Monthly Archives: January 2025

Looking Through The Lens Of History

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the Senate confirmation hearings. He notes that at the three hearings this week  the Democrats were hoping to stop the nominees, things did not necessarily move in that direction.

The article notes:

But now several of Trump’s most controversial nominees–controversial meaning that the New York Times and The Washington Post really, really hate them–have taken their turn. Today, Robert Kennedy, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard all testified in confirmation hearings. These are the nominees (along with Hegseth) that the Democrats are seriously determined to block, and you could see it in their hysterical, if sometimes hilarious, questioning.

I was able to watch only brief portions of today’s hearings and don’t have an opinion on how, in general, they went, other than the fact that the Democrats were in full howl-at-the-moon mode.

I hope all three nominees are confirmed, although I could go either way on Kennedy. Even here, though, Kennedy came across as I expected. He is walking away from some of his more out-there positions of years ago, and is focused on “making America healthy again.” I think there is room for him to do considerable good as an advocate for more healthy lifestyles.

But I really hope that Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed. From my own (admittedly minimal) experience with her, I have a great deal of respect for Gabbard’s patriotism, her intelligence–she is very, very smart–and her military bearing. And, to be honest, in my dealings with Gabbard I just liked her.

America’s “intelligence community” is sick and throughly politicized. Tulsi is, I think, a great choice to set it straight. I don’t agree with all of her opinions–my view of the Iraq war is more positive than hers, for instance–but I trust her to oversee an objective, competent and non-politicized intelligence operation. Which is what Trump wants, and a huge improvement.

The article notes a bit of history often overlooked:

The Democrats can’t block any of the President’s nominees, so their grandstanding is directed mostly at their own base. I suppose they also hope to persuade four Republicans to vote against Gabbard and the others. That shouldn’t happen. Of this group, the only one who isn’t plainly an excellent choice is the eccentric Robert Kennedy. But Kennedy, too, is President Trump’s choice, and there is a clear rationale for why he might be a very good Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Beginning with the Clinton administration and until this year, I believe there were only two occasions on which any senator of a president’s party voted against any of his Cabinet nominees. That number grew from two to three when three Republicans voted against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Let’s hope that Senate Republicans don’t continue to break with tradition.

If the Republicans are not willing to support their own President’s choices, why should they be considered Republicans? I am willing to support any primary opponent who runs against a Republican who opposes President Trump’s choices.

The Times They Are A’Changing

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On Friday, The Epoch Times reported that Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy will be removing the unreasonable fossil fuel emissions standards put in place by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

In December 2023, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration finalized a rule establishing a method to measure and report transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

The rule required state-level agencies to establish targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles traveling on national highways. These emission targets were intended to become more stringent over time, and agencies were required to report on their progress in meeting them. The rule did not specify how low the targets should be but allowed agencies the discretion to set goals appropriate for their communities.

The rule was set up to “confront the increasingly urgent climate crisis,” according to the executive summary, and was expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This was part of a plan to reach “net-zero emissions by no later than 2050,” according to a 2021 White House fact sheet.

On Jan. 29, Duffy approved a proposal to rescind the rule.

The article concludes:

The action is in line with several executive orders recently issued by President Donald Trump, including the “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” and “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” the department stated.

All DOT offices are required to identify and report, within 10 days, programs and policy statements that are subject to Trump’s relevant executive orders, according to the memo, and revoke nonconforming rules.

Duffy also signed an order to lower costs “through smarter policies, not political ideologies.” Under the order, it must be ensured that all DOT loans and grants are based on “sound economic principles, positive cost-benefit analyses, and pro-economic growth priorities.”

Duffy said these actions are a step toward restoring commonsense governance and merit-based policies at the Transportation Department.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are focused on eliminating excessive regulations that have hindered economic growth, increased costs for American families, and prioritized far-left agendas over practical solutions,” he said.“The American people deserve an efficient, safe, and pro-growth transportation system based on sound decision-making, not political ideologies. These actions will help us deliver on that promise.”

This is definitely a step in the right direction.

Let The Austerity Begin

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On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about some of the spending cuts President Trump is focused on. America has been wasting money on some totally ridiculous things.

The article reports:

Joe Biden‘s use of U.S. taxpayer money to fund transgender operas in Colombia and transgender comic books in Peru will be totally undone by Trump, a top Republican told DailyMail.com. 

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) has a laundry list of Biden-era State Department programs that are on the chopping block now that Trump is in the White House.

After a bombshell report came out this week unveiling how Biden’s State Department doled out $15 million worth of taxpayer funds to buy contraceptives like condoms for the Taliban, DailyMail.com asked Mast what other eye-popping programs exist. 

Joe Biden‘s use of U.S. taxpayer money to fund transgender operas in Colombia and transgender comic books in Peru will be totally undone by Trump, a top Republican told DailyMail.com. 

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) has a laundry list of Biden-era State Department programs that are on the chopping block now that Trump is in the White House.

After a bombshell report came out this week unveiling how Biden’s State Department doled out $15 million worth of taxpayer funds to buy contraceptives like condoms for the Taliban, DailyMail.com asked Mast what other eye-popping programs exist. 

The article concludes:

The $15 million for contraceptives destined for the Taliban was a part of a larger $100 million aid package bound for Afghanistan, the Washington Free Beacon first reported.

The United States Department of International Aid (USAID) used the millions to ‘procure contraceptives,’ like ‘oral contraceptives and condoms,’ according to records of the transaction. 

The Taliban outlawed contraceptives in Afghanistan after taking over the country following the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal from the country. 

Other costly diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives of the State Department have also been scrapped. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent out an internal memo to his staff after being sworn in last week warning against programs that don’t spend money on the department’s core mission.

‘Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,’ his memo stated, adding only initiatives that ‘make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous’ are appropriate.

‘Certain priorities will be replaced, certain issues deemphasized, and some practices we will cease altogether,’ his statement continued. 

Please follow the link to the article for further details. There is no way the American taxpayer should be funding these things.

I Don’t Think That Went The Way The Democrats Wanted It To

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On Wednesday (updated Thursday), The Epoch Times posted an article about the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The article lists five things the Democrats brought up thinking that they could get a gotcha moment. 1. They used quotes taken out of context to claim that he was anti-vaccine. 2. They claimed that he had changed his position on vaccines and abortion in order to gain political power. 3. They criticized him for saying he would support the Trump administration’s position on abortion. Since he will be part of the administration, it makes sense that he should support their views publicly even if he differs privately. 4. After being accused that he would be a ‘rubber stamp for the Trump administration,’ Kennedy explained that his goal was to improve the health of Americans. 5. Kennedy also pledged to change the lack of transparency that was part of the Department of Health and Human Services Department during the Biden administration.

The article concludes:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) requested that 11 letters of support, signed by thousands of physicians, be entered into the record. He also noted that he had written more than 70 oversight letters to federal health agencies under the Biden administration.

He said he has received redacted materials and has “issued a subpoena now to cover the information“ that he ”requested in 70 oversight letters.”

Johnson asked Kennedy if he would honor these requests from Congress and make HHS transparent.

“My approach for HHS, as I said before, senator, is radical transparency,” Kennedy said. “Democrats and Republicans ought to be able to come in and get information that was generated at taxpayer expense that is owned by the American taxpayer. It shouldn’t get redacted documents.

“Public health agencies should be transparent. If we want Americans to restore trust in the public health agencies, we need transparency.”

The Senators opposing this nomination have generally been the ones who have taken large campaign contributions from Big Pharma. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is most definitely a threat to Big Pharma. If America becomes healthy again without pills, how will the drug companies make money?

Running The Government Like A Business

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President Trump has been a successful businessman for years. There have been a few hiccups along the way, but overall, he has done very well. He has the mindset of a businessman–keep costs down, eliminate waste, and make a profit. The federal government is not necessarily supposed to make a profit, but keeping costs down and eliminating waste is a pretty good idea. That’s what the Washington establishment fears.

On January 30th, The Daily Signal posted an article about the firing of the 17 inspectors general. The article points out some of the reasons they were fired.

The article reports:

There is a very strong argument to be made that those inspectors general failed to do their jobs during the past four years. Their failures provide Trump with all of the “due cause” he needs.

Just two examples suffice: their failure to investigate the misbehavior of their departments in attempting to interfere in the 2022 and 2024 federal elections and in using government resources to violate the First Amendment rights of American citizens and censor their opinions and social media accounts.

…In 2021, Joe Biden issued an executive order directing all federal agencies–including every one of the agencies whose inspectors general were fired–to get involved in state election administration. The agencies had to implement “strategic” plans to use agency personnel and resources to persuade and “assist” members of the public who interacted with those agencies to register and vote in federal elections. That included providing access to “vote-by-mail ballot applications,” identification documents, and multilingual voting materials.

…Think about that for a moment. What possible business is it of the Energy or Commerce or Transportation Departments to play a role–any role–in our elections? Zero. Zip. Zilch.  

…Congress never appropriated any funding for any federal agency in the executive branch to engage in voter registration and ballot activities, with only one exception: the Federal Voting Assistance Program office at the Pentagon that helps overseas military personnel and their families.

Yet not a single inspector general investigated any of these illegal activities and illegal spending of taxpayer funds at any of their agencies. Why not? 

The article also cites other examples where the government violated the civil rights of its citizens and the inspectors general sat on their hands. Please follow the link above for further details.

We Know How The Mainstream Media Will Spin This

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On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about one of the first things the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has done.

The article reports:

Disgrace General Mark “White Rage” Milley finally got his long-awaited comeuppance.

Fox News exclusively reported Tuesday evening that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will “immediately” pull retired Gen. Mark Milley’s personal security detail and security clearance.

But the news gets even better: Hegseth will order the new acting Inspector General to conduct a review to ascertain whether evidence exists for Milley to lose a star in retirement due to his deceitful actions “undermining the chain of command” during President Donald Trump’s first term.

Fox News also reports that a second portrait of Milley will be removed inside the Pentagon. This one is from the Army’s Marshall Corridor on the third floor, honoring his service as chief of staff.

As TGP readers know, Milley did several things that arguably meet the definition of treason. First, Milley made two calls to an official in China’s People’s Liberation Army just months before Trump left office, assuring our most formidable adversary that he would give advance warning if the US were ever going to attack the communist nation.

Milley also made headlines for surrendering Afghanistan and arming the Taliban with $85 billion in US military equipment. Before fleeing Afghanistan in a rush in the fall of 2021, Joe Biden armed the Taliban terrorist organization with approximately $80 billion in US weapons.

The White House and Pentagon have never admitted to how many billion dollars worth of weapons they left behind for the Islamist group.

This will probably be reported by the mainstream media as a political move. It is not. Subverting the chain of command in the U.S. military is a serious offense. Calling someone in a country that has an adversarial relationship with America to tell them that you would give them advance warning of any hostilities is treason. President Biden preemptively pardoned the General from any past and future offenses, but I am not sure if that covers the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If it doesn’t, this may not be the end of this story. There is also the matter of the newly appointed Inspector General. As I said, the mainstream media will label this as political, but if America wants a strong military, everyone must be required to follow the same rules.

A New Level Of Insanity

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On Tuesday, The Federal News Network reported the following:

Federal employees have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management, after the agency created and began testing an email system meant to deliver mass communications directly to federal employees’ inboxes.

The lawsuit from two anonymous federal employees in the executive branch alleges OPM violated the 2002 E-Government Act by not releasing details of how the communication system will manage federal employees’ personal information stored in the system.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of the National Security Counselors law firm, filed the pro bono lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, alleging that the email system poses security risks for federal employees’ personal information.

“A one-stop shop for information about every government employee in the federal executive branch is just a treasure trove for hackers, or even just curiosity seekers,” McClanahan said in an interview.

An article at Hot Air posted on Wednesday notes:

What personal information is at risk?

Their email address is hardly a state secret. It’s not like the president will be asking for their social security number and putting it in a database.

You can see the real reason that these people are suing–aided by a left-leaning group doing the work pro-bono–in the highlighted portion. They don’t want to get bad news and want to throw sand into the works.

The article at Hot Air includes the following chart:

No private company would put up with this. Why should the federal government?

This is really about the email the employees received offering them a buyout. The lawsuit is just to delay the inevitable.

Drastic Changes At The Southern Border

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On Tuesday, Twitchy posted an article about the changes at our southern border since President Trump took office.

The article reports:

Bill Melugin of Fox News is reporting border crossing numbers are plummeting like he’s never seen before. It’s a pretty safe bet President Donald Trump’s immigration law enforcement is making would-be illegal aliens have second thoughts.

The article quotes Bill Melugin:

Per sources, Border Patrol recorded just 582 illegal crossings at the southern border yesterday, with not a single one of the nine sectors hitting 200.I’ve never seen anything this low in all of my border coverage.

The numbers were already flat/low in Biden’s final week, bouncing between 1,200-1,400 illegal crossings daily, but the numbers have been falling off a cliff since Trump took office.

Last three days January 24 – 665January 25 – 731January 26 – 582To put this into perspective, at the height of the border crisis in December 2023, Border Patrol hit a record high 11,000+ illegal crossings across the border in a single day, with the Del Rio sector alone getting 4,000+

I’m told there were 582 illegal crossings across the southern border yesterday, with only 60 happening in the Del Rio sector.

And there are no longer 1,500+ migrants being released at ports of entry via the CBP One cell phone app every single day, as Trump immediately terminated the program.

It’s still very early – we’ll see if these incredibly low numbers hold, especially heading into spring.

The bottom line of this is very simple.

The article concludes:

Putting a literal army at the border will do that.

The apparent ease with which Trump has activated the full might and resources of the Unites States government to combat illegal immigration has many commenters drawing the same conclusion.

Yes, Biden had the capability to practically stop border crossings at his wrinkly fingertips his entire term, but he chose not to use it. The only conclusion one can draw from that is he wanted our country to be overrun with illegal aliens. It’s a sure bet Kamala Harris would have followed suit if she succeeded him.

A Second Look At The Charges Against The January 6th Defendants

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On Tuesday, Red State reported on a reevaluation of the charges that were used to keep the January 6th protestors in jail for four years.

The article reports:

On Monday, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, announced that his office would undertake a review of the decision-making that led to the charging of hundreds of January 6 protesters with “obstructing Congress” in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1512(c). That was a statute passed by Congress in 2005 to address an alleged hole revealed in an obstruction of justice statute criminalizing the destruction of records, documents, materials, etc., to obstruct an investigation. The “hole” was the fact that the language of the existing statute made it a crime to direct third parties to undertake such obstructive acts, but it did not – by its plain language – make it a criminal act to take such action yourself.

This was the finding of the Supreme Court in Arthur Andersen v. United States, an infamous case related to the Enron scandal where then-U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann put one of the “Big 5” accounting firms out of business – costing maybe 80,000 Arthur Andersen employees their jobs – only to eventually be reversed by the Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision.

The crime that Arthur Andersen supposedly committed? It followed its internal policy for destroying client records – Enron in this case – before it received a federal grand jury subpoena for those records as part of the probe into Enron’s accounting practices. Arthur Andersen was charged under Sec. 1512(b)(2) – there was no subsection (c) at that time – which made it a crime to “knowingly [and] … corruptly persuade another person … with intent to … cause” that person to “withhold” or “alter” documents intended for use in an “official proceeding.”

The article concludes:

What is also significant about each of the cases listed above is that the convictions in each case were affirmed by the federal Appeals Court — just like Joseph Fischer’s conviction was affirmed — before the convictions were reversed by the Supreme Court, and those reversals were unanimous in almost every case.

This unbroken line of decisions by the Supreme Court should have been warning enough to Biden DOJ prosecutors who decided to charge hundreds of January 6 protesters with a felony using a novel legal theory under a new statute.

Some involved in making that decision may now pay a price for having done with their jobs – and rightly so.

Please click on the link above for further details. Someone needs to be held accountable for violating the civil rights of the January 6th prisoners.

Another Consequence Of The Biden Administration

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In June of 2024, The New York Post reported that the Biden administration had fast-tracked the takeover of the Audacy radio network by George Soros. Audacy reaches 165 million monthly listeners and includes a handful of conservative shows from hosts including Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson.

This week we saw one ugly result of that takeover.

On Monday, Newsbusters posted the following:

This weekend, a radio station owned by the George Soros-controlled Audacy outrageously identified the vehicle whereabouts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operating in San Jose, California, which is known for violent gang activity.

KCBS 740 AM – not to be confused with the Los Angeles CBS affiliate – elevated the insane unmasking of ICE agents from the leftist Rapid Response Network, which fights against deportation initiatives during the January 26 edition of KCBS Radio Weekend News.

But to make matters worse, anchor Bret Burkhart gave exact descriptions of the vehicles the ICE agents were reportedly using, including specific locations. NewsNation confirmed January 27 that the agents were conducting an operation in the area around that time, meaning their cover was potentially blown.

Post Millennial senior editor Andy Ngo noted the agents were allegedly working “undercover.” KCBS, in effect, “put the law enforcement officers at serious risk while an operation was ongoing targeting violent, criminal foreign nationals,” Ngo concluded. 

The article notes:

KCBS 740 was one of the stations prominently implicated in that deal. The Federal Communications Commission, in a bizarre act, fast-tracked Soros’s purchase of the radio giant, which was also backed by foreign money.

I am not sure if there is a definitive law that covers this activity, but there should be a penalty for this action.

Exactly Who Is Opposing This Nomination?

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On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Considering that President Biden’s Secretary of Health of Human Services was a man dressed as a woman, I find the opposition to RFK, Jr. rather interesting. How many Republicans voted for Rachel Levine?

First, let’s look at Rachel Levine (President Biden’s HHS Secretary).

In May 2020, Newsweek reported:

Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine confirmed on Tuesday that she recently moved her 95-year-old mother out of a personal care home.

Outbreaks in Pennsylvania long-term care facilities make up nearly 70 percent of the state’s coronavirus-related deaths and 21 percent of the state’s positive cases of the virus.

In March 2021, The Washington Examiner reported:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York was not the only state leader to have directed nursing homes to admit patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19. Governors from Michigan, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, all Democrats, enacted similar policies last year as fears grew that hospitals would be overwhelmed with new patients and too few healthcare providers.

So as Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary, Rachel Levine moved Covid patients into nursing homes while removing her mother from the danger. She was approved by Congress as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Breitbart reports:

A “committee” widely cited in the media as opposing the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services turns out to be a Bill Gates-backed “Astroturf” organization that accepts fake signatories.

The “Committee to Protect Health Care,” cited by NBC News and others, published an open letter declaring that doctors are “appalled by Donald Trump’s reckless decision” to appoint Kennedy. Thousands are said to have signed.

However, there is no verification process for signatories. (Breitbart News was able to sign up as Dr. Donald Duck, OG, of Disney World, FL, specializing in podiatry.) The anti-Kennedy petition simply accepts any signature from anyone.

The article notes:

The Committee to Protect Health Care is a 501(c)4 organization, meaning that it does not have to reveal its donors.

However, a related 501(c)3 charity, The Committee to Protect Health Care Fund, does have to reveal its donors. It is funded in part by the “left-of-center Sixteen Thirty Fund (1630 Fund) and Hopewell Fund.” The Hopewell Fund, in turn, has “hired Arabella Advisors, a leading national philanthropy services firm, to manage its project hosting and fiscal sponsorship services.” The Sixteen Thirty Fund is likewise managed by the Arabella Advisors organization.

Arabella’s donors include “Bill Gates, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg,” according to the Capital Research Center: “Each of them has given a tremendous amount of money to (or through) the main network of Arabella Advisors-managed nonprofits and used it to create policy advocacy projects for their favorite pet sociopolitical issues.”

Sometimes all you need to know about a nominee is who the people are who oppose him!

Standing Up For America

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about the recent dust-up with Columbia about the return of Colombian citizens who were here illegally. After the planes carrying the illegals were in the air, the Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that he would not let the planes land in Columbia. That really was not a very smart move.

The article notes:

As Ed wrote, it took 37 minutes for Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro to reverse himself on accepting Colombian deportees AND to offer his presidential plane to carry out the deportations. 

37 minutes, or three holes of golf for the president. Between the end of his third hole, when President Trump tweeted out his threats to President Petro and the sixth hole, the diplomatic dispute was resolved in our favor.

…The Pravda media and many in the transnational elite were horrified by what happened.

Donald Trump is so mean.

He bullied the poor, poor president of Columbia. Yankee imperialism in its worst form! Trump is a big mean bully who doesn’t respect our neighbors like Petro.

So let’s look at some of Petro’s history. The article notes:

At age 17, while studying economics at Externado University of Colombia in Bogotá, Petro was recruited by the 19th of April Movement (M-19), a Marxist guerrilla group that took its name from the date on which the group argued that the 1970 Colombian presidential election had been “stolen.” The group often resorted to audacious militant actions, including the kidnapping and murder of a labour leader in 1976, a raid on a Bogotá arsenal in 1979, and the kidnapping of cocktail-party guests at the Bogotá embassy of the Dominican Republic in 1980. …In October 1985, while disguised as a woman, Petro was arrested and incarcerated after he was found to be in possession of firearms, homemade explosives, and propaganda. Some three weeks later, while Petro was still behind bars, the M-19 undertook its most notorious operation: an invasion of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, where it took scores of hostages. In the subsequent military assault on the building, some 100 people were killed, including half of Colombia’s Supreme Court judges. In March 1987 Petro was released from confinement, and he helped promote peace talks between the M-19 and the Colombian government. In 1990 he demobilized along with the rest of the M-19 after negotiations with Colombian Pres. Virgilio Barco led to amnesty for members of the group, which then transformed into a legitimate political party, Alianza Democrática M-19.

If the people sent here from Columbia illegally were so bad that Colombian President Gustavo Petro didn’t want them in his country, we certainly don’t want them in our country.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

It Would Be Nice If Someone Were Held Accountable

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President Biden’s preemptive pardons may have spared his family members jail time, but the information that has come out about the family business should make every member of the Biden family ashamed. Part of me wants to simply leave all of their dishonesty behind and move on, but how will that deter future political types from the same criminal activities? If you believe that all politicians are corrupt, shouldn’t all of us be working to change that?

On Sunday, Zero Hedge posted an article about some documents about the Biden family’s financial transactions that have recently come to light.

The article reports:

Recently pardoned Hunter Biden has once again found himself at the center of controversy, as newly surfaced bank records and corporate documents indicate that a shared bank account linked to the future first son was used in a fraudulent bond transaction tied to Burnham Asset Management. The firm was involved in a million-dollar securities fraud that saw two of Biden’s business partners arrested and convicted – while Hunter escaped accountability, Just the News reports.

Huntr’s former business partners, Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, were convicted for their roles in a scheme that defrauded an Oglala Sioux Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars. Federal authorities found that instead of investing the funds as promised, Archer, Galanis, and their associates misappropriated the bond proceeds.

While Archer and Galanis faced prosecution, Hunter quickly faded into the bushes, telling lawmakers in his impeachment inquiry deposition that his proposed role in the company “never came to fruition.” However, bank records and a signature analysis reveal that Biden was more entangled with the firm than he has publicly acknowledged.

The article concludes:

House Republicans are now weighing their next steps considering Hunter’s massive pardon in December, the investigation remains far from over. With documented financial transactions, corporate records, and sworn testimony painting an increasingly complicated picture, the Biden family’s business dealings continue to fuel questions about influence peddling and financial transparency.

As Just the News notes further, one Senator believes it may be possible to bring Hunter Biden back for more questioning. Now that he is protected by his father’s expansive pardon, Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., says Hunter Biden cannot exercise his fifth amendment right to avoid incriminating himself. 

“But what is interesting is, with Hunter Biden’s pardon, he has no Fifth Amendment right not to testify and tell the truth, and so he could be, we could prosecute him for lying to Congress,” Sen. Johnson told the John Solomon Reports podcast earlier this month. “He’s going to have to answer truthfully. So that’s a real possibility.” 

I am not sure Congress should waste its time on this garbage. They might be better served by looking at current political figures to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If someone becomes a millionaire after one term in Congress when their net worth upon entering was a few hundred thousand, their financial dealings might be worth some scrutiny, but what is past is past.

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Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day was chosen because it is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27th as Remembrance Day in honor of the six million Jews and others who died in Germany’s concentration camps.

Shared from a friend on Facebook:

A Creative Way To Teach Students Something Hard

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In 2020, southeasttennessee.com posted an article about a project done by Whitwell Middle School students in Whitwell, Tennessee. The teachers in the school were looking for a way to make the Holocaust real to the students.

The article reports:

Whitwell Middle School, located within the Sequatchie Valley of Southeast Tennessee, is home to one of the world’s most profound remembrances of the Holocaust victims of Nazi Germany: the Children’s Holocaust Memorial.

The memorial is the result of the efforts of the school’s former principal, Linda Hooper, and teachers Sandra Roberts and David Smith, who began an eighth-grade Holocaust education class in 1998 to teach diversity in their small, mostly white, Christian community.

The Holocaust took place between the years of 1933 and 1945 and resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in Europe. Other groups were also persecuted during this period (the handicapped, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles and Gypsies); however, the Jews were targeted by the Nazis for complete annihilation.

When the class began, students were unable to grasp the sheer number of people murdered during the Holocaust. Teachers and students decided to gather paper clips – which many Norwegians wore on their lapels as a silent protest to Nazi occupation during World War II – to represent each person killed under the authority of the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler.

The students’ project went worldwide. There were newspaper articles, and people who were holocaust survivors also contributed items related to their experiences.

The article notes:

The Children’s Holocaust Memorial at Whitwell Middle School was dedicated Nov. 9, 2001, complete with an actual German railcar that was used to transport Jewish detainees to Nazi death camps. Today, the railcar stands as a testament to the tragedy – and it is filled with more than 30 million paper clips sent to the school from around the world.

The article concludes:

The memorial has also received more than 30,000 letters, documents, books and artifacts, which have been catalogued by students and are on display in the school’s research room.  In 2004, an award-winning documentary film about the project, Paper Clips, was released by Miramax Films.

“The paper clips project has been an affirmation of my beliefs that education is absolutely essential to change,” said Linda Hooper, former Whitwell Middle School principal. “Everyone must study the past so that we do not forget or repeat our mistakes.”

Individuals, visitors and groups can schedule tours of the memorial by emailing Linda Hooper at whitwelltraveler@gmail.com or by calling 423-658-7669. Visit the Children’s Holocaust Memorial’s website for more information.

I have seen the documentary, and I am hoping to visit the memorial sometime this spring or summer.

Please follow the link to the article for more information.

Your Family History Does NOT Determine Your Future

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On Saturday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about Kai Höss, the grandson of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz. Kai Höss is now a pastor, who speaks to groups about the horrors of that camp.

The article reports:

Just the other day, a local technical college near Stuttgart, Germany, rang Kai Höss with alarming news. Someone had been etching swastikas on the doors of the loos. 

This followed a number of student protests against Israeli operations in Gaza. Might Kai give a talk to the students?

He did not hesitate. Days later he was addressing a packed assembly, reading a first-hand account of scenes from the death camp at Auschwitz.

Of two small boys, newly arrived off a cattle truck and so engrossed in a game of tag that they failed to heed the command to follow the rest into the gas chamber until the commandant ordered two guards to pick them up and throw them inside.

Of a frantic mother trying to wedge the doors open and force her children out, screaming: ‘Why don’t you at least let my precious children live?’

‘People were in tears – including me,’ Kai tells me. ‘And so they should be. If this stuff doesn’t get you from here to here [he points from his head to his heart], then it hasn’t sunk in. It’s just another history lesson.’

The college has asked him to come back and give the same talk to those who could not be accommodated last time.

He is happy to oblige. Germany never takes the appearance of swastikas lightly, of course. But Kai speaks with a unique authority. The author of those accounts was not some terrified witness. He was Kai’s grandfather Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz and one of the most brutal criminals of the Second World War.

…Tracked down by the British after the conflict, he laid it all out in the chillingly clinical memoir he wrote as he awaited his date with the gallows in April 1947.

‘No one wants to be Rudolf Höss’s grandson,’ Kai, 62, tells me over a cup of tea at his home near Stuttgart. ‘Every day I must face the fact that I am descended from the worst mass-murderer in history.’

While some might want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and such a dark family past, Kai takes the opposite view.

A hotel manager turned evang-elical pastor, this father-of-four wants to ensure future generations never forget the horrors committed by his grandfather’s generation. In particular he wants to do what he can to stem the Gaza-fuelled rising tide of anti-Semitism in Western democracies.

He is determined to debunk any attempts to use moral relativism to compare Israel to the Nazis, let alone accuse the Jewish state of ‘genocide’ and thereby demand the dismantling of Israel.

‘You hear those demonstrators shouting ‘from the river to the sea’, but they don’t even know which river – or which sea,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘There’s all this emotional energy but they don’t understand what it’s really about. Hamas’s strategy was to bring Israel to the point where they get mad and hit hard so the world rises against Israel.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This is a man who knows what he is talking about.

The Lawsuit Filed Against The Effort To End Birthright Citizenship

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the lawsuit that has been filed to stop President Trump from ending birthright citizenship. In recent years, birthright citizenship has been the camel’s nose under the tent to allow children of other nations to attend colleges here and to pave a way for their parents to come here legally through chain migration.

The article lists four of the problems with the lawsuit against ending the practice:

 

Error #1: The citizenship clause merely adopted the pre-Dred Scott common law rule that everyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.

In 1856, the Supreme Court held in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford that the U.S.-born descendants of African slaves were not and could never become citizens, even though under the traditional common law rule, a person automatically became a citizen of the nation on whose soil he or she was born. The plaintiffs contend that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was intended to restore this earlier common law rule of universal birthright citizenship.

They support this claim with a single, highly edited quotation from Sen. Jacob Howard, a Republican from Michigan, who was instrumental in drafting the citizenship clause: “This amendment … is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is … a citizen of the United States.”

Error #2: This is an unprecedented action—the executive branch has long recognized that it can’t deny citizenship to children based on the immigration or citizenship status of their parents.

This assertion is only true if history begins in the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, it doesn’t. In the decades following the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the federal government regularly articulated a view of the citizenship clause that’s remarkably similar to that espoused in Trump’s order, and the executive branch issued citizenship documents accordingly.

Error #3: The Supreme Court confirmed in Wong Kim Ark that the citizenship clause automatically bestows citizenship on the U.S.-born children of noncitizen parents.

Contrary to popular assertions, this is not what the Supreme Court held in the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States. The question decided by the court in that case was far narrower: whether a child born in the U.S. to lawfully present and permanently domiciled immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen. And the court concluded that, indeed, the U.S.-born child of this narrow and specific subset of noncitizen parents is a citizen.

Error #4: The president’s order will leave many children deportable and stateless.

It would rarely, if ever, be true that a U.S.-born child of illegal or nonpermanent resident aliens would be left stateless simply because he or she isn’t automatically granted U.S. citizenship. Virtually every nation (including the United States) recognizes some manner of citizenship “by blood,” under which a child is automatically eligible for citizenship when one or both parents are citizens, even if that child is born abroad.

Please follow the link above for further details. This battle will probably eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see how the Justices rule.

 

Help That Is Neither Needed Or Appreciated

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On Friday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the Senate Democrats’ offer of bipartisanship on the border. They wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune that they would be glad to provide input on any border security bill under consideration by the Republicans. Really?!!? I would love to know what the Democrats’ definition of border security is. The last bill the Democrats proposed for border security allowed for 2500 illegal entries per day in exchange for a gauzy promise to maybe build the wall at some point in the future. Somehow I don’t think they are serious about border security.

The article reports:

The push came in a Jan. 22 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., which was led by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and signed by 12 other Democrats, mostly from politically competitive states.

“We understand that Senate Republicans have discussed using the budget reconciliation process to advance border security budget measures without any Democratic input. While that’s your right, in working together on a bipartisan basis, we can achieve the best outcome for the American people,” the Democrats wrote. “We remain ready to work with you in good faith to craft legislation that can achieve bipartisan support and 60 votes in the Senate.”

…Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., laughed out loud when asked about the letter and whether Republicans might accept their overture.

“That’s a letter we will ignore,” Johnson said in an interview. “We’re not going to wait for them. If they want to secure the border, they could have done that,” he added. “That’s not what they want.”

…Republicans have gotten burned on this issue repeatedly. Democrats spent years playing them as racists for wanting the border secured and illegals deported, but Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office made it clear that Donald Trump and the GOP are the mainstream point of view on illegal immigration, and that voters consider Democrats incompetent or worse on the issue. That’s why several Democrats rejected their leadership to vote for the Laken Riley Act, after having attempted to hijack it last year to push for relaxing asylum rules and enshrining stampede-levels of illegal border crossings as thresholds for “emergency” treatment. 

NBC also notes why Democrats have suddenly found an interest in getting on the right side of immigration enforcement:

Democrats in battleground states and districts are breaking with the bulk of their party on immigration, as they believe that the positions of progressives and leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are out of touch with their voters. The rightward shift comes after Democrats got clobbered on the issue of immigration in the 2024 election, and lost Latino men to Trump.

Asking the Democrats for help with the border would be like asking a fox to help design the hen house.

This Could Have Been Done Four Years Ago

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On Friday, Steven Hayward at Power Line Blog posted two charts illustrating the changes at America’s southern border in the past few days.

Here are the charts:

The illegal immigration at America’s southern border could have been totally avoided or totally stopped at any time during the last four years. During that time people on the terrorist watch list came freely into our country along with criminals let out of jail by other countries. During the past four years, the drug cartels have not only controlled our southern border, they have made more money than ever before doing it. Again, this was totally unnecessary.

As the border remains closed and the criminals are deported, the safety of Americans will improve. The senseless murders, the drunk driving, and driving without a license incidents should decrease significantly.

It is time to bring our nation back to a nation of law and order where people can safely go out for a walk or go to stores where the merchandise is not locked up for fear of looting.

View From The Lair

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Losing the Race Toward Irrelevance

As Granny G recently pointed out, the lamestream media is becoming irrelevant, and it’s their own fault. Quite true. And while many Americans, especially those over fifty (sixty?) who grew up with the three alphabet networks as their primary news source, do seem to cling to this obsolete habit; those younger citizens increasingly do not. There are those of us who remember Walter Cronkite, Douglas Edwards, Huntley & Brinkley and Tom Brokaw.  Mention these names to anyone under fifty and you’ll get a blank stare.

Edward R. Murrow?  There might be a few reading this that go to Google for a hint for him. And as our benevolent matriarch of this blog suggested, maybe most should let bygones be bygones.

I’m not one of the most.

While in journalism school our professors – and especially our dean – made it very clear that our job was to report the news accurately, corroborating facts, double checking descriptions, never including anonymous information unless it was verified, and then only using it as anonymous to protect the source. Opinions were fine – on the opinion pages. Never in a news story.  A little favoritism was permitted in sports reporting. Never in political and hard news.

Those news anchors listed above might have voted democrat, in fact I’m sure some, If not all, did.  But you didn’t get the rabid worshiping of the leftists that you see today. An interesting historical tidbit that RWG mentioned is that Edward R. Murrow, he who covered the Blitz in London during WWII, was also instrumental in bringing the start of the Marxist movement to Columbia U. That was somehow missed in journalism school. But then most of such ideological history was missed in all levels of schooling I received. Marxists have been infiltrating our government since WWII.

I was taught that the First Amendment to our Constitution was first for a reason. That our republic depended upon it for an educated and responsible citizenry. And we learned about the years of “yellow journalism,” the scandal sheets that were published even before the constitution was ratified. But those were known to be a biased source. That’s why they were published, and not regarded as a source of accurate news.

Today’s lamestream media has sown the seeds of its own demise and is reaping the results before our eyes. I saw it starting from the inside. I was part of the TV news industry for a few years. I saw it becoming “socially conscious” before it spread to the rest of the country. I could complain, point out bias and hypocrisy. And be fired. So I left, as did a number of others I worked with.

As for the current crop of “journalists,” other than Fox News, they can go up in flames like Los Angeles has done.

They lit their own fire.  Let them burn.

Ciao,

The Snark

A Different Perspective

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On Saturday, The Hindustan Times posted an article featuring comments by Bill Gates on autism. In the article, Bill Gates, who is on the autism spectrum, explains how this ‘disability’ is part of the reason for his success.

The article reports:

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has expressed that he likely would have been diagnosed with autism as a child, if assessed today. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, ahead of the release of his memoir Source Code, the 69-year-old shared insights into his childhood behaviours that he now recognises as characteristics associated with autism.

Gates explained, “This whole thing of Asperger’s or on the spectrum is a fairly new thing, you know? It used to be autism had a fairly narrow definition that was you know clearly identifiable,” he said.

He reflected on his tendency to avoid social interaction and habits such as rocking, which he acknowledges might have been perceived as self-soothing behaviours linked to autism. “But this idea that if you’re slow socialising — you know, I have a behaviour where I rock that bothers people, but that’s also common so-called self-esteeming type thing. So I realized, wow, there’s a bit of a pattern match there,” he added.

…In his memoir, Gates delves into how these traits shaped his childhood and ultimately contributed to his success. Reflecting on his early years, he remarked, “Looking back on that, because I didn’t behave in a standard way, and yet, you know, that deep concentration that got applied to math and science and eventually to all those programming experiences I had, that became a strength.”

When asked about his parents’ concerns during his formative years, Gates revealed how they supported him in nurturing his unique abilities. “They worried about would I fit in,” said Gates. “The two things they did, one, send me to a therapist who got me thinking about how I applied my energy and then sending me to a really great school. Those were great for me,” he said.

As someone who married into a family with generations of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), I totally understand what he is saying. I see generations of inventors, computer geeks, and people who marched to the beat of a different drummer. We need to embrace these people and be grateful for the scientific contributions they make that result in a better life for all of us.

This Is What Spin Looks Like

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On Wednesday, MSN posted the following headline:

Republicans renew efforts to limit people in US illegally from census count

The article reports:

Republican efforts to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from numbers used to divvy up congressional seats among states have begun anew, with four Republican state attorneys general suing to alter the once-a-decade head count even before President Donald Trump’s second term in office began Monday.

Trump joined in the battle immediately upon returning to office, signing an executive order on Monday that rescinded a Biden administration order and signaled the possibility of a push by his new administration to change the 2030 census. Those efforts may get a boost from the GOP-controlled Congress, where Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards from North Carolina earlier this month re-introduced legislation that would put a citizenship question on the census form.

During his first term, Trump signed an order that would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the 2020 census numbers used to allot congressional seats and Electoral College votes to each state. The GOP president also mandated in a second order the collection of citizenship data through administrative records. A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

This is not political, regardless of who benefits–it is common sense. In a representative republic, who is represented?

The question here is rather obvious, “Who are our Congressmen (and women) supposed to represent?” If a district gets an extra representative or two because of people who are non-citizens and are here illegally, the representation for people who are citizens is impacted. For example, California gets one of two extra representatives because of the number of illegal aliens that live there. Since there are only a limited number of representatives (435), a state with more citizens and fewer non-citizens will not get as many representatives. American citizens are entitled to representation in Congress. Non-citizens are not. There is no country in the world with a democracy or representative government that has a government that represents people who are not citizens. This is common sense, and the representation for illegal aliens and non-citizens needs to end.

Stopping Green Energy 

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D.  

The re-election of Donald Trump provides an opportunity to correct the devastating agenda of the green new deal extremists.  Inexpensive and ample supplies of energy are essential to the progress of our economy.  Solar and wind will never produce sufficient reliable energy to fuel a modern society.  Impossible, as the Europeans have found out.

It is very discouraging to realize that many of our elected Republicans believe the man-made climate change hoax and are therefore willing to support things like carbon neutrality.  There is no reliable scientific evidence that man’s consumption of fossil fuels has altered the environment!  The environmental extremists base their scare tactics about manmade global warming on computer models generated by their fellow believers.  The truth is that the earth’s temperature has varied substantially long before there were enough human beings to impact the CO2 levels.  There have been at least eight ice age/warming periods over the earth’s history going back several million years.  We are now in a global warming cycle from the last ice age that occurred over 10,000 years ago.  So the first thing we need to do is to ensure that our lawmakers are not taken in by the climate change extremists.  We also need to stop indoctrinating our children with the man-made climate hoax.

As President Trump has advocated, we need to “drill baby drill” for oil and natural gas, both of which we are fortunate to have an abundant supply.  We also need to return to coal burning plants since we have the technology to ensure that coal is burned efficiently and cleanly;  instead of shipping our coal to China, which is greatly expanding their coal fired plants and doing so with little concern for the environment.  President Trump’s recent announcement of our withdrawal from the globalist so-called Paris Accords which are detrimental to America is a step in the right direction.  Remember, that cheap and abundant energy will enhance our ability to compete with other countries in manufacturing.

All government subsidies and tax incentives for solar, wind and electrical vehicles need to be stopped immediately.  Wind farms off our coast are an environmental hazard that only enriches China.  A recent study conducted by the conservative John Locke Foundation estimates that continued movement towards wind and solar will produce an enormous increase in energy prices in our country.  Not only are wind and solar expensive and produce unreliable energy, but due to their intermittent energy production, extensive battery storage capacity (or more likely backup fossil fuel plants) will still be needed.  Experts have recently predicted that a full implementation of Artificial Intelligence will require a threefold electrical capacity increase nationwide.

The final solution to energy production is nuclear power.  Due to the environmental extremists scare tactics and excessive regulation, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in North Carolina since the Shearon Harris plant near Raleigh was completed in 1987.  This despite the improved safety and ability to produce nuclear power plants of smaller size, which could be located closer to customer demand.  The European Union is planning on increasing their nuclear plants due in large measure to the ineffectiveness of wind and solar.  Currently, France generates over 70% of their electricity from nuclear reactors.

The bottom line is that we need to do away with the move towards wind and solar and go back to the common sense approach of relying on fossil fuels and nuclear power.  If we do not, we will be unable to maintain our economy and grow for the future.  Our conservative lawmakers need to make this happen.