From my friends at Power Line Blog:
Monthly Archives: May 2025
The Fentanyl Tariffs
On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted an article about President Trump’s attempt to use tariffs as a bargaining chip in the war against fentanyl.
The article reports:
We’ve been trending in this direction for some time now, but after yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel on the United States Court of International Trade in Manhattan — which struck down all of the Trump administration’s tariffs — it’s now official: We don’t need any more rulings from federal judges about what the president of the United States isn’t allowed to do. Those are completely pointless. Instead, what we need, in our alleged first-world democracy, is a ruling from some federal court explaining, in as much detail as possible, what exactly the president of the United States does have the authority to do while in office. That would be the most efficient way forward, at this point.
In just the past five months, federal courts have held that the Trump administration has no authority to do the following:
- Change federal government websites
- Fire any Executive Branch employees
- Ban mentally disturbed individuals from joining the armed forces
- Eliminate slush funds for corrupt NGOs
- Stop funneling billions of dollars of taxpayer money to anti-white universities like Harvard
- Eliminate wasteful “administrative spending” that’s tacked onto every single scientific grant
- Deport illegal alien gang members — even the wife-beaters and terrorists
- Cut federal funding to child castration services for children
When I read this list, I wonder exactly what the courts are willing to allow the President to do!
On May 30th, The India Times reported:
The tariffs in question were put in place to encourage the countries behind the fentanyl crisis in America to crack down on the manufacture and transport of the drug. Admittedly, the drug comes into America because there is a market for it here, but it would be nice if we could all work together to solve the problem.
The courts have wandered far out of their lane. It’s time the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped this nonsense. However, I am beginning to wonder how many of the Supreme Court Justices are interested in following the Constitution rather than their political or personal leanings.
The Supreme Court Steps In
Some of the lower courts in America have decided that they are the President. It’s getting very old to see anything President Trump does result in a lawsuit filed in a lower court to stop whatever it is. I think that if President Trump declared that grocery shopping on Saturday was a good thing, the courts would try to close the stores on Saturday. However, the Supreme Court is slowly stepping up to the plate.
On Friday, The Epoch Times reported:
The Supreme Court has temporarily stayed a lower court decision that halted the Trump administration’s attempt to remove a protection known as parole for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The court’s decision, which came on May 30, blocks the lower court order as the issue plays out in the court system. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the court’s decision.
The Trump administration had argued that the decision to remove parole was discretionary for the secretary of homeland security and not reviewable by courts.
We need controlled, legal immigration. We need to bring people into America who will assimilate and who will work to help build this country. We definitely need to revise our immigration policies to make it easier for people to come to America, but we also need to limit the number of immigrants we allow in at any one time. We need to control immigration in a way that allows for assimilation. Britain, and some of the European Union Countries are currently in danger of losing their identity because of mass migration by people who are not interested in assimilating into their various cultures. This is a threat to western civilization. There are differences in civilizations–and people need to live where they are most comfortable with the culture–they do not need to take over the culture of another country. The takeover of the British culture is currently happening in Britain. I don’t want it to happen here.
Why Is (Was) President Trump Such A Threat?
On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about recently released documents relating to the RussiaGate controversy.
The article reports:
Nellie Ohr isn’t a new name in the Russiagate saga, but newly released documents from Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office shatter the fiction that she was just a low-level researcher and reveal her as a key conduit between Clinton operatives, the DOJ, and the FBI. The documents also pull back the curtain on a darker truth: an internal black hole FBI system designed not just to restrict access to sensitive Russiagate documents, but to bury them so completely that even FBI agents tasked with finding them wouldn’t know they existed.
According to the newly released document from Sen. Grassley’s office, a previously unseen 43-page FBI analysis from 2019, Nellie Ohr was involved in many aspects of the Russia collusion hoax, including in the drafting of the Steele Dossier. The FBI analysis was initiated after then-Congressman Mark Meadows filed a criminal referral, alleging that Ohr had lied to Congress during her 2018 testimony about her role in producing supposed research that helped trigger the Trump-Russia investigation. Meadows had good reason to be suspicious.
As the analysis concluded, Nellie Ohr repeatedly lied under oath. The FBI found that despite her denials, she contributed directly to the writing of the Steele Dossier. One telling clue was an identical analytical error that appeared both in her research and in the dossier itself. Even more damning, the FBI recovered a deleted “FSB report” from a thumb drive which Fusion owner Simpson had given to Bruce Ohr to give to the FBI in December 2016. That same fictitious report had already appeared as part of the dossier given to the FBI by Steele two months earlier, in October 2016. The FSB report bore all the hallmarks of Nellie Ohr’s work, which likely explains why Simpson, or whoever created the thumb drive, deleted the report just four minutes after uploading it, before eventually giving it to Bruce Ohr to pass to the FBI. What they didn’t realize was that what they tried to hide was still recoverable.
Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is interesting to see how much the Washington establishment feared President Trump. He was an outsider with a reputation for being a bull in a china shop and demanding efficiency. The federal government has never been known for efficiency. Considering all of the fraud, waste, and abuse that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has found, they were right to fear President Trump. I just hope that any money that flowed from the treasury back to Congress members will result in severe punishment for those Congress members.
The Lingering Poison of the Entrenched Two-Party System
The two-party system is not the entire problem—the problem exists when party loyalty is more important than what is good for the country. Full disclosure—I am a registered Republican. At various times in my life, I have been a registered Democrat, a registered unaffiliated, and a registered Republican. I am much more of a conservative than a Republican. I am registered as a Republican right now because I think the other party is crazy. Obviously, that’s just a personal opinion.
But let’s look at some of the results of prioritizing party over country.
During President Trump’s first term, there were several attempts to use the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office. In September 2018, CNN reported, “In the days after FBI Director James Comey’s May 2017 firing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed wearing a “wire” to record conversations with President Donald Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.” Where was this concern during the Biden administration? How was discussing the 25th Amendment regarding President Trump and ignoring the 25th Amendment regarding President Biden helpful to America in any way? It was simply a reflection of the desire of one political party.
After Hunter Biden’s laptop was proven to be authentic, why was there no action taken concerning what was on the laptop—evidence of money being funneled to the Biden family from foreign entities, evidence of illegal activities involving minors, etc.? During that same time, the Justice Department was doing S.W.A.T. raids on people who were protesting outside abortion clinics. Again? Where was the unbiased concern for criminal activity?
The January 6th protesters were put in prison, denied trials in a timely manner, had exculpatory evidence withheld during their trials, and their plight was pretty much ignored. Yet, a gang member who is in America illegally gets all kinds of positive press when he is deported. Why in the world would we want to bring him back?
The Democrat party has supported a number of things that are not only bad for America, but totally unpopular among the American people—open borders, men in women’s sports, transgender surgery on minors without parental consent, etc. However, many Americans who oppose these things are still voting for Democrat candidates, putting party over principle. I am not saying that I expect every voter to agree totally with his political party on every issue, but ignoring moral issues for the sake of a political party is not good for the country.
It’s time all of us put our allegiance to America before our allegiance to a political party. And while we are at it, let’s let issues decide who and what we support—not personalities.
The View From The Lair
Legal Forgeries
How many times a day do you sign your name? I don’t nearly as many times as I used to. Electronic messaging, online banking, legally acceptable electronic signatures have eliminated many, if not most, signatures. Other than greeting cards, I sign very few things. I suspect attorneys and public officials have to sign documents frequently. I sign my name most frequently in restaurants to include a tip.
The higher up the food chain in the political spectrum I suspect (I’m suspecting a lot of things here; not having any actual experience in these positions) that more signatures are expected. Autographs are requested, cards and letters signed. It’s enough to inflict carpel tunnel syndrome.
That’s why the “robot pen” was invented. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to use an early version of the “robot pen.” Considering that Jefferson was a mechanical genius, it is no wonder to me that he would be an early adopter.
The first legal opinion about the legitimacy of using the “robot pen” or what it has evolved into, the Autopen, came in 2005. The Bush DOJ provided a legal opinion that the autopen was a valid presentation of the president’s signature. Considering what we know today about the efficacy of the DOJ, I have my doubts about the quality of legal opinions from that source. Granted, GW Bush might have been significantly more cognitively aware than some later presidents, but I still have to wonder about who was in control of the device.
According to Wikipedia, the first president to use the Autopen to sign legislation was Barry Obozo. But the actual legality of this device has never been tested. What is the difference between the Autopen and a rubber stamp?
Using the Autopen to sign the Proclamation of National Cheeseburger Day, or National Rocky Road Ice Cream Cone Day isn’t quite as consequential as signing, say, a Declaration of War Against the Government of China. Or how about the congratulations to an Eagle Scout compared to pardoning a known crackhead? In all honesty, the pardon for Hunter is identified to bear Biden’s own shaky signature. But the pardon of Fauci, et al, not to mention a bunch of other usual suspects, bear the smooth signature of the Autopen. What other documents including a LOT of executive orders all seem to bear a signature that conform to the Autopen? Even Mitch McConnel (RINO-KY) stated that Biden had no idea that his signature was on some executive orders. Granted, Biden was ignorant of most everything that has happened since 1985, but SOMEONE was controlling the Autopen. Could it have been “Dr.” Jill? It could have been anyone with access to the White House.
Could this happen again? Certainly. Will the responsible adults in Congress (I know, that’s an oxymoron) have the cojones to pass legislation describing the parameters under which the Autopen is a legitimate instrument for presidential legislation or executive order use? OR NOT? If – God Forbid –we have another situation where the sitting president is a rutabaga and the usurpers of power within the White House decide that Our Republic is better run by a bunch of unelected staff members with no oversight and no regard for the inconsequential document known as the US Constitution, perhaps the damage they are attempting to do might be thwarted?
Unfortunately, I don’t really trust a Republican presidential staff much more than a Marxist presidential staff. The only saving grace to me is that I don’t think that a Republican staff will have the amount of destructive imagination as a Marxist staff would.
Small favors.
ciao.
Bubbles Up
The Snark
Inquiring Minds Want To Know…
On Monday, The Epoch Times posted an article about three investigations currently being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These are three investigations that somehow were never quite concluded by the Biden administration.
The article reports:
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said on May 26 that the bureau is looking at launching investigations into cases of potential public corruption.
“Shortly after swearing in, [FBI Director Kash Patel] and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest,” Dan Bongino wrote in a post on social media platform X on the morning of May 26.
Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and radio host, noted that they “made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases.”
One case that they are looking to target is the FBI investigation into the alleged pipe bombs left near the Democratic and Republican national committee buildings in Washington a day before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, he said.
The FBI said in 2024 that a $500,000 reward is still in effect for information leading to the arrest of the pipe bomb suspect. Earlier in 2025, David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, told CNN that officials are seeking new leads.
“Maybe allegiances have changed or relationships have changed, and it’s time to report [on the suspect],” Sundberg told the outlet.
The article lists the two other cases:
Other cases that warrant more resources include one involving the discovery of cocaine in the White House in July 2023 and the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Bongino said.
“I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly and we are making progress,” he said in his post. “If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us then please contact the FBI.”
The article also noted:
Meanwhile, Patel confirmed on May 18 that the FBI is investigating New York Attorney General Letitia James over her real estate transactions.
I am thankful that the American people may finally find out exactly who was involved in these crimes.
Forcing Congress To Do Its Job
On Tuesday, updated Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about the REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act. This Act would begin to move a large part of responsibility for making laws away from the Executive Branch (bureaucratic regulations) and into the Legislative Branch (Congress actually passing laws).
The article reports:
When the House of Representatives last week passed Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” there was a poison pill for the regulatory state buried within: the long-lingering REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act that proponents have been trying to send to the Oval Office for signature for 16 years. The implications of such a bureaucratic dressing-down would reverberate throughout all of U.S. industry and consumerism.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told Just The News, No Noise TV show that his hope is that it gets over the finish line and once it does, a cascade of other burden-easing improvements can take place. “As you look forward with the legislative agenda, there will be other opportunities to get permanent reform done, NEPA (National Environamental Policy Act) reform to make it easier to invest in America at less cost, taking less time and having more certainty,” he said.
It was originally introduced in 2009 by then-Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., with the goal of increasing congressional oversight of federal agency rule-making. The current version of the bill stipulates that agency rules with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more, significant cost or price increases for consumers or industries, or substantial adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation, or US competitiveness, would require explicit approval from both the House and Senate via a joint resolution and then be signed by the president before taking effect.
The article notes:
A wide range of industries would likely see a tectonic shift, including energy, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, financial services, manufacturing and construction, transportation, agriculture and food safety.
Phil Kerpen, who serves as president of American Commitment, referred to it as “unfinished business from the Tea Party era” and told Just The News that this could be the most significant aspect of the bill because it “would be a massive, positive change, and stop this pendulum from swinging wildly back and forth with the party in the White House. We’d have a lot more policy stability.”
In addition to concrete steps towards regulatory overhaul and passing Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” if Republicans remain committed to the issues upon which they were elected, they could quite possibly remain in the majority, thus granting Trump two more years to govern without obstructionist Democratic Party constraints.
The REINS Act would definitely bring us closer to the government our Founding Fathers envisioned.
The Tariffs
The featured article in the May issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis Magazine is “Tariffs in American History” by John Steele Gordon, author, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
Tariffs are among the oldest of taxes for the simple reason that they are easy to collect. Just send in the tax collectors and don’t let the goods being transported move until the duty has been paid. Being one of the earliest forms of taxation, it is not surprising that tariffs produced one of the earliest forms of tax evasion: smuggling.
In America’s colonial period, the east coast of the United States, with its many rivers and inlets that the small ships of those days could utilize, lent itself to smuggling, and the American colonists evaded British tariffs on a grand scale.
Indeed, Rhode Island, with its long coastline relative to the area and its many small harbors, was the epicenter of colonial smuggling, and it opposed any attempts to suppress it. Rhode Island was the first colony to foreswear allegiance to Great Britain, on May 4, 1776, two months before the Declaration of Independence. It was also the only state not to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, fearing that a stronger federal government, empowered to tax, would suppress smuggling. And it was the last state to ratify the Constitution, on May 29, 1790, more than a year after the federal government had come into existence. It did so then only under the threat of having its exports taxed as if from a foreign nation.
When the Constitution took effect in 1789, the first order of business was to straighten out the nation’s disastrous financial situation. That is why the new State Department started out with only five employees while the Treasury Department had 40.
When Alexander Hamilton became the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, he immediately began to prepare a schedule of tariffs, along with excise taxes on such commodities as alcohol and tobacco. The Constitution forbids taxing the exports of any state, and so American tariffs have always been laid only on imports.
The article concludes:
One of the provisions agreed to by the U.S. in the early GATT negotiations following World War II was differential tariffs: the U.S. lowered its tariffs more than its trading partners did. Again, the purpose of this was to speed the economic rebuilding of allies and former enemies who had suffered devastation during the war. But World War II has now been over for 80 years. The economic recovery of Western Europe and the Far East has long since been accomplished. Yet the differential tariffs in many cases are still in existence.
The U.S., for instance, has a 2.5 percent tariff on cars imported from Germany, while Germany has a ten percent tariff on American cars. In addition, Germany’s value-added tax is remitted on exports but charged on imports. As a result, while the logos of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen are seen all over American roads, those of Ford and General Motors are a rare sight in Germany. And China, as already noted, is far worse, a world outlier, in terms of its nefarious trade policies.
President Trump wants to level this playing field. To do so, he has started what some are calling a trade war and others are calling the greatest example of “the art of the deal” in history. We will have to wait and see how it plays out.
The question we might want to ask ourselves is, “Is the media giving tariffs a bad rap because President Trump is putting them in place or because they are actually bad?”
The Justice Department Is Suing North Carolina
On May 28th, Townhall posted an article stating that the Department of Justice is suing North Carolina.
The article reports:
The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a lawsuit against the State of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Board of Elections for its inaccurate voter rolls—a violation of the Help America Vote Act.
The lawsuit alleges the state did not require a proper form of identification—a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security number—in its voter registration form, a clear violation of HAVA.
Because proper identification rules were not followed in the 2024 election, a number of votes were accepted that were questionable at best.
In April, Breitbart reported:
A North Carolina appeals court has ruled that more than 60,000 voters who voted in the state’s Supreme Court election in November 2024 must verify that they are eligible to vote.
The ruling from the appeals court ordering “more than 65,000 voters” to prove their eligibility comes after Judge Jefferson Griffin, who ran against North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs in November, challenged the results of the election, according to NBC News.
Per the outlet, voters “now have 15 business days to provide state elections officials with the necessary proof of identity that would verify their votes,” and voters who do not respond “will not have their votes counted in the race.”
That decision was overruled by another court and Allison Riggs was declared the winner of the election. I suspect the lawsuit by the Department of Justice might have something to do with preventing that from happening in the future.
The article at Townhall concludes:
“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”
Every legal vote needs to be counted. Every illegal voter needs to be prevented from voting.
Is the National Debt Reducible?
Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D
The current national debt is currently $36.2 trillion and will have gone up by $8.5 billion per day by the time you read this. The debt amounts to $106,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. The national debt has been growing at rates never before seen in America and, in fact, no other country on earth. The question becomes whether this expansion of the debt is sustainable, and if not, what will happen if it continues?
Just to put things in perspective, the national debt was $17 billion in 1929 the year of the stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression. Notice we are talking billions not trillions. A trillion is 1,000 billion. If you stacked 36 trillion-dollar bills on top of each other, they would reach 2.2 million miles high. It may be a good thing that artificial intelligence is taking over, since the human mind cannot comprehend such figures. By the end of World War II in 1945, the national debt had jumped to $259 billion. The debt dropped slightly by 1950 to $257 billion, and then it continued to increase steadily until 1980 when it doubled. It has been going up about 75% each five-year period until now, when the debt is expected to reach $37.6 trillion by the end of this year.
Now the only thing that has saved us from going completely bankrupt has been the growth of the overall economy as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the value of all goods and services. Compared to your personal finances, this would be like taking on more debt, which you can manage only as long as your income keeps up with the debt increase. The World Bank estimates that a country can manage its debt as long as the debt does not exceed 77% of its GDP. The percentage of U.S. debt is now 124% of its GDP. This would be like your personal indebtedness being 24% higher than your total annual income. There are only nine other countries whose debt to GDP ratio is higher than the U.S. Japan leads that list with a ratio of 240%, and many of the others are failing states you probably never heard of like Eritrea and Maldives. Since we are dependent on others financing our debt by purchasing federal treasury bonds and other government securities, this only can continue as long as those lending us money are confident we can pay the interest and return the principle of the bond/security.
This is where President Trump’s strategy comes in. The national debt will never be paid off. We must accept that reality. The only president to succeed in paying off the national debt was Andrew Jackson in 1835. The game is to balance the increase in national debt caused by increased government spending with the growth of the economy. President Trump appears to be trying to address both spending and growth, but realizes that while some cuts in federal spending may be possible (if the courts, Democrats, and people getting free stuff permit it), the growth of the economy is the critical strategy. That is the reason he is pressing so hard to return manufacturing back to the United States through tariffs, reducing burdensome regulations, and utilizing our abundant sources of energy.
Unfortunately, as we are seeing in his effort to pass the “One Beautiful Bill,” he is meeting with the usual opposition. The reality is that once people get used to free stuff from the government, it is almost impossible to end it. The expansion of Medicaid is a prime example. When Medicaid was first introduced and signed into law by Democrat President Johnson in 1965, it was intended to provide healthcare to low-income children deprived of parental support, their caretaker relatives, the elderly, the blind, and individuals with disabilities. Over the years the program has expanded to include younger, healthy individuals who should be able to work for and afford their own medical services, which of course has greatly expanded the cost of the program. Since a politician’s primary objective is to get re-elected, most are opposed to reducing the eligibility of their voters to access free stuff. The so-called SALT (State and Local Taxes) deduction that allows the deduction of state taxes from federal taxes is another example. The maximum amount of local taxes that can be deducted when itemizing federal tax deductions has been $10,000 since 2017; the new budget bill raises that limit to $40,000. This change was a concession to those Republicans who represent the highest taxing states such as New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, etc. This may help Republicans from those states get re-elected, but it transfers the tax burden to the rest of us. Similarly, the bill does not eliminate all funding for green new deal subsidies as it should; but just reduces them.
What all this shows is the fatal flaw of democratic governments that implement social programs that they never reduce, but always expand. Then the politicians, in order to continue getting elected, choose their own interests over the best interests of the country. This is one of the better arguments that can be made for term limits. The best we can hope for is that the impact of the ”Big Beautiful Bill,” will produce an expansion of the economy that will make it easier to afford the interest burden of carrying such a high national debt. Time will tell.
The Plane! The Plane! (Part Two)
Pastor Daimon – CCTA Chairman
Here we are again to finalize our look into the “plane”. There are some sketchy views and opinions about the “plane” out there, yet this article is just one tool to help us all get a Biblical perspective so that we may be centered during our own assessment of the gift. I must admit, the gifting of the plane should not have caught any of us off guard. Tattoo has been trying to tell us since January 14, 1977 that the plane is coming!
In part one, we saw that the Queen of Sheba brought extravagant gifts to King Solomon due to his fame for his wealth, his wisdom, the superior military might of his nation, Israel, and his ability to successfully handle and judge in difficult matters of the people. Psalm 72:10 says, “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles will bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts.” This verse is actually a passage of an entire Psalm of prophecy which, in theology, we call a “Scripture of double-reference” that foretells of this event with the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, AND, the future second coming of Christ during the 1000 year Millennial reign. This time in world history could be another precursor or foreshadow of the coming of Christ as…hear me out…that God is now demonstrating this moment through a Gentile world leader in President Trump just as he did through a Hebrew world leader in King Solomon. Why? Well, salvation has been made available to all, Jews and Gentiles. And, throughout biblical history, God has revealed His plan through Jews and Gentiles. Ruth was a Gentile. Doctor Luke, who wrote the Gospel that bears his name and Book of Acts, was a Gentile. Timothy, to whom Paul wrote two books in the New Testament, was a Gentile. Donald J. Trump is also a Gentile.
Just as King Solomon, President Trump has incredible personal wealth, and is amassing a ton of wealth rapidly for our nation…even to the retrieving the gold that was stolen from Fort Knox YEARS ago. (That will be a future article.) President Trump has been using wisdom to guide him in the moves that he is making on behalf of the United States and re-establishing our nation as the top world power. And, his administration is handling the matters between the people with wisdom bringing forth successful resolve. Suddenly, Arab Kings have brought forth gifts for our nation ($5 Trillion+ dollars invested into our nation and a $400,000,000 jet) that are tokens of honor and respect as they recognize these same qualities in President Trump and the superior power of the United States of America. This has been their tradition since the time of Solomon.
These are just a few thoughts that may deliver some insights into what we see happening in our nation and in our world. I believe, to properly bring all things into focus to the people, every Pastor should solicit the Bible’s perspective to wipe away the blurred lines. I hope this serves as a catalyst to assist you in further research for answers so that discernment may lead to transparency and truth in all of our government’s operations.
Exactly What Are The Medicaid Cuts Cutting?
On Monday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the fraud and waste found in Medicaid.
The article reports:
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator, said his agency and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have identified at least $14 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse.
“There’s about $14 billion we’ve identified with DOGE, of folks who are duly enrolled wrongly in multiple states for Medicaid,” Oz told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
As an example, Oz said: “You live in New Jersey, but you move to Pennsylvania, and which state gets your Medicaid? Turns out both states collect money from the federal government.”
There are other areas, he said, that constitute abuse of the federal health care system. He said some people who are eligible to get a job or seek education are receiving Medicaid. Oz echoed statements made by GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.)., who in recent days said that able-bodied individuals and illegal immigrants have received Medicaid benefits.
Oz urged that Medicaid be cleaned up so that it can provide services to individuals such as people with disabilities and others, suggesting that Republicans keep a work requirement to be eligible for the program.
“I think there’s a moral hazard if we don’t, because you’ve got people who are not working who could work, who should work, and it’s better for them and better for the country if they do,” he said, referring to Republicans’ having added work requirements to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in the House of Representatives on May 22.
The article notes:
The bill, which is now in the hands of the Senate, would impose work requirements for low-income adults to receive Medicaid health insurance and would increase those requirements for food assistance. Supporters of the bill say the moves will save money, root out waste, and encourage personal responsibility.
Starting next year, many able-bodied Medicaid enrollees under age 65 would be required to show that they work, volunteer, or go to school in exchange for the health insurance coverage under the measure. Only Arkansas has had a work requirement that kicks people off for noncompliance.
It’s time for everyone who can to get out and help pull the wagon rather than sitting in the wagon and expecting everyone else to pull it.
Views On The Trump Economy Are Slowly Changing
The Democrat rant that ‘the economic sky is falling’ seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The economy is slowly coming back after four years of inflation and slow job growth. The workforce participation rate is steady, but climbing slightly, and inflation is somewhat under control. We can all rejoice in the significant drop in gasoline prices.
On May 27th, CNBC posted the following headline:
Consumer confidence for May was much stronger than expected on optimism for trade deals
I love how when a Republican is in the White House, good news is always unexpected.
The article reports:
Consumer optimism got a much-needed boost in May on hopes for trade pace between the U.S. and China, according to a survey Tuesday.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index leaped to 98.0, a 12.3-point increase from April and much better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 86.0.
Much of the positive sentiment, according to board officials, came from developments in the U.S.-China trade impasse, most notably President Donald Trump’s halting of the most severe tariffs on May 12.
“The rebound was already visible before the May 12 US-China trade deal but gained momentum afterwards,” said Stephanie Guichard, the Conference Board’s senior economist for global indicators.
May’s rebound followed five straight months of declines. Consumers and investors had grown sour on economic prospects amid the intensifying trade war that Trump has launched against U.S. global trading partners, with China a particular target.
I think all of us consumers feel optimistic when we don’t have to mortgage our house to buy a steak or fill up our gas tank.
The article concludes:
The present situation index increased to 135.9, up 4.8 points, and the expectations index posted a major surge to 72.8, a 17.4 point gain. Investors also showed more optimism, with 44% now expecting stocks to be higher over the next 12 months, up 6.4 percentage points from April.
Views on the labor market also improved, with 19.2% of respondents expecting more jobs to be available in the next six months, compared to 13.9% in April. At the same time, 26.6% expect fewer jobs, down from 32.4%.
Survey officials said sentiment improved across age, income and political affiliation, though noting that the “strongest improvements” came from Republicans.
Let’s hope Congress can pass laws that keep this going.
Rewarding Bad Behavior
On Monday, The Jerusalem Post posted an article about some of the consequences of anti-Semitism at Harvard University. Spoiler alert–there are no negative consequences.
The article reports:
In October 2023, Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo surrounded a Jewish student named Yoav Segev and covered him with keffiyehs while shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
One of two Harvard students who assaulted a Jewish classmate during an anti-Israel protest in October 2023 has been appointed as class marshal by Harvard Divinity School at the upcoming graduation ceremony.
This comes just three weeks after the other assailant was awarded a $65,000 Harvard Law School fellowship to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The Harvard Law Review website says its $65,000 fellowship goes to recent Harvard Law School graduates “with a demonstrated interest in serving the public interest through their work and scholarship.”
Just to refresh your memory– CAIR was founded in 1994. CAIR is listed among the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. It was included as an unindicted co-conspirator because it was involved in funding Hamas.
The article notes:
In October 2023, Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo surrounded a Jewish student named Yoav Segev and covered him with keffiyehs while shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as he tried to free himself and said “don’t touch me.”
While Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo originally faced a criminal trial, Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen W. McClenon dismissed the charges at the end of April, instead ordering them to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service.
Rewarding violence is not acceptable. I wonder what the response would have been if the violence had been against a black student. Harvard has totally lost any credibility as an institute of higher learning. Instead, it has become a home for those in our country who refuse to learn the lessons of history.
From my friends at Townhall:
I Don’t Think This Is What The Founding Fathers Had In Mind
On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article about how some of the White House staff under President Biden viewed their jobs.
The article reports:
A former aide to President Joe Biden said White House staff felt justified doing “undemocratic things” in order to stop the “existential threat” that was Donald Trump.
Axios reporter Alex Thompson revealed on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream that White House insiders revealed to him they often viewed themselves as the decision makers in the Biden administration and were shielded from the president’s oversight.
“If you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe — that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things,” Thompson said.
Another aide also reportedly told Thompson that former President Biden “just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years.”
“He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while,” Thompson said the aide told him. “His aides could pick up the slack.”
“When you’re voting for president, you’re voting for the aides around him,” the aide said.
No, actually you are voting for the president and his policies. So who is the threat to our democracy (actually we are a republic)?
It is concerning to me that a group of unelected people who are supposed to be aiding the President in his job would take it upon themselves to take over the job of President.
I think it’s time for our schools to start teaching the U.S. Constitution.
When The Engineers Don’t Quite Get The Math Quite Right
On Thursday, The New York Post posted an article about North Korea’s launch of its new navy destroyer. It didn’t go well.
The article reports:
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un was left red-faced and furious after a navy destroyer was badly damaged during a botched launch as he looked on.
The hermit dictator slammed the incident as a national embarrassment and vowed to punish those responsible in a rare public admission of failure, according to state media.
Kim suffered a humiliating blow when the newly built 5,000-ton destroyer became unbalanced during its christening at the port of Chongjin on Wednesday.
The malfunction caused the vessel to slide prematurely into the water, crushing parts of the hull and leaving the bow stuck on the shipway, Korean Central News Agency reported.
The article concludes:
Seoul intelligence claim the Choe Hyon was likely built with Moscow’s assistance following last year’s strategic military partnership summit between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While North Korea’s naval forces are considered far inferior to South Korea’s, its destroyer program is still viewed as a serious threat by the West, given Kim’s nuclear arms.
Hours after releasing the report of the damaged destroyer, North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles from an area near the northeastern town of Sondok, according to South Korea’s military.
The hermit leader of North Korea is not someone to be taken lightly. His anger can easily be misplaced and misdirected in ways that could be a serious threat to world peace. I guess getting your shipbuilding plans from Russia might not be a great idea.
The Plane! The Plane! (Part One)
Author: Pastor Daimon – Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association Chairman
All of us over 50 years of age can remember Tatoo exclaiming “The Plane! The Plane!” on one of our favorite Saturday-night television programs, “Fantasy Island.” Today, just in the past week, we hear that same cry from many Americans–”The plane! The plane!”
What plane? Oh, yeah…the plane from Qatar that they are donating to the United States Air Force/ Defense Department. What a wonderful gesture from a nation that I have never considered an American ally due to some foundational differences of our nations. Nevertheless, I will attempt to explain.
It just may be a genuine gift from Qatar as a token of respect and acknowledgement of our great power. Therefore, to accept this plane from Qatar may actually be a good move. A failure to receive this gift may be considered an insult, causing a rift between the US and its want-to-be enemies. Refusing the gift could possibly lead to great hostility between the US and Qatar. Please allow me to interject with a significant piece of historical background information found in my favorite Book…The Holy Bible.
This custom of giving gifts to foreign kings and nations by Middle-Eastern Kings began thousands of years ago and can be found in the Scriptures in regards to the Queen of Sheba and the King of Israel, Solomon. As we travel back to the Book of First Kings, chapter 10, the Queen of Sheba had heard of the great wealth and wisdom of Solomon, and his ability to handle matters as a king in a way that granted him great reputation and fame throughout the world. In fact, let’s listen to the Bible speak:
“Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels that bore spices, very much gold, and precious stones; and when she came to Solomon, she spoke with him about all that was in her heart. So Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing so difficult for the king that he could not explain it to her. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers, and his entryway by which he went up to the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. Then she said to the king: “It was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However, I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes; and indeed, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of which I heard.”
Then she gave the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold, spices in great quantity, and precious stones. Also, the ships of Hiram, which brought gold from Ophir, brought great quantities of almug wood and precious stones from Ophir. And the king made steps of the almug wood for the house.
The weight of gold that came to Solomon yearly was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, 15 besides that from the traveling merchants, from the income of traders, from all the kings of Arabia, and from the governors of the country.”
This is an excerpt from some verses of the New King James English Version of the Holy Bible, First Kings, Chapter Ten. Does this all sound familiar? I will return next week to close this discussion concerning “The Plane!”
The Republican Party Now Contains The Old Obama Coalition
On Saturday, Townhall posted an article about the Obama political coalition and how it has become the Trump coalition. It’s really not surprising when you look at the issues the Democrat party has supported in recent years–massive illegal immigration, boys in girls’ sports, and transgender medical treatments for children. These are generally 80/20 issues, with 80 percent of Americans supporting the Republicans’ views on the issue. The Democrat party needs new issues that are popular with the American voters.
The article reports:
Former Obama aides Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer spoke about one of the main things that’s gnawing at liberals: Trump has taken over their coalition. The Republican Party is now a multi-racial working-class party. Republicans are winning enough women and Latino voters, which makes this latest iteration of the GOP virtually unbeatable. The only good news for Democrats is that Trump is term-limited, and there’s nothing permanent in politics.
It’s an underreported gripe, but the data and the exit polling don’t lie. Pfieffer especially went into how if Democrats don’t reverse course and have the tough discussions about their messaging, agenda, and campaign strategy, they’re on the path toward total annihilation. Latino voters are fleeing the Democrats, and the current leadership and political operative class seems to be banking more on waiting for Trump to ‘screw up.’ It’s not going to work.
Being against President Trump is not a viable political platform. Until the Democrats come up with a few solutions to problems that voters can related to, they are going to have a problem.
The article concludes:
It’s funny how things have flipped: high turnout doesn’t favor Democrats anymore. If every registered voter had been dragged out of their homes and taken to the polls during the 2024 election, Trump would’ve won the popular vote by five points instead of 1.7.
The Democratic Party can’t focus on these issues because it lacks the bandwidth to face them. These people stick their heads in the sand when pressed and given facts that obliterate its views and messaging.
It will be interesting to see if the Democrats can sort this out in the coming year.
When You Don’t Think Something All The Way Through
This is a picture of a landfill with used windmill turbine blades. Note the size of the tractor in comparison to the size of the blades.
The picture is from an article posted at The Federalist on Friday.
The article reports:
While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.
The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals — not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines — pose no threat currently to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.
…“Nobody planned on this, nobody had a plan to get rid of them, nobody planned for closure,” said Dwight Clark, whose company, Solar eWaste Solutions, recycles solar panels. “Nobody thought this through.”
The discussion about what to do with worn-out solar and wind equipment is another topic usually elided in net zero blueprints, which often focus on the claimed benefits of projects while discounting or ignoring the costs. As RealClearInvestigations previously reported regarding the lack of plans for acquiring the massive amounts of land for solar and wind farms needed to achieve net zero, the math can get fuzzy, and the numbers cited most frequently are those rosiest for renewables.
The article concludes:
What’s more, bankruptcies among European companies have begun to mar the renewable wind landscape as surely as the towers, a trend that could continue or accelerate as the Trump administration stops the federal spigot.
“The government has let them off the hook by shaping their policies around climate activism,” Shaffer said. “They’re not putting down escrow money for decommissioning and someone’s going to have to come along and remove them, or we’ll be staring at these rotting towers in the ocean.”
The blades are so big that they are usually broken into three pieces when decommissioned, and the giant chunks of fiberglass, resin, and composite materials go to landfills or warehouses.
Already, horror stories exist of municipalities faced with decommissioning problems. Towns like Sweetwater, Texas, which for many years has been the leading state for wind power, have seen turbine recycling contracts ignored. Global Fiberglass Solutions, one of the companies handling such contracts, did not return requests for comment.
“You can’t reuse turbines, and there are now thousands upon thousands of blades just sitting there in warehouses already,” Isaac said. “It’s an environmental disaster we’re looking at.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations.
There is nothing environmentally friendly about either wind or solar energy when you look at the bigger picture–how it is manufactured and how it has to be disposed of.
The Predictions Were Wrong Again
The doom and gloom crowd is just not happy with the Trump economy. It isn’t really the Trump economy yet–he has only been in office four months, but he has definitely made some moves that have impacted the economy.
On Friday, Breitbart reported:
The economy keeps failing to live up to claims by critics of the Trump administration that the economy is teetering on a recession.
Sales of new single-family homes surged in April, with the pace of sales rising to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 743,000 units, the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Friday. That’s a 10.9 percent increase from March and 3.3 percent above the level from a year earlier, though both comparisons fall within margins of error that leave statistical significance uncertain.
The South and Midwest regions led the gains, with sales up 11.7 percent and 35.5 percent, respectively, from March. The Northeast, by contrast, saw a sharp 14.8 percent monthly decline in sales.
The April numbers mark the fastest sales pace since early 2023 and suggest some resilience in the new home market, even as mortgage rates remain elevated and affordability continues to be a headwind.
We are getting to the end of the baby boomer retirement years. The youngest baby boomer is now about 61 years old. How much of the increased new home sales in the South and the Midwest is the result of the boomers retiring and moving to places where the weather is better and the cost of living lower?
The article concludes:
The data show continued strength in mid-range price tiers, with homes priced between $300,000 and $499,999 accounting for just over half of April’s sales. Homes under $300,000 made up only about 15 percent of the market.
Upward Revisions and Regional Divergence
With this release, the Census Bureau revised seasonally adjusted figures going back to January 2020, a move that slightly adjusted trends in past months. Regionally, the year-over-year picture remains mixed: the Midwest and South posted modest gains from April 2024, while the Northeast and West saw declines.
The new home market continues to reflect a bifurcated economy, with demand supported by new household formation and limited resale inventory, but constrained by affordability challenges and financing costs.
As energy costs come down, and people have a bit of wiggle room in their budgets, I suspect we will see the housing market do very well in the areas of the country with a reasonable cost of living.
From my friends at Power Line Blog:
What Happened to America?
What happened to the America that I grew up in? I miss those days.
As I grew up, I was taught to treat adults with respect. I was taught to respect my teachers.
..I had respect for my family and, while my father passed away when I was six years old, Mom carried a big stick. Or should I say a wooden spoon. It left an indelible mark on my character and my outlook, and I appreciated her, and respected her for all her 84 years until her passing. She was a 28-year-old widow who raised five children (one girl, four boys) and did the best she could while working in a factory. She never gave up on us.
..I grew up in Chicago, but it was a different place than it is today. The school system enforced discipline, allowing us to learn. Most of us could write a letter adequately by the time we graduated eighth grade, since most of us would not end up staying in school long enough to receive a High School Diploma. Yet, we had common sense, and many went on to progress through the workforce to become successful in our workplaces and make a decent living. We did not eat Tide Pods because they did not exist, but we would have been smart enough to know not to eat them if they did exist. We did not need instructions that the cup of coffee we bought was hot, because that was common sense. Sense is not common anymore. ..Auto owners’ manuals explained how to adjust the engine valves, but today they tell you not to drink battery acid.
..Many went on to start their own businesses and become corporate CEO’s, regardless of not having a High School Diploma. Now, a college degree is no more than a High School Diploma with lessons in indoctrination. They are useless.
..Our nightly newscasts used to tell us what happened, and it was up to us to decide what that meant. Now, journalists and newscasters tell us outright lies, innuendos or falsehoods intended to manipulate our opinions and direct our viewpoints. Most legacy media is nothing short of propaganda arms of the democrat party. Sad, but true! Thankfully, podcasts, internet videos and commentaries and the like are replacing the legacy media. Even the White House has rearranged seating in the Press Room to put more modern-day media up close and moved the legacy media to the rear of the room.
..We grew up knowing that boys were boys, and girls were girls, and that nothing can change one into the other.
..We grew up believing in the sanctity of life and thought it a travesty that the Supreme Court manipulated the right of abortion from of the Constitution where there is no right stated. Wholesale manipulation of the Supreme Law of the Land, and viola, sixty-three million babies were aborted before that erroneous ruling was corrected.
…We learned the US and State Constitutions, along with our God-given rights, and we understood the three branches of government. You cannot control what you do not understand, and that is why we have the deep-state bureaucracy that we have today. Unelected bureaucrats have been allowed to fester and multiply for decades, and we pay the price daily.
We were lied to by our government, even then, and global cooling was the trend taught in schools. We were taught that we are headed into a pending Ice Age. In later years, it changed to global warming, and since they have no idea now, they are playing with the words like Climate Change. None of any of this has been proven, nor can it be at this stage, since our weather professionals cannot even get the weather forecasts for the week correct!
I could go on and on, but we all know that we must fix what is broken, but to do that, we must understand how we got here and not allow people to take us here again.