately, there is no way this bill will pass either the Senate or be signed by the President.

Protecting Our Children

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On Tuesday, Townhall reported the following:

On Saturday, a federal appeals panel said a Tennessee law restricting irreversible, experimental transgender care for children could be enforced. 

The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio granted an emergency appeal from Tennessee to allow the legislation to go into effect. Previously, a judge struck blocked components of the law, which Townhall covered.

“The case is far from over, but this is a big win,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “The court of appeals lifted the injunction, meaning the law can be fully enforced, and recognized that Tennessee is likely to win the constitutional argument and the case.”

Reportedly, the ruling is preliminary and will be in effect until the appeals court conducts a full review of the appeal. The case should be resolved by Sept. 30.

Gender reassignment therapy is a money-maker for the medical industry. A person who changes their gender as a young person will be on medication for the rest of their life to maintain that change. There will also be medical complications from that change.

In June 2015, PBS reported:

The physical changes that hormones bring about are irreversible, making the decision more weighty than taking puberty blockers. Some of the known side effects of hormones include things that might sound familiar: acne and changes in mood. Patients are also warned that they may be at higher risk for heart disease or diabetes later in life. The risk of blood clots increases for those who start estrogen. And the risk for cancer is an unknown, but it is included in the warnings doctors give their patients.

Another potential dilemma facing transgender children, their families and their doctors is this: Taking cross hormones can reduce fertility. And there isn’t enough research to find out of it is reversible or not. So when children make the decision to start taking hormones, they have to consider whether they ever want to have biological children.

These are not decisions young teenagers are equipped to make. The drugs and medical procedures need to be postponed until a person is mature enough to comprehend the risks of what they are doing.

Misusing The Office Of The Presidency

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article detailing how the Obama administration used secret information to undermine the incoming Trump administration.

The article reports:

Heavily redacted documents from the National Security Agency tell at least part of the story of a final-month rush by the outgoing Obama administration to torpedo the incoming presidency of Donald Trump. 

The Daily Signal obtained 217 pages of documents from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents reveal that Obama administration officials, from Vice President Joe Biden down to several ambassadors and many officials in the Treasury and Energy departments, gained access to secret information about Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Trump’s choice for national security adviser.

The article includes screen captures of many of the documents.

The article continues:

In May 2020, then-acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell declassified information and provided Congress with a list of names involved in the Obama administration’s “unmasking” of Flynn, Trump’s original pick for national security adviser, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years under Obama.

Senate Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin released the list of Obama admnistration officials. 

“Unmasking” is the practice of disclosing to political appointees the identities of U.S. citizens referenced or recorded in intelligence surveillance of foreign nationals. Names of citizens typically are redacted, or obscured, from such reports, unless a specific request is made to “unmask” those citizens. 

NSA emails about most such requests from Obama officials regarding Flynn bear this message: “The identities of the named U.S. persons and organizations is required for full understanding of the intelligence in the report.” 

Several of the NSA documents note Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, including the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The amendment to the Constitution also requires warrants “upon probable cause.”

The Obama administration and the Biden administration have consistently ignored the Constitution. Rarely have the other two branches of government pushed back. Some recent decisions by the Supreme Court have undone some unconstitutional laws, but we need the Republicans in Congress to stand up for our Constitution.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

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“Loose Lips Sink Ships” was a popular phrase during World War II. If you are a fan of Tom Clancy novels, he often illustrated how a casual remark by someone could be very helpful to a foreign agent seeking information. In one example, a foreign agent wooing a secretary to a high official wanted to plan a getaway with the secretary of that official during the time her boss was away so that she would have time off. Thus he was able to figure out the travel schedule of her boss and set up an ambush. Anyone who works for the government and deals with sensitive information needs to be careful what they say. Unfortunately, President Biden evidently has not figured that out.

On Sunday, The Daily Wire reported:

President Joe Biden faced backlash on Sunday after he revealed sensitive U.S. military information during an interview that critics said could make America’s adversaries more aggressive.

Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that the reason that he is giving cluster munitions to Ukraine is because the U.S. is running out of 155mm artillery shells.

…“The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” Biden responded. “The ammunition, that they used to call them 155-millimeter weapons. This is a war relating to munitions, and they are running out of that ammunition and we’re low on it. And so what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to, not permanently, but to allow for in this transition period where we have more 155 weapons, these shells for the Ukrainians, to provide them with something that has a very low dud rate. It’s about — I think it’s 150, which is the least likely to be blowing.

Why not work toward peace instead?

Peace Would Be Better Than Escalation

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It is unfortunate that we keep throwing money and arms into an endless war that is doing nothing but kill large numbers of people on both sides. It is unfortunate that no one seems to be interested in finding a peaceful solution.

On Saturday, The Daily Caller reported:

Political leaders from Spain and the United Kingdom voiced their disagreement Saturday with President Joe Biden’s change of heart over providing widely-banned cluster munitions to Ukrainian forces, according to Politico.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Spain’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles each voiced their disagreement with the Biden administration’s decision to provide cluster munitions to Ukrainian forces in Saturday remarks to reporters, according to Politico. Biden’s decision to send the munitions marks the latest reversal of U.S. policy to send weapons to the Ukrainians that had previously been deemed too sensitive.

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated the administration’s view that Russia’s use of cluster munitions in the war “would potentially be a war crime” in February 2022. Biden said that the choice to change his mind and send cluster munitions to the Ukrainians was “a difficult decision” in a Friday interview with CNN.

The article notes:

“Spain, based on the firm commitment it has with Ukraine, also has a firm commitment that certain weapons and bombs cannot be delivered under any circumstances,” Robles said Saturday, according to Reuters. “No to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defense of Ukraine, which we understand should not be carried out with cluster bombs.”

The munitions are banned by numerous other U.S. allies, including Germany, France, Japan and Australia, because the submunitions they contain often do not detonate right away, leaving the dangerous duds on the ground and posing high casualty risk to civilians, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition’s website.

On July 8, CNN reported:

Cluster munitions scatter “bomblets” across large areas that can fail to explode on impact and can pose a long-term risk to anyone who encounters them, similar to landmines. Over 100 countries, including the UK, France and Germany, have outlawed the munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but the US and Ukraine are not signatories to the ban.

I can’t help believe that this is a decision that America will regret in the future.

 

 

I Thought Hostile Work Environments Were A Problem

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On Monday, Hot Air quoted an Axios article about what it is like to work for President  Biden.

Axios notes:

Zoom out: Biden’s temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums.

He’ll grill aides on topics until it’s clear they don’t know the answer to a question — a routine that some see as meticulous and others call “stump the chump” or “stump the dummy.”

Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.

Hot Air notes:

[Yeah, and if he hits you, it means he *really* loves you. Axios tries mightily to normalize this behavior, but it’s disturbing, especially for someone Biden’s age. He’s always been needlessly combative; one clip from the 1987 campaign showed him challenging a critic to a fight, and he did something similar in the last presidential campaign with an auto worker defending the 2nd Amendment. His natural pugilism is the kind of overcompensation one usually sees from stuffed suits, but this sounds as though it’s being compounded by Biden’s cognition issues. And if a Republican president exhibited this kind of behavior, Axios and other media outlets wouldn’t hesitate to point that out. Beege will have more on this later today. — Ed]

Angry outbursts are part of the disease of dementia, but of course no one is willing to talk about President Biden’s not being able to find his way off a speaking platform or making odd remarks during speeches. It doesn’t sound as if working in the White House is very much fun right now. Evidently the civility that Joe Biden claimed he would bring back to America does not extend to his own staff in the White House.

A Subtle Difference That Matters

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On July 6th, The Epoch Times reported that the Supreme Court ruled that Aaron and Melissa Klein, who operate Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a bakery specializing in custom-designed cakes, did not have to make cakes to celebrate same-sex weddings. The Kleins said that being forced to make a cake for same-sex weddings violated their religious beliefs. There is something important that needs to be noted here. The Kleins did not say that they wouldn’t bake a cake for a homosexual couple–they simply said that they would not bake a wedding cake. Is a business allowed to determined what type of service it will provide? If a printing company is asked to print an image they consider pornographic or sexually inappropriate, are they required to print it? This is a civil rights case, but it is also a case about whether or not a business owner has the right to choose what services he will provide–not to whom he will provide services, but what services he will provide. I think that is an important distinction.

The article reports:

The Supreme Court ruled on June 30 in favor of Christian bakers who said Oregon’s law requiring them to make cakes to celebrate same-sex weddings infringed on their constitutional rights.

The decision came hours after the nation’s highest court issued a landmark 6–3 ruling in favor of Christian website designer Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, who said a Colorado law that punished her for refusing to create websites for same-sex weddings violated her First Amendment rights.

“The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to speak freely and live according to their sincere religious beliefs,” said the bakers’ attorney, Trent McCotter of Boyden Gray and Associates in Washington.

“As the Supreme Court has recognized, carefully guarding these rights is all the more important when the beliefs expressed are controversial,” he said in a statement.

Left-wing activists have been targeting bakers for years for political purposes, asking Christian confectioners opposed to same-sex marriage to bake wedding cakes for gay marriage celebrations.

When the bakers refuse to make the cakes, these activists sue under anti-discrimination laws in hopes of securing favorable legal precedents.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It explains how some organizations are trying to use the courts to limit the religious freedom of Christians. Note that Muslim bakeries don’t seem to be targeted.

 

 

Forgetting The Value Of Life

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One of the never-mentioned side effects of abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy is that it implies that the life of the child has no value. Because that life has no value, it is assumed that it is okay to dispose of that life. Recently I posted an article illustrating how that idea has taken hold in the Netherlands where the government is allowing citizens who are mentally handicapped to be euthanized. That is a slippery slope that Canada has not embarked on. When you walk away from the principle that all human life is valued by God, bad things happen.

On Sunday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

Army veteran Kelsi Sheren was a fresh-faced 19-year-old when she first set foot on the combat field in Afghanistan. It proved to be a life-altering experience. 

…The experience, she says, ‘broke part of my brain’. It took witnessing that horrific death ‘for the reality of what we were doing to hit’. She was plagued by the memory of scrubbing her comrade’s remains off her hands – all the while ducking heavy fire. 

Once home, she turned to therapy – and realized she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Sheren made it her mission to help other veterans and has been an outspoken critic of the Canadian government’s relaxed attitude to euthanasia – including its push to make it available to veterans plagued by PTSD.

‘It’s disgusting and it’s unacceptable,’ she said, arguing that authorities would rather euthanize a soldier than foot the bill for their recovery.

Canada has the world’s most permissive assisted suicide program. The country is on track to record some 13,500 state-sanctioned suicides in 2022, a 34 percent rise on the 10,064 in 2021, according to Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s analysis of official data. 

Canada’s politicians are currently weighing whether to expand access to include children and the mentally ill. 

The article concludes:

Euthanasia, a lethal injection administered by a doctor, is legal in seven countries — Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain — plus several states in Australia. 

Other jurisdictions, including a growing number of US states, allow doctor-assisted suicide — where patients take the drug themselves, typically crushing up and drinking a lethal dose of pills prescribed by a physician.

The numbers of people opting for assisted suicides has risen steadily in the countries where it’s allowed. 

The Netherlands in 2002 became the world’s first country to allow doctors to kill patients, at their request, if strict conditions were met. 

Nearly 60,000 opted for the procedure between 2012 and 2021, official figures show

These numbers do not represent progress for the human race–they represent people who believe they can play God by determining who lives and who dies and when people die. This is not a step in a good direction.

Climate Hoax I

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Make no mistake about it, we are in a struggle against the environmental extremists (Greenies) to save our way of life. Since the leftist Biden regime has taken over, the Greenies have had their way. The frustrating aspect has been the number of elected officials who are going along with these destructive policies, regulations, and spending on green energy projects. Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis and other Rinos are voting for the destruction of our country. Why? Because no modern civilization can possibly exist without inexpensive and abundant energy that currently is only available from fossil fuels.

Do these elected officials actually believe the propaganda from the Greenies about the catastrophic impact of the continued use of fossil fuels, or are there other reasons that explain why they are going along? The intent of this article is to provide information about the climate that refutes the Greenies positions and predictions. All of us should accept the responsibility to be informed about the actual facts about climate so we can be sure of our beliefs, and also, importantly, be in a strong position to debate others who have been indoctrinated about the climate hoax.

The entire foundation of the climate hoax, rests on the assumption that there is a “normal” or “ideal” temperature of the earth. Similar to the actual fact that mammals have a normal temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If the assumption of a normal earth temperature is incorrect, then the whole basis of the Greenies argument collapses. Let’s take a look at this.

Attempts to “take the temperature” of the earth have only be occurring for the past fifty years or so. It is done by direct measurement from land locations, ships at sea, buoys, and recently, satellites. No one knows precisely what the temperature of the earth was 100 years ago much less thousands of years ago. The measurement of temperature at land locations frequently differ from other data by significant amounts. Which are to be believed?

Another fact that impacts temperature measurements is urban vs rural areas. Cities are notorious for holding the heat of the sun. Buildings, streets, parking lots and highways must be adding to the overall temperature of the earth as compared to plants and foliage in rural areas. We never hear this discussed; it is always the fault of fossil fuels.

The Greenies also always assume that the earth getting warmer is a terrible thing. Actually, the earth getting colder would be much more catastrophic for mankind as the so-called Little Ice Age proved in the Middle Ages when millions of people died of starvation and cold temperatures.

There is an old saying, “Follow the money” which needs to be considered in the context of the climate hoax. For example, Governor Cooper issued an executive order that North Carolina achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2035. Recently, it was reported that he and his brother purchased and are building a five-thousand acre solar farm here in North Carolina. Co-incidence? You decide.

More on this topic in future articles. Stay tuned.

Being Too Woke Gets You Into Trouble

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On Friday, MSN reported that Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream suffered significant losses on the stock market after a tweet that called for Americans to return U.S. land to Native Americans.

The article reports:

The fallout of Ben & Jerry’s Fourth of July tweet became evident as soon as the close of the stock market on Thursday, which reflected a loss of almost $1 per share.

Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, had its shares listed at $52.28 at the end of the day on Monday, before the tweet called for the return of U.S. land to Native Americans. By Thursday, when about 30 million Twitter users had read the ice cream company’s claim that “the US was founded on stolen Indigenous land” and opted to boycott the brand, its share price had fallen to $51.31.

But that’s only part of the story.

On Friday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Ben & Jerry’s headquarters is located on land originally controlled by a Native American tribe in Vermont, and the chief of this tribe expressed interest in reclaiming the property on Friday.

Ben & Jerry’s marked Independence Day on Tuesday by tweeting that the U.S. should “commit to returning” land to Native Americans. In response, Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of The Coosuk Abenaki Nation said his tribe would be willing to take back the land currently owned by Ben & Jerry’s, according to Newsweek.

The article at The Daily Caller concludes:

In a statement, Ben & Jerry’s claims that the best place to start returning land to Native Americans  is Mount Rushmore. They call for the United States to return the South Dakota land to the Lakota Sioux.

“From there, in 1927, they watched as their holy mountain, now located on land known as South Dakota, was desecrated and dynamited to honor their colonizers, four white men—two of whom enslaved people and all of whom were hostile to Indigenous people and values,” the statement reads.

Ben & Jerry’s hasn’t yet publicly responded to Steven’s comments.

Ben & Jerry’s did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

This reminds me of NIMBY (Not In My BackYard), only in this case it’s ‘Take someone else’s backyard first!’

Can we give the Native Americans back Manhattan?

Unemployment And The Workforce Participation Rate

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According to USA Today, the unemployment rate for June 2023 was 3.6 percent, down from 3.7 percent in May. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the workforce participation rate remained unchanged at 62.6. The percentage of Americans in the workforce or looking for jobs has not changed since March. That is not an indication of a growing economy.

USA Today reports:

Hiring slowed but remained sturdy in June as U.S. employers added 209,000 jobs despite inflation, high interest rates and nagging recession fears.  

Still, that’s the weakest showing since employers shed jobs in December 2020.

The unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.6%, the Labor Department said Friday. 

Economists had estimated that 225,000 jobs were added last month.

Payroll gains for April and May were revised down by a total of 110,000, depicting somewhat weaker hiring in the spring than believed. The May rise in jobs was downgraded to 306,000 from 339,000.

On Saturday, Breitbart reported:

During an interview on Bloomberg on Friday, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein stated that the increase in the black unemployment rate “was statistically insignificant in June,” but the increase in black unemployment in May was statistically significant.

Co-host Romaine Bostic asked, “Well, what about some demographics? Our International Economics Correspondent Michael McKee pointed this out to me, that, when you look at unemployment rates in terms of demographics here, it went down for white men, it went down for white women, but it went up for blacks, it went up for Hispanics, and it went up for those who only have a high school education or less.”

How many minorities who have a high school education or less are being replaced in the labor force by the illegal aliens coming across our southern border? How many companies are hiring illegal aliens and paying them under the table at a much lower rate than Americans would accept? It is possible that this is part of the reason the minorities and people with a high school education or less are having trouble finding work?

Public Pressure Works!

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On Thursday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about a new book by Mark Levin that is going to be released in September. The book’s title is ‘The Democratic Party Hates America.’

The article reports:

Target has made a stunning reversal after Fox News host Mark Levin called out the retail giant for not carrying his new book ‘The Democratic Party Hates America’ because it ‘may offend certain customers.’

Levin blasted the retail giant on Wednesday saying: ‘Target has informed my publisher, Simon & Schuster, that it will not carry my new book when it is released on September 19.

‘It claims that certain customers might be offended by the title. Imagine that! So, the corporatist leftwing censorship begins. I will discuss this in more detail on this evening’s radio show.’

…Within 24 hours however, Levin’s book was destined for shelves in what appeared to be an overnight U-turn by the retailer. 

‘We’ve been offering this book for pre-sale since mid-June,’ a Target spokesperson said to Fox News. 

‘As we have with Mark Levin’s past books, many of which are currently available for sale at Target, we’ll offer his newest title for sale when it is available on September 19.

The spokesperson said that the company had initially taken issue with the book’s title in which it uses the term ‘hate.’

‘The use of the word ‘hate’ in the title caused our team to reach out to the publisher, but as stated, we are continuing to offer this book for pre-sale now, and it will be available for sale on its release date,’ they added. 

‘We regret any confusion this situation caused.

As Mark Twain reportedly said, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” Mark Levin does not buy ink by the barrel, but he has a pretty substantial radio and television audience. Also, I suspect his comments on censorship echo the feelings of many Americans. The left yells ‘censorship’ when parents try to protect their children from reading trash, yet they are perfectly content with censoring any literature that does not agree with their beliefs. Most Americans easily see through that!