Monthly Archives: August 2025

Stacking The Deck Through Redistricting

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On Wednesday, American Greatness posted an article about the gerrymandering of Congressional districts. Redistricting has been used by both parties for a very long time. At one point our Massachusetts congressional district was in the shape of a sea horse in order to dilute one Republican area.

The article reports:

Few events in politics are more consequential while being less understood than redistricting. The consequences are obvious. If your party controls a state legislature, then once every ten years, when it comes time to redraw district boundaries for state legislative seats and seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, you can redraw them to your advantage.

The methods are less obvious, but intuitive enough. Create geographical boundaries that concentrate registered members of the opposition party into a single district, thereby shifting the majority in your favor in surrounding districts. Or, equally effective, disburse registered members of the opposition party into carefully apportioned districts where they will not have a majority anywhere, completely nullifying their voting power.

The intelligibility of the process ends there. How redistricting commissions parse voter geolocations—deemed favorable or unfavorable based on precinct-level registration—is a complex science. And since the people drawing these new boundaries are almost invariably partisan hardliners, a lot of time and money is invested in calculating maps that precisely optimize the ruling party’s prospects of preserving and enhancing their advantages in the next election.

The article includes a map of the Congressional Districts of Los Angeles, California:

The logic in drawing the above districts is less than obvious.

The article notes:

In reviewing this map, it doesn’t take a cartographer to quickly recognize how the boundaries are twisted in ways that bear no resemblance to city limits or natural geographic features. These boundaries are contorted to the point of absurdity for one reason: to ensure California Democrats control 83 percent of the state’s congressional delegation, to ensure that California’s Republicans are denied 13 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that they might otherwise have earned based on voter behavior in California’s statewide elections.

The article suggests a solution:

There are solutions to the practice of partisan redistricting that plagues every state, California most of all. It is to rely on algorithms that can assign district boundaries without taking into account voter demographics or party affiliation. It would automatically generate district borders, sorting at the precinct level, according to the following conditions:

(1) Maintain equal populations;

(2) select for district centers based on areas with the highest population density;

(3) solve for convex edges; and

(4) minimize the cumulative length of the polygons formed by the districts.

It would be naive to believe that this would totally solve the problem, but it might make Congress more representative of the people they are supposed to serve.

Addressing Social Security

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop PhD

A recent report indicated that Social Security is in worse condition than previously estimated and will be operating at a deficit by at least 2033 if not before. If no changes are made by Congress, social security benefits will have to be cut by about 23% to match payments into the program. Let’s take a look at what is causing the problem and potential solutions.

Currently, 74.2 million Americans receive Social Security benefits. This is about one fifth of the population. Eighty-seven percent of people over 65 years of age are currently receiving benefits. In 2023, this amounted to 1.4 trillion dollars or 23% of the federal budget. There are three types of benefits. The largest group, 67 million, is retirees who receive an average of $1,999 per month. The second group is 4.9 million people receiving Supplemental Security Income of an average of $1,581 per month. Lastly, there are 2.5 million receiving both types of benefits.

There are a few reasons for the solvency issues with social security. First is the percentage of employed workers paying into the system compared to the number receiving benefits. For example, in 1965 there were 4 workers for every person receiving retirement benefits. Now it is 2.7 workers per retiree. This trend is expected to continue. Second, people are living longer and due to the so-called Baby Boomer generation, the number retiring is at an all-time high. Also, the number of manufacturing jobs has been decreasing. This is due in part to allowing cheaper imports and the increasing use of machine-based manufacturing which lowers the number of workers needed. The third issue is the expansion of the Social Security programs from strictly a benefit for retirees, as intended by the original legislation creating the program in the 1930s, to income supplementation for the disabled. The definition of a disabled person has expanded from clear physical limitations to vague and less certain psychological disorders. The final problem is the declining birthrate. It takes a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman just to maintain a stable population. The current birthrate is 1.4 and declining.

The question is, “What options are available to keep the social security system solvent?” The Social Security program is not allowed to operate at a deficit, and therefore the problem must be solved before benefits exceed revenues. One option is to reduce the benefits paid to retirees. This would break the promise made by the program to workers who have paid into the system all their working years. This would also be a problem as the cost of living continues to increase. A second option would be to increase the qualifying age for receiving benefits. Because people are living longer, this would still allow a considerable number of years for the average person to receive benefits before they die. It would also maintain more people in the workforce to continue to contribute to social security program revenues. A third option would be to increase the rate of payment into the system by those employed. The question of fairness becomes a problem with this option since we would be increasingly requiring workers to pay for the retirement of others. More socialism. Also, the Big Beautiful Bill included a unique program that awards $1000 for each child born from 2025 through 2029 for parents to establish nontaxable-interest accounts that can be added to over the years.

None of these potential solutions will be easy for Congress since they all have potential political blow back. This is another example of social programs that continue to grow and expand until they threaten to bankrupt the system. In a truly free society, each individual should be responsible for earning and saving enough so they can finance their own retirement. Many people have done that and do not have to rely on Social Security.  This needs to be encouraged, and perhaps if Trump’s plans to expand the economy succeed, it will allow more people to achieve this goal. Relying on the government is always a bad idea.

Working Toward Election Integrity

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Anyone who remembers the 1960 presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon understands that Illinois (particularly Chicago) might have a problem with voter integrity. The question becomes what to do about it. Some other states have similar problems. Oddly enough, the answer may lie in the courts.

On Monday, PJ Media reported:

Federal courts have allowed two lawsuits to proceed against California and Illinois to force them to clean up their voter rolls.

Democrats have been engaging in election fraud for well over a century and a half, but I don’t think any of us understood the extent of the election integrity problem in our day until the last few election cycles. One aspect of potential fraud is the presence of ‘dirty names’ on voter rolls—individuals who are not legally allowed to be there, whether because they are illegal aliens, deceased, or disqualified for other reasons. Those are the names Judicial Watch and two other organizations are suing to remove in two deep blue states.

“The voter rolls in Illinois and California are a mess and these court decisions allow our Judicial Watch legal team to proceed in court to clean them up,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated in a press release. “The stakes are high—as there are potentially millions of ineligible names on the voter rolls in these two states.”

The article concludes:

Both lawsuits can now move forward thanks to the rulings from last week.

This is a good beginning.

Common Sense From A Congressman

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On Tuesday, Fox News reported the following:

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke the nonprofit status of a Muslim advocacy group that he believes has ties to terror groups, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the letter, Cotton notes that “in the largest terrorism-financing case in U.S. history, [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.” CAIR was listed as an unindicted coconspirator in the infamous Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing case. The organization later attempted, unsuccessfully, to have its name removed from the list.

The Justice Department found that HLF and five of its leaders had, while working together and with others, “provided material support to the Hamas movement.” In total, the groups provided Hamas with approximately $12.4M, according to the DOJ.

In July of 2024, PJ Media reported:

The first indication of the activities of this clandestine (Muslim) Brotherhood organization came in September 2007, with the revelation during the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terrorism funding trial of a document dating from May 1991, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America.” It stated that “The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions” (p. 7).

The article concludes:

CAIR was disavowed by the Biden administration after the organization’s executive director appeared to praise Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. In November 2023, just weeks after the attacks, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.” Additionally, in his remarks, Awad appeared to further justify the attacks, saying that “the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense” and that Israel does not.

The New York Times quoted then-Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates as saying that the administration condemned the “shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) slammed Awad’s recent remarks about the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The national executive director said that “Netanyahu calls the shots. Trump pretends to be in charge.” Additionally, the ADL pointed out that Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, referred to Congress and the White House as “Israeli-occupied territories.”

The remarks are not shocking once you realize who CAIR is. Their nonprofit status should be revoked and they should be monitored closely for terrorist activity. If you have not yet read the document referred to in the PJ Media article, please take the time to read it. It is important.

Applying The Statute Of Limitations

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article explaining how the Statute of Limitations applies to the potential case against the former Obama intelligence officials who obstructed the investigation and concealed evidence in the Russia Hoax.

The article reports:

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Sunday that the clock began “ticking” on a potential case being brought against former Obama intelligence officials for obstruction the moment “deliberately concealed evidence” was discovered by the Trump administration.

The Russia investigation, which alleged President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to sway the election in his favor, received new scrutiny in July after the FBI reportedly placed former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan under criminal investigation. With allegations and new intelligence surfacing about how Comey, Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper played a role in targeting the Trump campaign, Jarrett was asked by “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo if he believed the Department of Justice (DOJ) “will act” and whether “the statute of limitations apply to conspiracy or not.”

“I would say yes to all three. This does look like a broad criminal conspiracy by unscrupulous officials, dishonest people. I would look at conspiracy to defraud the government, deprivation of rights under color of law, but importantly, obstruction of justice and the cover up,” Jarrett said. “The elaborate cover up has been going on for years, as Stephen Miller pointed out, which extends the statute of limitations in any conspiracy case against malign actors. That’s because the clock begins ticking when deliberately concealed evidence is discovered, which is actually quite recently.”

“So, for example, you were talking about the burn bags that were discovered incriminating documents hidden at the FBI, as well as other records, hard drives squirreled away under lock and key by Comey recently found,” Jarrett added. “So attempting to conceal or destroy evidence relevant to investigations, that’s obstruction. The last overt act in a conspiracy starts the clock anew. So that’s the value of bringing a conspiracy case that includes obstruction.”

If the information we are receiving is proven to be correct, the people involved belong in jail. If we do not deal with this type of illegal behavior, it will continue. There have to be consequences for the illegal actions.

What Is Journalistic Responsibility?

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Just for the record, I don’t consider myself a journalist. I am a blogger. My goal is to point out stories that the mainstream media might not have carried and to shine light on shenanigans in the press and elsewhere.

Recently,  The New York Times posted a very misleading article about children starving in Gaza. Anyone who has investigated this claim understands that Hamas holds food hostage (as well as people). The humanitarian aid that comes into Gaza is sold at exorbitant prices to raise money to buy weapons. That is documented in various places. That is why Israel has taken to doing food drops–in an effort to get food directly to the people. There was a picture included in The New York Times article of a child who was obviously suffering from malnutrition. It turns out that the child shown has a genetic health problem that is causing the malnutrition.

On Monday, Hot Air reported:

The New York Times ran a photo on its front page that was a visual lie. 

The point of that lie was to back the claims made in their article that Israel was intentionally starving Gazan children, but apparently, there were no photos available that would back the claims made in their story. 

No doubt they believed the story that their reporters were feeding them, not that any reporter who was not a Hamas toady would dare set foot in Gaza–but in the circular logic of the Times they assumed that nothing printed in their paper could be false.

We know that they knew the photo was false because there are internal Times emails that show they did. In fact, the editors had rejected a different photo because they knew that printing a photo of a child suffering from a genetic disease did not back their story, and demanded it be replaced.

…Uh, maybe they would use a photo like that because there IS a dearth of photos of otherwise healthy children dying of starvation. Did they consider that?

Of course not.

We already know that The New York Times employs a reporter who openly expresses his admiration for Hitler and defends him against accusations of bias. Nazis can be fair, too, you know. His work is published in the Times, so it must be true.

As I said, I am not a journalist, but it seems to me that even if they had only put a note on the picture that said ‘file footage’ at least that would have been partially honest. When are they going to post the video of the hostage being forced to dig his own grave?

Never Again Is Now

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Hamas recently released a video of Israeli hostage Evyatar David being forced to dig his own grave in a tunnel underneath Gaza. He looks like the people the allied forces rescued from the concentration camps in the 1940’s. Yet somehow there is no outrage–only cries for a Palestinian state. That makes no sense. Where were those cries when the land in question was owned by Egypt and Jordan?

On Saturday, Breitbart reported:

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas filmed Israeli hostage Evyatar David being forced to dig his own grave in a tunnel underneath Gaza, in a propaganda video meant to pressure the Israeli government to end the war.

The war will end when Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages.

The article concludes:

Images of starving Palestinian children, many of them fake or misleading, have flooded the international media, though the only people confirmed to be starving are the remaining 20 or so living Israeli hostages.

It is telling that none of the countries in the region or Israel are interested in taking in the Palestinian refugees.

The article contains a video released by Hamas.

Good News From Florida

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On Monday, Townhall reported the following:

An undercover operation in Florida, labeled “Operation Seek and Ye Shall Find Out,” led to the arrests of 48 men, including 6 illegal aliens. The sting against child sex predators lasted for six days in Marion County, Florida.

The report from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said the men used various social media platforms, including Snapchat and dating apps, to meet children and to coordinate physical meetings. Undercover officers interacted with the men, who believed they were communicating with 13-15 year old children.

The alleged predators possessed condoms, guns, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs at the time of their arrests, according to investigators.

Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier spoke Wednesday at a press conference held after the operation.

“As a father, I am outraged by the heinous crimes we spoke about today,” said Uthmeier. “As Attorney General, I’m proud of the brave officers behind this record-breaking operation. The predators arrested by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office thought they were meeting children—instead they were met with handcuffs. In Florida, we protect our kids and hold predators accountable.”

These arrests should serve as a warning to parents to always be aware of who your children are talking to online. Predators use different social media platforms and different methods of luring children. In some cases, children from are lured into trafficking with promises of modeling careers.

The article concludes:

The report from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office alleges that many of these men used social media platforms to arrange explicit meet-ups locations. Forty of the men have been charged with traveling to meet a minor for illegal sexual conduct and human trafficking.

Uthmeier stated the Attorney General’s Office has filed a lawsuit against Snapchat, alleging the platform violated Florida laws designed to protect its children. 

“There is no defense,” said Uthmeier. “There is no justification. There is no excuse. It cannot happen, and it will not happen in Florida.”

Does She Have A Future As A Political Spokesperson?

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On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

President Trump dismissed Erika McEntarfer, the now-former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after rightfully accusing her of deliberately inflating employment numbers ahead of the election to boost Kamala Harris’s campaign. He pointed to a falsely reported “all-time high” in job figures that was later revised down by nearly one million jobs, an error he described as the most severe in over 50 years.

Supporting McEntarfer’s firing, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett cited a “partisan pattern” in BLS reporting and emphasized the need for a “fresh set of eyes” at the agency.

Apart from lying about the total number of jobs created, roughly a quarter of Biden’s job growth in some periods was government jobs funded by taxpayers, most job growth was part-time employment while full-time jobs remained flat, workforce participation declined which artificially improved the unemployment rate, and because of Biden’s catastrophic inflation, real wage growth was negative throughout his presidency.

When Biden handed off the economy to Trump, employment levels were still inferior to what Trump had built by 2019.

The article reviews some of the economic numbers under President Biden and President Trump:

The unemployment rate under Biden was also artificially improved due to a decline in labor force participation. Although the labor force participation rate rose from 61.3% in January 2021 to around 62.6–62.7% by mid-2024, it still remained 0.7 percentage points below the pre-pandemic level of 63.3% in February 2020.

When adjusted for population growth, nearly 2 million more Americans were on the sidelines compared to when President Trump was in office (Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). By July 2025, the rate had fallen again, dropping 0.5 percentage point over the year to 62.2%.

The article concludes:

All net job gains since the start of 2020 went to foreign-born workers, while native-born Americans experienced a net job loss. When comparing total employment to pre-pandemic levels, the increase was just 3.7 million jobs—still short of the 6.7 million jobs created under President Trump before the pandemic, meaning Biden fell about 3 million jobs behind that benchmark.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Real wages fell during the Biden administration due to inflation, and generally speaking, Americans struggled as inflation got worse and high-paying jobs got harder to find.

This Should Be Done Every Year

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about the Department of Justice’s effort to clean up America’s voter rolls in time for the mid-term election.

The article reports:

The Trump Justice Department has launched a nationwide effort to clean up voter rolls ahead of the 2026 elections, pushing states to purge duplicate and outdated registrations and catch any non-citizens or illegal aliens who slipped into a position to vote, officials told Just the News on Saturday.

Notifications have gone out to several states and localities that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has been concerned that states aren’t complying with federal laws, including California, Wisconsin, Utah and New Hampshire. 

“Unlike the previous administration, at President Trump’s DOJ, we will fight to have fair and secure elections – and that begins with making our voter rolls accurate,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Just the News.

There have been situations in North Carolina (and I am sure elsewhere) where three hundred people have been registered to vote using the address of a shack in the middle of a parking lot. In this age of computers, where the government knows exactly where you are because you carry a cell phone, there is no excuse for that.

The article notes:

“I can’t comment on the specifics of any ongoing investigations, but I am committed to making it harder to cheat and easier to vote,” Dhillon (Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon) told Just the News on Saturday. “Clean voter rolls will help achieve that goal.”

Just the News reported in June that Dhillon was moving to punish Wisconsin for allegedly failing to comply with federal voting integrity laws, taking the first step to withhold future federal funds for administering elections.

She notified the Wisconsin Election Commission that it was not in compliance with the Helping Americans Vote Act (HAVA), specifically for failing to set up a system to field and resolve voter complaints about election integrity.

“Quite surprisingly, we have learned that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has refused to provide any administrative complaint process or hearing regarding HAVA complaints against the Commission,” Dhillon wrote. “Rather, Wisconsin has decided to rely on a 2022 state court case opining that the Commission cannot police itself..

Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter.

The Impact Of The Tariffs

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On Sunday, Fox Business posted an article about the growth of manufacturing in America.

The article reports:

While some headlines fret over a weak jobs report, Marlin Steel CEO Drew Greenblatt sees something else entirely — a once-in-a-generation boom in American manufacturing that the media is missing.

“This is a re-industrialization of America. This is a fabulous, optimistic time,” Greenblatt told Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday.

“[And] the mainstream media is missing what’s happening. It’s such an optimistic, good time for a factory worker, and these are good jobs… we need more of these jobs in our country,” he continued, tying the outcomes to President Donald Trump’s tariff structure, which he sees as reversing the long-standing trend of foreign dumping and offshoring.

Greenblatt expects overseas companies to start building inside the U.S. — a shift already underway, he argued.

“We’re having a new opportunity for factories in Germany, factory owners in Japan and England, they’re saying, ‘You know what? We’ve got to rethink this. We have high taxes where we are. We have very expensive energy where we are. And now, when we ship to our biggest client in the world, America, there’s this new 15% tariff, so this is crazy. 

“We’re not going to build in Europe anymore. We’re not going to build it in Japan anymore. We’re going to put that factory in America,’ and, when they do that, they’re going to hire local American workers,” he said. 

So why would companies that have manufacturing facilities in other countries relocate to America? Some of the things a manufacturing company looks for in a location are low taxes, cheap energy, reliable energy, and a relatively skilled workforce. A company is willing to pay a reasonable wage if the tax policies remain friendly and the energy remains cheap and reliable. As the tariffs go into effect, I believe we will see a boom in American manufacturing.

When Judges Don’t Like The Law

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the influence of the Supreme Court decision regarding federal judges trying to undermine President Trump’s agency. Basically, the Supreme Court said that they were exceeding their authority. Unfortunately, the judges have continued to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The article reports:

Federal judges are increasingly ruling against the Trump administration’s agenda and in defiance of Supreme Court orders.

The executive branch finds itself fending off endless counter-opinions from federal judges in the courtroom as it continues to implement its hard-line immigration policies. While the Trump administration has scored major victories in the nation’s highest court, including successfully reining in the scope of nationwide injunctions by federal judges, some have chosen to defy Supreme Court rulings.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of the Biden administration, blocked the Trump administration on Friday from using a process known as “expedited removal” to quickly remove illegal migrants from the country, according to court documents. The order could, at least for the time being, dramatically curtail the White House’s ability to carry out its deportation agenda.

In a public statement about the ruling, an administration spokesperson slammed the Biden-appointed judge, accusing her of defying a previous Supreme Court ruling.

The article concludes:

The Trump administration, which has grown increasingly frustrated with “activist judges” continually undermining its agenda, scored a major victory in late June when, in a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court dramatically limited lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions in a decision revolving around Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

“The injunctions before us today reflect a more recent development: district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated in the majority opinion. “These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts. We therefore grant the Government’s applications to partially stay the injunctions entered below.”

The White House referred to the decision as a “big win” in a press statement shortly following the order.

However, in the relatively short amount of time since that Supreme Court ruling, lower courts have repeatedly taken advantage of exceptions in the order that still allow them to issue nationwide injunctions. Lower courts have blocked the president’s asylum ban at the southern border and barred the White House from ending deportation protections for Haitian nationals.

A federal judge in late July barred the Trump administration from ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal migrants, marking the third such nationwide court ruling blocking the order since the Supreme Court ruling.

The President represents the executive branch of our government. He was elected to do a job. The judges are way outside their lane when they try to prevent the President from doing the job he was elected to do.

Buyers’ Remorse

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about the city fathers of Nantucket’s regret at allowing the developers of the Vineyard Wind project to construct a large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town.

The article reports:

The Nantucket City Council and Nantucket residents are suffering from buyer’s remorse, like everybody who decided to buy a Yugo based on the marketing that it was a great car at an amazing price. 

We told you so. It’s as if liberals see common sense and choose to do the opposite of what it tells them. No amount of sage advice will dissuade them because some “expert” with dollar signs in their eyes can talk them into anything as long as they whisper magic words like “renewable energy.”

The article includes a quote from The Washington Free Beacon:

If they could go back in time, officials in Nantucket, Massachusetts, wouldn’t sign the legal agreement that helped bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town’s picturesque shoreline.

That was the common sentiment expressed during a Nantucket select board meeting this week about the August 2020 community benefit agreement the town entered into with developers of the Vineyard Wind project, which is currently under construction. “These wind turbines are bigger, brighter, and much more impactful than we ever thought—and not to mention the environmental hazards from failures,” said Dawn Hill, the chairwoman of the select board, which serves as the town’s executive body.

The agreement represented Nantucket’s formal endorsement of the project and satisfied Vineyard Wind’s legal responsibility to consult with the town. Because Nantucket is a federally designated national historic district, regulators and developers must consult with the town on new projects that may threaten its protected status.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” added Greg Werkheiser, an attorney who represents Nantucket. “Every lawyer in the world wishes 5 or 10 years into a negotiated contract that they could take the knowledge they have, fly back in time, and renegotiate—but communities make the choices they have with the information they have at the time.”

North Carolina take note! There is a group pushing for wind farms off the North Carolina coast.

Remember this event:

Tensions between Nantucket and Vineyard Wind reached a boiling point in July 2024 after a football field-sized blade on one of its wind towers fell apart during construction, sending 50 tons of fiberglass and industrial-grade foam into the ocean, forcing the island’s beaches to close. Project developers waited until debris washed ashore three days following the failure before they informed Nantucket about the incident, sparking fury from officials, businesses, and residents.

In the 12 months since the blade failure, the developers haven’t provided the town with information about changes to the construction timeline or the progress of environmental reviews related to the blade failure. As of this week, Vineyard Wind’s leadership remains in “hiding,” according to Mohr. Alas, Vineyard Wind issued its most recent press release in October, and its only public update this year appears to have come during an earnings call held last week by one of its developers, the Spain-based energy firm Iberdrola.

“They were not uninformed. Local groups were informing them five years ago that they should not do this deal and gave them all the reasons why they now regret it,” said Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute. “The folks in the town didn’t fight, they didn’t look at all the negatives, they just didn’t listen.”

Don’t let that happen here!

Sleight Of Hand At Its Best

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The Trump Russia Hoax is in the headlines because of new information and new whistleblowers. But sometimes the press (mainstream and otherwise) overlooks the read purpose of the hoax. When President Trump was elected the first time, the hoax was no longer useful in preventing him from being elected. The hoax had some value as a way to hamstring his administration and tie them down with lawsuits and other baseless things (which it did), but why did it continue for so long? Possibly because it was working, but there is another reason.

On Saturday, Townhall reported:

It’s over, man. Over. The Russian collusion hoax has been so thoroughly exposed, so stripped down to the bare bones, that it’s now just as pathetic as it is disconcerting. The largest intelligence operation in American history was used against us—and for what? To cover Hillary Clinton’s botched use of an unsecured server while she served as Barack Obama’s top diplomat. Since the server was unsecured, it was likely hacked, and files were retrieved. Democrats needed to take action to launch countermeasures.  

There was no file on Donald Trump from the Russians, but they did have one on Ms. Clinton. Former Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi had a damning post summarizing all the document dumps that have occurred over the past few days—all of which point to a cover-up and Obama’s people working vigorously to set up Mr. Trump to get Hillary out of a jam.

Racket News reports:

Now, we know. With the help of the declassified Durham material, we can explain the whole affair in three brushstrokes.

One, Hillary Clinton and her team apparently hoped to deflect from her email scandal and other problems via a campaign tying Trump to Putin. Two, American security services learned of these plans. Three — and this is the most important part — instead of outing them, authorities used state resources to massively expand and amplify her scheme. The last stage required the enthusiastic cooperation and canine incuriosity of the entire commercial news business, which cheered as conspirators made an enforcement target of Trump, actually an irrelevant bystander.

I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on some of these crimes, but if we are to have ‘equal justice under the law,’ every person involved in this scheme needs to go to jail.

The Truth Is Slowly Leaking Out

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about some of the behind-the-scenes activities associated with the Russia Hoax.

The article reports:

A crony of then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper threatened to withhold a promotion from a senior intelligence official unless he concurred in the fake Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, notes obtained exclusively by The Federalist show.

The notes made public for the first time today recount a conversation the top analyst in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) had with an unnamed superior who worked closely with the then-Director James Clapper, according to sources familiar with the document.

The release of the notes represents the latest cache of documents declassified by the Trump administration official concerning the ICA that outgoing President Barack Obama ordered, which falsely assessed that Putin “aspired” to help Trump win the election. An earlier release by the current Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, revealed the senior intelligence official — whom her office identified as an ODNI whistleblower — had been charged with conducting a “scrub,” which is a review, of the intelligence in the non-compartmented ICA. Emails released last week by Gabbard show the top analyst expressing shock over the ICA’s reliance on the Steele dossier because the versions the analyst reviewed included no intel relying on the Hillary Clinton-based fairy tale of opposition research.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article. It is disturbing.

The sad part of this is that the people who were lying to the American voters for political reasons evidently felt that what they were doing was for a greater purpose. No one gave them the authority to manipulate American voters for political purposes. They were so prideful that they felt justified in providing false information to the voters because they knew better than the voters. They assumed authority they did not have in order to undermine the person elected who did have authority.

Aren’t Regular Wasps Bad Enough?

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

A South Carolina city has been left rattled after a radioactive wasp nest was discovered at a former nuclear weapons site, yet no trace of the actual wasps has been found. 

A new report from the US Department of Energy (DOE), released July 27, revealed that the nest was emitting radiation levels 10 times higher than what federal regulations allow. 

The alarming find was made on July 3 at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, where employees conducting routine checks stumbled upon the contaminated nest perched on a post near tanks storing liquid nuclear waste. 

It is somewhat encouraging that no trace of actual wasps has been found.

The article notes:

Officials stressed there was no leak from the nearby waste tanks, saying they believe the nest became radioactive due to ‘onsite legacy contamination.’

Legacy contamination refers to leftover radioactive residue from the site’s bomb-making days during the Cold War.

‘The wasp nest was sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste. The ground and surrounded area did not have any contamination,’ the report said. 

A DOE spokesperson told NewsNation that if wasps had been present, they likely would have carried far less radiation than what was measured in the nest itself.

One can hope that the amount of radiation killed any wasps that were in the nest. However, I remember someone telling me that the only animal that would survive a worldwide nuclear war would be the cockroach. I wonder if wasps are as sturdy as cockroaches. I hope I never find out!

The article concludes:

‘Radiological Control personnel discovered a wasp nest in F Tank Farm at the Savannah River Site while performing routine radiological monitoring activities,’ according to a statement released by Savannah River Mission Completion. 

The F-Area Tank Farm where the nest was found holds 22 massive underground tanks, each up to 100 feet wide and 23 feet deep, packed with between 750,000 and 1.3 million gallons of radioactive waste. 

‘While no wasps were found on the nest, the individual insects would have significantly lower levels of contamination, Savannah River Mission Completion added.

The organization noted that ‘F Tank Farm is centrally located inside the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site. Generally, wasps travel only a few hundred yards from their nest.’

Officials admit the report on the wasp nest was delayed, citing the need to review past incidents involving contaminated wildlife and to meet strict federal reporting rules. 

‘No further action was required in the field. There is no impact from event on other activities and operations,’ the DOE stated in the report.

There is a real good science fiction movie in this if anyone wants to write the script!

The Files In The Burn Bags

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We now have the smoking gun(s) on the Russia Hoax and the Hillary Clinton email scandal. The documents hidden in the back room have been declassified and made public. Whether or not anyone will be held accountable remains to be seen. Someone who I consider a reliable source experienced in handling classified material told me that he believes the documents were saved on purpose by a future whistleblower. Because of the the procedure for dealing with classified information, that makes sense. Normally all no-longer-needed classified information is put in a burn bag and incinerated daily. The security officer on site is supposed to make sure all of it burns before he leaves the premises.

On Thursday, Townhall posted an article about some of the information that has been declassified.

Some highlights from the article:

First, we have George Soros ties, with emails from Open Society Foundations Regional Director Leonard Bernardo that were authentic, which spoke to the Trump-Russia collusion narrative being used against the then-incoming president. The Obama FBI never investigated this angle. Moreover, as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) noted in his press release about the annex, no investigative steps were taken to follow up on any leads related to Russiagate. The answer is simple: they were all in on peddling this operation.

Second, while Barack Obama ordered the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, Hillary Clinton also signed off on using the Russian collusion hoax to attack Trump. Obama-Clinton—quite the gruesome twosome.

The article concludes:

James Clapper seems to be the only member of this plot who has knowingly admitted to lawyering up. Brennan, Obama, and Clinton should be next. They should be charged, especially Brennan, who likely committed perjury in his May 2017 testimony, where he said the Steele Dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.”

DNI Tulsi Gabbard set that narrative aflame, nuking it from orbit with her document disclosures. This was a seditious conspiracy, and the media is just as culpable. Without them, this operation dies quickly. We should demand more documents, but for now, we have enough to charge people. 

Obama has already been referred to the DOJ for potential prosecution.

We may never get accountability, but we can consume a lot of popcorn watching the show.

Somehow This Was Left Out Of The News Coverage Of the Jobs Report

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The news that came out today on the June and July jobs reports sounded ominous. Why weren’t we adding the expected amount of jobs? What is happening to our workforce? There are some other numbers that need to be looked at to put the jobs report in perspective. The Workforce Participation Rate has been steady but dropping slightly since April–it was 62.6 in April, 62.4 in May, 62.3 in June, and 62.2 in July. We have no way of knowing how many of the federal employees who were laid off were reflected in those numbers. The unemployment rate in June was 4.1 percent and 4.2 percent in July. Again, not a serious increase.

There is, however, a number that is being overlooked.

On August 1st, this chart was posted at X:

American workers are coming back into the labor force.

We are in a period of transition. Inflation is down and wages are up. The federal government is shrinking and jobs are being moved into the private sector. The Stock Market did not like the jobs report, but as the report and the other numbers involved are analyzed, the Stock Market will rebound.

The important thing now is to hang on to your hat, celebrate the slowing of inflation and the cheaper fuel prices, and wait out the bumps.

Third Parties:  Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D. 

 Elon Musk recently made a comment about starting a third political party to provide an alternative to the Republicans and Democrats. He wrote on “X” that the so-called America Party is intended to appeal to the centrist voters who he believes make up 80% of those in the middle. Let’s examine why this is a terrible idea for anyone who wants to preserve the United States as it has existed for almost 250 years.

America has been essentially a two-party system since 1856 with the emergence of the Republican Party. Although no third-party candidate since then has ever won the presidency, there have been instances where they dramatically influenced the outcome of the presidential race. The Republican Party was formed before the Civil War as an alternative to the Whig and Democrat parties, neither of which was willing to take a definitive stance against slavery. The abolition of slavery was one of the main issues favored by the new Republican Party.

Forming an effective, winning third party is difficult in this country due to the existence of the Electoral College process and the creation of voting districts that permit only one person to be designated as the winner. In contrast, in parliamentary democracies, each party can use its winners to combine with other parties to elect a prime minister or president even though they are in the minority. That is exactly how Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany even though he received only 30% of the popular vote. Another obstacle to third parties is the primary election system where voters get to select their candidates in each party instead of party bosses.

However, in at least two notable instances, third-party candidates have garnered enough votes to determine who won the presidential election even though their candidate did not win. The first example was in 1912 when ex-president Theodore Roosevelt decided to withdraw from the Republican Party and form a third party called the Bull Moose Party. As a result, he split the conservative vote, receiving 27% while the Republican nominee William Howard Taft received 23%. This allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency even though he only received 42% of the popular vote, considerably less than the 50% combination for Roosevelt and Taft. The second example occurred in 1992 when Ross Perot, running as a third-party candidate received 20% of the popular vote allowing Democrat Bill Clinton, who received only 43% to defeat Republican H.W. Bush who received 38%. In both cases the third-party candidate split the conservative vote, allowing liberal Democrats to win with considerably less than 50% of votes cast. Clearly, the Democrat Party would love to see Elon Musk launch a third party in time for the next presidential election in 2028.

Winning the presidency is not just a matter of spending money. If it were, then billionaire candidates would be favored to win. What really counts is a party organization that can do the grass roots work to get out the voters for their candidate. Also, getting on the ballot in most states requires varying amounts of voter signatures, which again requires a strong grass roots organization.

Another troubling thing is that Musk himself is not a natural born citizen since he was born in South Africa in 1971. This makes him ineligible to run for president himself. Consequently, some other person would have to be his third-party nominee. He became a naturalized citizen in 2002 after having immigrated to this country in 1992.

The bottom line is that we do not need recent immigrants, no matter how rich, determining the outcome of our elections. We, conservatives should not allow ourselves to be duped into thinking that a third party can do anything but hand the presidency to the leftist Democrats, who on their current path, will continue to move America towards socialism. Conservative tax payers must stay loyal to the only party that is for lower taxes, smaller government, and freedom to achieve our goals.

Deflecting From The Actual Problem

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One of the Democrat talking points about ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ is that the changes in healthcare policies present a threat to rural hospitals. The changes in the bill are actually not the problem, but there is something that does need to be fixed in order for rural hospitals to survive.

On Wednesday, Red State reported:

The Democrats have decided that they want to make the One Big Beautiful Bill their primary campaign talking point in 2026. They think that by focusing on Medicaid cuts, they can scare voters away from the Republican Party and back toward them for the midterms.

One of their focus points is how Medicaid cuts might impact rural hospitals. But the Democrats are also big proponents of doing away with the 340B drug program that those same hospitals rely on, and they aren’t lifting a finger to stop big pharmaceutical companies from trying to gut it however they can.

What’s Really Happening

Five major pharmaceutical companies—Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Sanofi—are pushing to fundamentally change how rural hospitals get discounted drugs. Instead of getting upfront discounts through the federal 340B program, these companies want to switch to a “rebate model” where hospitals pay full price first, then wait for pharmaceutical companies to maybe pay them back later.

Sound like a scam? That’s because it is.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

A new national survey by 340B Health shows just how devastating this change would be. The average critical access hospital—these are the small rural hospitals with 25 beds or fewer that serve communities across Louisiana and the rest of rural America—would have to float an extra $1.7 million per year to pharmaceutical companies.

Think about that for a minute. Rural hospitals that are already operating on razor-thin margins would suddenly have to come up with nearly $2 million in upfront cash, then wait for drug companies to process their rebate requests “using their own criteria and timelines.”

The article concludes:

But while Washington argues about Medicaid work requirements that might affect rural hospitals down the road, Big Pharma is actively working to destroy rural healthcare right now. And they’re counting on nobody paying attention.

The 340B program isn’t perfect—no federal program is. But it’s a lifeline for rural hospitals that serve the patients nobody else wants to treat. If we let pharmaceutical companies turn it into just another profit center, we’ll lose more than hospitals. We’ll lose entire communities.

It’s time to call this what it is: corporate greed masquerading as healthcare reform. And it’s time to stop it before it’s too late.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This might be a really good time to examine the campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies given to the Congressmen pushing this idea.