News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.
When taking bribes, unmarked bills are a good idea, other things can be risky–gold bars, for instance, have serial numbers. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez really should have considered that.
Four of the gold bars Sen. Bob Menendez stashed at his home were previously stolen from the businessman accused of bribing the New Jersey Democrat, according to a report.
The serial numbers on some of the gold found by the FBI during a June 2022 raid on Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs, NJ, home match identifiers that Fred Daibes reported to police after a 2013 armed robbery, according to NBC News.
Robbers made off with $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars from Daibes’ Edgewater, NJ, home during the 2013 heist, the outlet reports.
Police later nabbed four suspects and recovered the stolen gold.
The matching serial numbers indicate that authorities have directly linked at least some of the gold found in Menendez’s home to Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer and Menendez fundraiser.
Daibes has been accused of bribing the senator for a series of favors, including help in disrupting a federal prosecution against him.
“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in 2014 when questioned about the stolen gold. “They’re all stamped … you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”
The article concludes:
Menendez has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has refused to resign from the Senate, despite numerous calls for him to do so, even from fellow Democrats.
Menendez and his wife are accused of accepting bribes from Daibes in exchange for the senator’s help shielding him from criminal prosecution in a bank fraud case.
The New Jersey Democrat allegedly helped Daibes by recommending President Biden pick Philip Sellinger, who the senator believed would apply a light touch to the case, for the post of New Jersey US attorney.
If convicted on all charges, Menendez faces up to 45 years in prison.
I guess if you are a Democrat, you just don’t plan on having your house searched or a swat team arrive at six o’clock in the morning.
On Thursday, Townhall posted an article about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate ignoring the rules of the Senate. I suspect there will be no consequences for their actions because the Republicans have become experts at rolling over and playing dead.
The article reports:
Senate Democrats threw out the rules of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in order to launch an unprecedented attack on the United States Supreme Court. More specifically, on conservative justices and their friends.
For months Chairman Dick Durbin and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse have been trying to issue subpoenas to longtime conservative activists Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlon Crow. Leo and Crow, both private individuals, are also friends to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Earlier this month, Durbin briefly backed off his conquest to subpoena Leo and Crow. Today, he blatantly disregarded Senate process and voted to do just that.
“Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have been destroying the Supreme Court; now they are destroying the Senate. I will not cooperate with this unlawful campaign of political retribution,” Leo released in response to the move.
The article concludes:
Republicans on the Committee argue that because the vote was taken before noon, any subpoenas issued to Leo or Crow are invalid.
While Democrats voted to subpoena friends of conservative justices, Durbin blocked efforts to do the same for staff of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Until the current Republicans in the Senate develop a spine or new group of Republicans is elected, we can expect more of the same.
There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are seeing glaring examples of this in our justice (maybe better our injustice system). As any sensible person can see, President Trump is being singled out by the Democrat’s for persecution not prosecution. Their fear of him is palpable and they will do anything to stop him from running again. We must make sure they fail, or our constitutional republic will never recover.
Some judges have become political pawns rather than fair arbiters of facts and truth. The case in New York is a prime example. The judge issued a summary judgement against President Trump before even hearing his defense. The judge is a lifelong Democrat as is the prosecutor Latisha James. As in the other three cases against President Trump, this judge placed a “gag” order on President Trump that violates his first amendment right to free speech. The case in Atlanta about election interference also includes a gag order. There is no legal justification for preventing a defendant from commenting critically about the trial process or the motivation of the judge or prosecutor. The only legal justification for a gag order by a judge is based on 18USC1512 which is concerned with violence, threats and intimidation of witnesses. It says nothing about criticizing the judge, clerk or prosecutor. In today’s judicial system the outcome of a case often has more to do with the judge who tries the case than the facts presented. This is not blind justice. It is right out of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China.
Another troubling development, as shown by the fraudulent cases against the former president, is the prosecution or threat of prosecution of his attorneys and staff. Prosecutors in the Atlanta case are using what is called RICO tactics that were designed to be used against organized crime. What they do is threaten the defendant’s attorney with felony prosecution if he or she does not reveal supposedly privileged conversation with their clients. The enormous cost of defending oneself is often sufficient to bankrupt the attorney. This actually amounts to blackmail. Who can trust the truthfulness of a person who is threatened with jail time, professional ruin and financial destruction if they do not go along with the prosecutors and turn states evidence against their client who came to them, expecting attorney/client privacy? This is not the justice that our Founding Fathers expected would occur in our country.
So what do we do about this trend? First, as stated above we must support the re-election of President Trump to show the leftist Democrats that these tactics will not work in this country. Second, we must get our state legislators to pass legislation that makes the communication between attorney and client absolutely privileged and cannot be used by any prosecutor in a trial or lawsuit. It should be similar to the spousal rule that a wife cannot be forced or coerced into testifying against her husband and vice versa. In fact, an attorney should not be allowed to testify willingly against a client based on privileged communications. Third, there should be an independent process that can review the actions of a judge to ensure that political motivations are not influencing the judge’s actions and decisions.
Without these or similar actions to protect the integrity of the justice system, the citizen’s confidence that we can receive justice before the law will continue to be undermined.
The U.S. Constitution was not written to give Americans their rights. It was written to insure that the government respected the God-given rights of Americans. The Constitution was written to limit the rights of the government–not the rights of Americans. That concept seems to have gotten lost in recent years.
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The government in recent years has violated that amendment by spying on Americans without cause or has invented causes (see Carter Page). Now that it has come to light that some Congressional staffers were spied on, Congress has decided to do something about it.
House Judiciary Committee Republicans are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to the government’s FISA surveillance powers that among other things would would prohibit the FBI from searching through Americans’ phone records without a court-approved warrant.
The effort is on track to be wrapped up by the end of the year when several Patriot Act powers expire. Republicans and Democrats are coming together on this matter in rare bipartisan cooperation, lawmakers told Just the News.
“We’ve got, I think, strong agreement amongst members of the Intel Committee and members of the Judiciary Committee. And frankly some Democrats as well, that there needs to be stronger penalties if you abuse the system,” Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show in an interview aired Friday night.
Jordan said he was focused on what is known as the Section 702 system “where they can create this database” of phone communications metadata that currently can be searched by agents without a warrant.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court earlier this year declassified a report revealing that FBI agents had inappropriately searched Americans’ phone records more than 270,000 times over a two year period, alarming civil liberty experts and generating bipartisan condemnation.
I hate to be cynical, but it seems that Congress is only getting around to dealing with this problem when it affected them. That’s okay. I just hope they successfully end unwarranted government spying on American citizens.
The GOP measure to provide emergency aid to Israel as it fights Hamas passed by a 226-196 vote, sending the legislation to the Democrat-led Senate where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already vowed not to bring it up for consideration.
Instead, Schumer announced earlier in the day, the Senate would “work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government.”
But the passage of the GOP House plan has already proven to be bipartisan with a dozen Democrats voting in favor of it: Reps. Angie Craig (D-MN), Don Davis (D-NC), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Jared Golden (D-ME), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Darren Soto (D-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Frederica Wilson (D-FL).
The second article reported on Senator Schumer’s reaction to the bill:
The Democrat-controlled Senate will refuse to consider the House GOP plan to send aid to Israel in its fight against Hamas, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on Thursday, setting up a standoff with the Republican-led lower chamber.
Opting for a different path, Schumer said the Senate will move forward by working on legislation that combines Israel assistance with other national security matters — a strategy rejected by House conservatives, but favored by the Biden administration.
“Let me be clear: The Senate will not take up the House GOP’s deeply flawed proposal,” Schumer said in a post to X. “Instead we will work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government.”
The Democrats are allergic to spending cuts. Because of that, it is questionable whether any American aid will reach Israel. However, I suspect the Democrats will find a way to send more money to Ukraine. Maybe it’s not really about the spending cuts.
In 2022, Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News ranked No. 2 in total viewers (3.3 million) (The Five was the most watched). (article here) Now Tucker Carlson is among the unemployed. So what happened?
On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article with a very unique perspective on the removal of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
The article notes:
However, Tucker Carlson’s program had been on life support since December 18, 2018. That is when “progressive” Democrats cancelled most of its sponsors.
On December 13, 2018, Tucker Carlson did a segment on the effects of massive, uncontrolled, and often illegal immigration from poor countries. Tucker showed videos of caravans of illegal immigrants coming to our borders, and of the piles of garbage they left behind. Tucker explained how this was hurting America in many ways. He criticized political leaders of both parties and business elites for ignoring the problem.
…Everything Tucker Carlson said was true, undisputed, and reasonable. It had all been said many times by many political leaders and economic experts. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump won widespread, mainstream support by promising to fix these problems. Trump promised a border wall and strict enforcement of immigration laws. Tucker Carlson was correct to remind his viewers of how the leaders of both parties were ignoring this critical issue.
However, the Left used Tucker’s December 13, 2018 program to begin an orchestrated campaign to eliminate Tucker Carlson’s program, and possibly the entire Fox News network, from cable television.
The following is an important lesson for conservatives:
For the next two days, various “progressives” made phone calls and sent letters and emails to every company and ad agency that bought ads on the Tucker Carlson program.
For the next week, the mainstream media reported non-stop that there was national outrage over Tucker’s remarks. They reported that advertisers and ad agencies were angry and embarrassed by what Tucker Carlson had said.
Within days, at least 26 mainstream corporate sponsors publicly announced that they would no longer sponsor the Tucker Carlson program.
…When these sponsors left, Tucker Carlson had only “second tier” sponsors paying much lower rates. They included My Pillow, Relief Factor, and Granite Stone pots and pans. The Tucker Carlson program may have had a superstar, prime-time audience. But it had the income of something like a 1970s late-night TV show sponsored by Veg-O-Matic and Ginsu Knives.
The article concludes:
On May 12, 2022, the New York Times and government-funded NPR falsely claimed that Tucker Carlson created “the most racist show in the history of cable news”.
Periodic attacks like these guaranteed that mainstream corporations would never return to Tucker Carlson.
Now that the Tucker Carlson program is gone from Fox News, Democrats are emboldened. I am sure that they are now ready to take down other hosts, or even the whole network. The Murdoch family and Fox News do not seem eager for a fight. I suspect they will soon do whatever Democrats demand as the price for ending the attacks, and getting corporate sponsors to return.
Conservatives who love and admire Tucker Carlson are angry. They are eager to boycott Fox News and turn to other conservative networks like Newsmax. However, Comcast and Direct TV already proved that they can drop networks like Newsmax at any time. Even if conservative networks like Newsmax keep their cable access, how long can they survive if they only have “second tier” sponsors like My Pillow and Relief Factor?
News shouldn’t be biased, but it is. Conservatives need to support efforts to keep media outlets alive that at least try to report facts without liberal bias. It is very obvious that any voice they may have in the mainstream media is being systematically erased.
On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article explaining the forces that blocked the overwhelming Republican victory that should have happened in the mid-term elections.
The first headwind that the red wave encountered was the Republican Elites who do not want to give up their power (despite the fact that they have not used their power to help average Americans in any way).
The article notes:
What response did the Republicans make to the Dems’ constant drumbeat about Republican fascism leading up to the election? As far as I can tell, it was mostly crickets. They were overconfident and complacent. They spent three weeks beating their chests about the “red wave” and talking big about what they’d do when they took control of Congress. While they were doing that, the Democrats and their media allies were scaring the bejesus out of their base and, as a result, they turned out in droves.
When I read that Mitch McConnell called Joe O’Dea, a Colorado Senate candidate, “the perfect candidate,” I shuddered because conservatives dislike McConnell almost as much as they dislike Nancy Pelosi. That statement probably cost O’Dea support among rural conservatives.
There was also the matter of denying money to candidates that McConnell knew would not support him as Senate majority or minority leader.
The second headwind was the garbage the media was constantly feeding Americans.
The article reports:
…Americans don’t see the threat to our freedoms that vaccine and mask mandates and lockdowns were and are. They also don’t understand that someone must pay the bill for government handouts, either directly as confiscatory taxes or indirectly as rampant inflation or hyperinflation.
As a result, they tend to vote for the person who promises them something for nothing. Many are mush-heads who will be gobsmacked with the business failures, job losses, foreclosures, bankruptcies, shortages, and other chaos that will inevitably result from the Biden administration’s policies.
The third headwind was early voting. It skews the results by letting those who engage in stuffing ballot boxes how many ballots they need to create.
The article notes:
Early voting is the sleeper contributor to last night’s losses. It gives both parties an advance detailed picture of how many people voted, who voted, who is likely to vote but hasn’t yet, and what party voters support or belong to. With all the massive databases out there and modern computers, they have a pretty good idea of how many votes they need to produce to win an election and where to go to get them, days before election day.
The Democrats have turned early voting and stuffing drop boxes into a science.
Please follow the link to the article to read the details. The Republicans who still believe in the Republican platform need to get their heads out of the sand and change their Washington leadership.
If a camel’s nose gets under the tent, the rest of the camel will soon follow. That is actually a good warning. It’s a shame our Republican legislators in Washington have either not heard it or choose to ignore it. They are also choosing to ignore the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including enough Republicans to overcome the chamber’s “filibuster” rule, on Sunday announced an agreement on a framework for potential gun safety legislation.
The bill included support for state “red flag” laws, tougher background checks for firearms buyers under 21 and a crackdown on a practice called “straw purchases” but not other limits Democrats and President Joe Biden had advocated such as raising the age for buying semiautomatic rifles to 21 or new limits on assault-style rifles.
Ten Republicans signaled their support for the preliminary deal, indicating the measure potentially could advance to a vote on passage and overcome roadblocks by other Republicans who oppose most gun control measures.
The talks that led to the framework followed a series of high-profile mass shootings in the United States, including one at a school in Uvalde, Texas, last month that killed 19 young children and one also in May in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that killed 10 Black victims.
What the Senators do not seem to realize is that people who are intent on breaking the law (murder is, after all, against the law), do not follow gun laws. All that will happen as a result of this bill (assuming it will be passed) is that it will be more difficult for law-abiding citizens to get guns. That is the scenario the Second Amendment was passed to prevent. Red flag laws are unconstitutional because they do not allow for due process. They are also very easily abused. This is a bad bill.
The article continues:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, issued a statement calling the plan “a good first step” and one that would “limit the ability of potential mass shooters to quickly obtain assault rifles by establishing an enhanced background check process for gun purchasers under age 21.”
Schumer said that he wanted to move a bill quickly to a Senate vote once legislative details are worked out.
The United States has the highest rate of firearms deaths among the world’s wealthy nations. But it is a country where many cherish gun rights and its Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms.”
According to a Politifact post of March 20, 2018:
The main study of intentional homicides is performed by the United Nations’ Office of Drug Control. The UN warns against cross-national comparisons because of the differences in legal definitions of intentional homicides and recording practices.
Our count of the UN’s data placed the United States ninth in intentional homicides. We used the most up-to-date count for each country and territory, which included data anywhere from 2007 to 2015.
As the country with the third-highest population size, however, experts told us the number of people killed is not a very useful metric.
Controlling for population size, most criminologists use the per 100,000 metric. By that standard, we found the United States ranked 94th.
When we counted only the countries for which the UN had 2015 data, the United States ranked 73rd. That’s still far from the top ten.
U.S. border officials are quietly bussing a vast flood of wage-cutting, rent-spiking migrants into Americans’ towns and cities, despite the court-ordered preservation of the Title 42 barrier.
“It’s like 8,000 to 9,000 a day now,” and there are more on the way, migration monitor Todd Bensman told Breitbart News.
U.S. border chief Alejandro Mayorkas and his pro-migration deputies are using the Title 42 barrier to send some Central American single men and families back to Mexico. But Mayorkas is cutting loopholes in the barrier to place everyone else on government-funded buses to cities and towns around the United States, said Bensman, who works for the Center for Immigration Studies.
They’re [letting in] people from the Middle East, Asia, Africa — the extra-continentals — and also from Cuba and South America. They’re letting in Peruvians — about 500 a week now. They’re letting in Ecuadorians and tons and tons of Venezuelans.
The article describes the shelter system that has been set up in America for these illegal immigrants:
The U.S. shelter network is a northern mirror of the cartels’ southern network of camps, bus stations, and housing created to transport migrants up through Mexico to the U.S. border.
The northern-side network has been created by a variety of U.S. nonprofits that are funded by donations from pro-migration business elites, progressive charities, and government contracts. They form a nationwide catch-and-release network that helps the U.S. government and cartels smuggle the indebted migrants into Americans’ jobs without exposure from national TV broadcasters.
The number of illegal immigrants coming across the border has a detrimental impact on the wages of Americans:
The elite-delivered flood of migrant workers aids employers, investors, and wealthy professionals. But it imposes much damage on many millions of working-class Americans, who are forced to accept lower wages, higher rents, crowded schools, and lower political status in their own homeland.
That wage loss has been lauded by business interests, such as Goldman Sachs, and is acknowledged by many business groups and even by Biden’s White House advisors. The flood of cheap labor is expected to reinflate the post-1990 Cheap Labor Bubble that has suppressed wages for tens of millions of ordinary Americans. The Wall Street-boosting bubble was deflated by President Donald Trump’s low-migration/high-wage policies in 2020 and 2021.
Migration advocates also celebrate the displacement of Americans in their own country. “The phenomenon of [population] replacement, writ large, is America, and has been from the beginning, sometimes by force, mostly by choice,” said a May 17 op-ed in the New York Times. “What the far right calls “replacement” is better described as renewal.”
Progressives claim that the migrants will offset the economic damage to ordinary Americans by buying food and services from Americans — despite the evidence of minimal wage growth since 1990. ‘The average effect, at all skill levels, is nothing in the short term,” said Michael Clemens, a migration expert at the Center for Global Development.
Please follow the link to read the entire article.
This is not a problem created by one political party–the Republicans are as guilty as the Democrats. The Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans love the cheap labor that the illegal immigrants provide. Open borders is a policy supported by people in both political parties who are part of the Washington swamp. The Republicans (and the Democrats) have had multiple opportunities to solve the crisis at the southern border AND the illegal immigration crisis. Both parties have chosen not to solve the problem.
On Friday, The Blaze posted an article about the high price of gasoline at at the pump. Recently, Democrats have accused oil companies of profiteering–making excessive profits on the backs of American consumers. Well, that charge does not hold water.
The Blaze reports:
Economists at the Federal Reserve of Dallas published analysis this week debunking a popular claim that Democrats make against oil companies.
Garrett Golding and Lutz Kilian, senior economic analysts at the Federal Reserve of Dallas, explained that profiteering and price gouging are not contributing to the staggering price of gas.
Two facts in particular disprove this myth. Golding and Kilian explained:
Gas station operators set prices: “Gas station operators set retail prices based on their expected acquisition cost for the next delivery of fuel from the local distributor, federal and state tax rates, and a markup that covers operating expenses, such as rent, delivery charges and credit card fees.”
Nearly every gas station is owned by a company that does not produce oil: “Since only 1 percent of service stations in the U.S. are owned by companies that also produce oil, U.S. oil producers are in no position to control retail gasoline prices.”
The article explains the rise and fall of gasoline prices:
The economists also addressed asymmetric nature of gas price changes.
[T]he asymmetry of the response of retail gasoline prices need not be evidence of price gouging. One potential explanation is that station operators are recapturing margins lost during the upswing, when gas stations were initially slow to increase pump prices. The reluctance to lower retail prices also likely reflects concerns that oil prices—and, hence, wholesale gasoline prices—may quickly rebound, eating into station profit margins.
Another possible reason for this asymmetry is consumers’ tendency to more intensively search for lower pump prices as gasoline prices rise than when they decline. This diminished search effort provides further pricing power to gas stations, causing prices to fall more slowly than they rose. This has prompted researchers to liken the response of gasoline prices to higher oil prices to a rocket—and the response to lower oil prices to a feather.
It is not noted in the article, but making America energy independent once again might be a big step in the right direction to bring gasoline prices down.
One of the problems with the age of electronics is that there is a digital record of everything you say or do. If that digital record has questionable information on it and falls into the wrong hands, your life could become complicated.
On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article detailing the avenues that the Republicans in Congress want to investigate regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The article reports:
The minority members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform are laying the groundwork for a probe that would get underway if the GOP gains subpoena power by wresting control from Democrats in the November elections, as many political experts expect.
Topping the list are the first son’s controversial overseas business dealings — some of which involved the state-controlled Bank of China and other companies tied to the Chinese government — and their potential impact on national security, a spokesperson said.
These are the items:
These are legitimate questions that need to be answered.
The article concludes:
Meanwhile, in a Wednesday letter, the House committee’s ranking member, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), and 14 colleagues asked former Rosemont Seneca Partners president Eric Schwerin to hand over records of all his all communications involving President Biden and Hunter Biden since 2009 — when Joe Biden became vice president — and a list of Schwerin’s positions in Biden family companies.
The move came after The Post exclusively revealed this past weekend that Schwerin visited the White House at least 19 times between 2009 and 2015 — and even sat down with then-Vice President Biden in the West Wing.
Subsequent reporting uncovered at least eight more Schwerin visits, including two meetings with Steve Ricchetti, who at the time was Joe Biden’s chief of staff and is now his White House counselor.
The House Republicans’ letter signals that if Schwerin doesn’t comply voluntarily, he could get slapped with a subpoena next year.
“We expect Eric Schwerin to provide us with answers to our questions,” a GOP committee aide told The Post.
“If Americans entrust Republicans with the majority in 2023, we will use tools at our disposal to ensure we get to the truth about whether Joe Biden has financially benefited and helped facilitate Hunter Biden’s business dealings.”
The letter cites a June 10, 2010, email that Schwerin sent Hunter Biden regarding Joe Biden’s Delaware state tax refund check, which Schwerin said he was “depositing…in his account and writing a check in that amount back to you since he owes it to you.”
“This email shows an intertwined financial relationship between President Biden and his son, the latter of whom has profited from America’s losses to foreign adversaries,” Comer and the other Republicans wrote.
” If President Biden and Hunter are sharing funds or if President Biden is in debt to his son — the American people deserve to know it especially in light of the millions of dollars Hunter’s businesses have received from countries adversarial to U.S. interests.”
Neither Schwerin nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
If the Republicans become the majority after the November election, there will be a serious investigation into the finances of the Biden family. You can expect the Democrats to do anything and everything to prevent that from happening.
Please remember Journalist Matt Stiller’s report on Hillary Clinton’s reaction on election night 2016:
Journalist Matt Stiller shared in a recent report that during the 2016 presidential election Hillary Clinton was unhinged, and that various NBC insiders can substantiate his account.
According to Still, during last year’s presidential campaign at the Commander-In-Chief Forum on September 7, 2016, moderator Matt Lauer went “off script” and asked Hillary about her using an illegal, private email-server when she was secretary of state.
According to Bill Still’s source — an unnamed “NBC associate producer of the forum” — Hillary was so enraged that, after the forum, she went into a ballistic melt-down, screaming at her staff, including a racist rant at Donna Brazile, calling Brazile a “buffalo” and “janitor”. Brazile recently turned against Hillary — now we know why.
…She screamed she’d get that f**king Lauer fired for this. Referring to Donald Trump, Clinton said, ‘If that f**king b***ard wins, we all hang from nooses! Lauer’s finished, and if I lose, it’s all on your heads for screwing this up.’
You don’t normally hang from a noose when you lose an election. What was she referring to?
If I honestly believed that the majority of those sent to Congress to represent the American people had an ounce of principle, I would be happy. Unfortunately, principle seems to be something in short supply in Washington. The recent debate over ending the filibuster was a shining example of this. When the Democrats are in the minority, they want to keep the filibuster. When the Democrats are in the majority, they want to end the filibuster. The Republicans have maintained a consistent position, as has Senator Joe Manchin.
On Friday, Townhall posted an article about some of the more obvious flip-flops on the issue.
The article includes the following screenshot of a tweet:
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There are many people who need to be voted out of office in November.
There are a lot of differing medical opinions on the coronavirus and the vaccines for the coronavirus. Somehow the prevention and treatment of a disease has become political. I don’t understand how or why that happened, but it is now a reality. The Washington Examiner posted an article on Thursday that further illustrates this divide.
The article reports:
Nearly two years after former President Donald Trump tossed politics into the nation’s battle against the coronavirus, the partisan divide appears to have grown, with Republicans fighting mandates and Democrats calling for harsh punishments for those who refuse to get vaccinated.
In an expanded survey of the public’s view of mandates and punishments to get people vaccinated, Rasmussen Reports found that Democrats even support fines, home confinement, and prison for those who fight the government on masks and shots.
…Consider: Twenty-nine percent of Democrats would go so far as to support taking children away from parents who refused to be vaccinated.
…Next came a question on President Joe Biden’s mandate that companies of 100 employees or more should demand workers to get vaccinated. Just 22% of Republicans agreed, while Democrats were all in at 78%.
Asked if voters favor a federal or state fine for those who refuse a vaccine, only 19% of Republicans said “favor” to 55% of Democrats.
The conclusion of the article is frightening:
Rasmussen next asked if people favor home confinement for those who are not vaccinated. On the GOP side, 79% were opposed, while 59% of Democrats favored it.
The survey also asked about those who challenge the government’s view of vaccines and if opponents should be jailed or fined for questioning it on social media. A remarkable 48% of Democrats supported those punishments.
And nearly half of Democrats favored fixing tracking devices on those who refused to vaccinate.
Rasmussen added that Biden supporters would go even further than Democrats.
“President Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to endorse the harshest punishments against those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. Among voters who have a Very Favorable impression of Biden, 51% are in favor of government putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities,” and 54% favor imposing fines or prison sentences on vaccine critics,” said the pollster.
It seems as if the Democrat party has forgotten the concepts of freedom and equality.
Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about the Biden administration’s economic plans. The Biden administration is not friendly to small businesses.
The article reports:
Over the last several months, small businesses persevered the best they could, holding on until “temporary” welfare programs driving people away from work expired. But if there were any doubt left that Dems’ ultimate goal wasn’t a temporary boost to Americans most impacted by lockdowns, but rather a calculated step toward government control and socialism, their proposed $4.3 trillion tax-and-spend bill removes it all ($4.3 trillion is the true cost, as we learned in the Budget Committee).
Walk down any main street or city avenue in America today, and you will see sign after sign with help-wanted pleas, hiring incentives or apologies in advance for shortened hours and delayed service due to staff shortages. There are nearly 11 million job openings nationwide, and our small businesses are trying to get back on their feet after the crushing lockdowns.
But where are the workers? The short answer is that the Biden administration is more interested in handouts that pay more, or just as much, to stay home than going back to work. Since taking office, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have prioritized big government over earned pay stubs.
The article concludes:
Biden and the Democrats’ plan raises the corporate tax rate to 26.5 percent, even further away from a proposed “global minimum tax” of 19 percent that will drive more businesses overseas, further discouraging production and innovation in America.
The Democrats argue that big business can afford to pay more. But aside from their hypocrisy that creates new carve-outs for rich university endowments like Harvard, their plan hurts the little guy. By removing deductions and increasing taxes by nearly 4 percent for business owners that operate as “pass throughs,” the plan puts at risk small businesses that have been struggling since March 2020 — and the new ones created since the pandemic under assumed tax burdens.
As a former small-business owner, I know these conditions aren’t sustainable. Americans don’t deserve to bear the brunt of policies pushed by people in Washington who will never feel the effects of them, and who will receive a healthy paycheck each month no matter what.
The Democrats’ idea of an economic plan is to punish citizens who are producing for our country and working to support their families, while rewarding themselves and others for staying home.
This is not sustainable. If the Biden economic plans pass Congress, we will soon be living in a country we won’t recognize.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are trying to wrap up their proposal for $2.9 trillion in tax hikes, which would mean the largest tax increase in decades, in order to help pay for higher spending in their ‘reconciliation’ package, Politico reported on Monday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the proposal is expected to include raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5% from 21% and enacting a 3-percentage-point surtax on individual income above $5 million.
House Democrats are also thinking about boosting the minimum tax on the foregn income of U.S. companies to 16.5% from 10.5%, as well as raising the top capital-gains tax rate to 28.8% from 23.8%.
This will be sold as a tax increase only for the rich. If you believe that, you have not been paying attention for the past thirty years. There are a few things to keep in mind when you hear about ‘tax increases for the rich.’ First of all, the ‘rich’ can afford tax accountants who will find ways to mitigate the tax increases. Second of all, raising capital-gains taxes discourages investment and has a negative impact on the 401k account of the average American, Raising the corporate tax only results in higher prices for consumers–corporations pass the cost of increased taxes on to consumers. The entire idea of ‘tax the rich’ is a socialist scam. It has been used all over the world to create class warfare and line the pockets of those in power who despite their wealth somehow manage to avoid the tax increases.
The article concludes:
Other details in a five-page memo being passed around about the Democrats’ plans include tightening estate tax rules and reducing deductions for some unincorporated businesses, as well as new limits on supersized individual retirement accounts, additional restrictions on deductions companies take for highly compensated employees, and new “wash sale” rules for those who own cryptocurrencies.
The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the monetary value of the tax increases “includes $1 trillion in tax increases on individuals, $900 billion on corporations, $700 billion from drug-pricing policy changes, and $120 billion from tougher tax enforcement. Adding miscellaneous other changes and an assumption that the economy will grow reaches $3.5 trillion.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates praised Neal’s proposals, saying that “this meets two core goals that the president laid out at the beginning of this process — it does not raise taxes on Americans earning under $400,000 and it repeals the core elements of the Trump tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations.”
Bates added that “the President looks forward to continuing to work with Chairman Neal, as well as the Senate Finance Committee and Chairman Wyden, as we advance the Build Back Better agenda.”
On Friday, Just the News posted an article about the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill the Democrats are planning to force through Congress.
The article reports:
Expected to be included in the Congressional Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill is language that will advance the party’s goals for immigration reform. Working with the White House, a group of top Capitol Hill Democrats are workshopping placing a handful of immigration measures into the spending bill that will likely be passed via budget reconciliation, that is with no Republican support.
For years, efforts to reform the American immigration system have stalled as Democrats and Republicans fail to make any sort of meaningful bipartisan progress on the issue. Now, Democrats are opting to strategically move forward potentially without the need for bipartisan agreement.
As Democrats in Washington scramble to complete the full version of the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of an initial procedural vote next Wednesday, details of the massive spending plan meant to accompany the infrastructure legislation are nowhere near fleshed-out, including how they plan to insert immigration policy into a spending bill. Right now, Democrats are, according to Politico, employing a “trial-and-error” approach to the legislation.
Democrats are reportedly attempting to include pathways to citizenship for a number of illegal immigrant groups in the bill, including “dreamers,” who came or were brought to the United States as minors, and farmworkers already living and working in the country. The Hispanic Caucus is also lobbying to include giving out green cards to “essential workers,” including those who work on the frontlines of health professions during the pandemic, as part of the legislation.
It is not clear that the Democrats will be able to include all, or any, of these measures in the final framework of the bill, if they wish to pass it without Republican support. There will likely be a lively back-and-forth with the Senate parliamentarian (who happens to be a former immigration lawyer) regarding what immigration policy can, under the complex and sometimes obscure rules of the Senate, be included in the budget.
To qualify for Senate passage with a simple majority vote, which the $3.5 trillion package theoretically will, any given part of it must directly relate to federal revenue. It remains to be seen how Democrats will retrofit their immigration goals to meet the standards of the Senate rules in that regard.
The bottom line here is simply–the Democrats have never intended to try to work with the Republicans–any time the Democrats have been in power in recent years, they have ignored any Republican input and simply passed bills unilaterally. We all remember ObamaCare.
Carroll Quigley was an American who lived from 1910 to 1977. He stated:
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies… is a foolish idea. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”
The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday (updated today) about President Biden’s first 100 days in office. The article notes that the moderate, unifying President we were promised during the election campaign has not shown up yet.
The article reports:
President Donald Trump and conservative pundits warned for months during the 2020 campaign that behind then-candidate Joe Biden’s centrist, bipartisan façade lay a radical liberal agenda to transform the United States. Biden has proven them right in less than 100 days, earning praise from liberal observers who are drawing historical comparisons to the tenure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, written along the outline of Biden’s proposal, dwarfs FDR’s New Deal in terms of total cost to the American taxpayer. Democrats rammed the measure through Congress without any Republican support, proving Biden was the partisan that critics had warned about.
The Democratic president’s proposed infrastructure measures—the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—would bring the total price tag to an estimated $5.4 trillion, while ushering in a wave of welfare programs unseen since the introduction of Medicare and food stamps. The cost splits up to more than $43,000 per household and more than the combined wealth of all the billionaires in America. Democrats could enact both plans without any Republican support, by using, for the first time ever, the reconciliation process more than once in a budget year.
The fiscal scale and radical nature of the agenda, coupled with the razor-thin House and Senate majorities the Democrats are using to implement it, are exerting pressure on an American system of governance that has historically demanded a measure of bipartisanship in order to enact transformative change.
The article concludes:
Though his cabinet wouldn’t admit it, Biden inherited a successful vaccine development and distribution program from Trump. This meant that Biden’s campaign promise of injecting 100 million Americans with the vaccine against the CCP virus in his first 100 days was on track to being fulfilled even before he took office on Jan. 20. After eluding questions about raising the target to a more ambitious figure, Biden doubled the goal to 200 million. The administration is now on pace to triple the initial goal by April 29, his 100th day in office.
That tangible highlight is offset by the crisis on the southern border, which some experts say was triggered by Biden’s revocation of Trump-era immigration policies. Illegal aliens are crossing the border in numbers unseen in decades, forcing immigration authorities to overload shelters for housing detained minors. After weeks of avoidance, Biden finally called the situation a crisis earlier this month.
The White House has signaled that it intends to solve the crisis by investing in the countries the illegal aliens are fleeing from. Over the past two decades, the United States has spent billions in foreign aid to the nations in question.
Biden’s approval ratings have fluctuated between the high-40s and mid-50s during his first three months in office, according to Rasmussen, the only pollster conducting daily presidential approval surveys. The media may be contributing to that outcome. A recent Media Research Center study showed that evening news coverage of Biden was 59 percent positive during his first three months in office, compared to just 11 percent positive coverage during the same period in Trump’s presidency.
A supportive media cannot cover up the negative impact of President Biden’s policies forever. As inflation increases (as a result of the runaway spending) and the influx of illegal immigrants further increases federal spending, Americans may begin to believe what they see rather than what they are being told.
Most of us who live in middle class America are not overly concerned with the limit placed by the Trump administration on the state and local tax (SALT tax) deduction on our federal income tax. Generally that deduction impacts people who live in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California and one or two other states. Generally speaking, the people who are impacted by the limitations placed on that deduction are among the high earners among us who own large homes and live in states with high real estate taxes. Limiting that deduction was a way to end the practice of fiscally responsible states subsidizing fiscally irresponsible states. Limiting that deduction should have jarred the states impacted into being more fiscally responsible. Not only did that no happen, the Democrat Congress wants to end that limit–thus providing a tax break for the rich–something they continuously accused President Trump of doing.
On Tuesday Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line Blog about the move to end the limits on the SALT deduction.
The article notes:
If you need proof that Democrats are really on the side of the plutocracy, look no further than New York’s Democratic House members, who today wrote to Speaker Pelosi threatening to vote against any of (P)resident Biden’s tax increase proposals unless the bill includes full repeal of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction limitations that were part of Trump’s 2017 tax reform. The SALT limitation was the single most “progressive” tax increase on the rich in years, but chiefly in high tax states like California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey.
Read the letter for yourself and enjoy the casuistry: We need SALT repeal, the New York Dems day, so that our taxpayers won’t be “double-taxed,” but of course their citizens only face this problem because those states impose those extra high taxes. And most of the benefit of the SALT deductions go to high income people—the very people Dems are always telling us should pay their “fair share,” which they never define in any concrete way. “Fair share” just means “more.” Well, Trump delivered that, so what’s the problem?
I also like how the letter, in paragraph three, admits that cutting taxes on the rich will help spur job growth. I thought liberals didn’t believe in supply-side tax cuts?
This is the letter:
I guess the Democrats really do like tax cuts for the rich.
The Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed HR1. There were no Republican votes for the bill. That is the bill that will fundamentally change American elections to the point where honest elections will become a thing of the past.
The Federalist posted an article yesterday listing fifteen of the major problems with the bill.
This is the list. Please read the entire article for details:
1. Openly Breaks the Constitution
2. Set Up Star Chambers to Intimidate Judges
3. Mandate Mail-in Ballots, 10-Day Delay in Results
4. Eliminate Voter ID Election Security
5. Register Millions Of Criminally Present Foreign Citizens to Vote
6. Explode Opportunities for Election Cheating
7. Prevent Cleaning Up Voter Rolls
8. Unleash Mobs on Political Donors
9. Gerrymander Districts to Favor Democrats
10. Make Vote Hacking Easier
11. Let Former Felons Vote Before They’ve Completed Their Sentences
12. Help 16- and 17-Year-Olds Vote Illegally
13. Bans Keeping the Records Necessary for an Election Audit or Recount
14. Mandates Ballot Drop Boxes
15. Giving U.S. Territories Extra Democrat Seats in Congress and the Electoral College
I honestly don’t know if the Republicans can stop this disaster from passing in the Senate. If it becomes law (and survives the court challenges that will follow because it is unconstitutional–states control their own elections), we will have lost our republic.
Yesterday Bloomberg posted a very interesting article about bipartisanship. Despite President Biden’s claim that he seeks unity, there seems to be very little unity in Washington these days. I should mention that bipartisanship is not a requirement. The Democrats control the White House and the House of Representatives and essentially the Senate. There is no requirement that they work with Republicans. However, the article points out that the Republicans are not solely responsible for the lack of bipartisanship.
The article notes:
During the Obama years, Democrats cited incidents like this one to cast Republicans in a bad light. Obama and severalother Democrats also complained bitterly that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had announced at the start of his first term that his top priority was preventing a second one. Democrats said they tried again and again to meet Republicans halfway on health care, too, and were rebuffed.
With President Joe Biden in the White House, Democratsaresayingthat the Republicans’ behavior then justifies ignoring them now: There’s no point wasting time trying to negotiate with them.
The incidents didn’t actually happen, though, or at least didn’t happen the way Obama related them. Before he met with House Republicans in January 2009, House Democrats had already introduced a stimulus bill without any of their input, and Republicans had already made public statements of opposition. In his meeting with the Republicans, Obama reportedly said he was open to changing the bill; the Republicans then voted against the unchanged bill; and Boehner issued a statement saying he would still like to work with Obama on the issue.
McConnell’s remark, meanwhile, was made well into Obama’s term, right before the midterm elections of 2010. He said in the same breath that he would work with Obama if he moderated the way the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had: “I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.”
Part of the problem right not is that we really don’t know who is making the decisions in the White House.
The article concludes:
Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass a large Covid-relief bill last spring, and did it again just a few weeks ago. The second one was passed after Biden had won the election and the Electoral College had met. Republicans knew that any positive effect it had would buoy Biden politically, and did it anyway.
There’s no moral or constitutional obligation for Democrats to bargain with the Republicans. Obama came into office with large Democratic majorities in Congress, and had the votes he needed to pass the stimulus and his health-care bill without Republicans.
Maybe they will have the votes they need in Congress this time, too. It would be nice, though, if they would stop pretending that they have no other choice.
If you are going to talk about unity, it would be nice if you did something to promote it.
Unfortunately it appears that the Democrat’s definition of unity is to silence any dissenting views on their policies. The idea of compromise and debate seems to have vanished somewhere in the recent election. This is not the way our country was set up, and many Americans are unhappy with the direction the Democrats are already taking us.
Just the News posted an article yesterday about the approval ratings of some of our Congressional leaders.
The article includes the following screenshot:
The article concludes:
Less than a majority of Republican voters (45%) expressed approval for McConnell, showing a growing divide within the Republican party. Meanwhile, a majority of Democrats (67%) still approve of Pelosi, who was recently elected Speaker of the House by a slender margin.
This survey polled 1,200 registered voters and was conducted by Scott Rasmussen from Jan 7-9, 2021.
The poll’s cross-demographic tabulations can be found here and here.To see the poll’s methodology and sample demographics, click here.
The Republican Party does not easily unify. It is made up of people who do not naturally fall into lock step. There are many Republicans (myself included) who would like to see the Republican Party actually lead instead of sitting back and playing the victim. Mitch McConnell has done a good job of confirming judges, but he has not always been on the President’s team. That is unfortunate because the President is the highest elected official in the Republican Party–he should be considered its leader. It is unfortunate that the Party has not been willing to unite behind him to get things done. Had the members of the Party been willing to take a strong stand, they might have been able to work out an infrastructure bill and get it passed despite the Democrats’ objections. Had the party stuck together instead of playing their ‘never Trump’ games, they might have been able to overcome Democrat resistance to policies that would have moved our country forward. I believe the approval ratings above reflect the frustration of the American people that the two parties have not been able to work together for the good of the country. Based on their actions so far, I don’t see that changing under a new Congress and administration.
After a while, you have to wonder why Democrats in Congress are so anxious to get President Trump out of the White House. He has eight days left to serve as President, can’t they just leave him alone? I guess not.
The Epoch Times reported yesterday that Representative Alex Mooney, a Republican from West Virginia, blocked Democrats from introducing a resolution via unanimous consent to call on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump.
The article reports:
The Democrat-backed resolution calls on Pence and the Cabinet to “declare what is obvious to a horrified Nation: That the President is unable to successfully discharge the duties and powers of his office.”
…Mooney said Pelosi “should not attempt to adopt a resolution of this magnitude without any debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives,” noting that “it is wrong to have sent members of Congress home and then try to adopt without any debate a precedent-setting resolution that could imperil our Republic. The U.S. House must never adopt a resolution that demands the removal of a duly elected president, without any hearings, debate, or recorded votes.”
Whatever happened to the Democrat’s calls for unity? I don’t think misusing the 25th Amendment to unlawfully remove a Republican President creates unity.
The Epoch Times reported yesterday that many of the absentee ballots sent out in Pennsylvania were returned with postmarks earlier than the date they were sent out. Wow.
The article reports:
More than 20,000 absentee ballots in Pennsylvania have impossible return dates and another more than 80,000 have return dates that raise questions, according to a researcher’s analysis of the state’s voter database.
Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out—an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have a return date earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
The state’s voter records are being scrutinized as President Donald Trump is challenging the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania and other states where his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, holds a tight lead. The Trump campaign is alleging that invalid ballots have been counted for Democrats and valid ballots for Republicans were thrown away.
The analysis of the publicly available data was conducted by a data researcher who submitted it first to the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times. The researcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he consulted about the matter with several USPS field engineers, who said the return dates shown in the database are “impossible.”
Please follow the link above to the article as it includes a number of screenshots illustrating the problem.
The article also notes:
According to the data analyzed by the researcher, at least 31 people who appear to be older than the oldest known person in the state returned ballots. They were all born between 1900 and 1907, based on the state’s data. The oldest known person in the state is 113-year-old Ardith Grose.
About 20 of the voters shared the birth date of Jan. 1, 1900. The date corresponds to an allegation in Michigan, where a poll watcher said he saw operators adding people to the poll book while they were counting their mail-in ballots, raising concern that these voters weren’t properly registered and thus were ineligible to vote. The operators input the names with fabricated birth dates, such as Jan. 1, 1900, according to a sworn affidavit by the poll watcher.
Another analysis of the Pennsylvania data showed that the extremely old voters were mostly registered Democrats.
Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the Democrat’s reaction to the President’s plan to appoint a Supreme Court Justice in the coming six weeks.
The article includes a screenshot of a tweet by Gavin Newsom’s Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary:
Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that laying your body on the floor of the Senate might be considered radical.
The article details some of the threats the Democrats have made:
Democrats are determined to prevent the Republican President and Republican Senate to nominate and confirm the next Supreme Court Justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The 87-year-old Ginsburg passed away at home on Friday.
Democrats are threatening impeachment of President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr.
And Democrats are even threatening to block access to the Republican senators from entering the US Senate Chamber in the US Capitol Building.
So what is this actually about? It’s about two things. The first is the fact that in recent years the Supreme Court has become an oligarchy making laws and impacting American lives in ways our Founding Fathers never intended. The Supreme Court in recent years has made things legal on a federal level that Americans never had a chance to vote for or hold their elected officials accountable for. The reason Congress is tasked with the responsibility for making laws is that the voters can hold them accountable for their actions. The Supreme Court Justices serve for life and are not accountable to the voters. The second is the fear of the political left that a conservative court will overturn Roe v. Wade. There are a few misconceptions in this. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not end abortion in America. Ending Roe v. Wade will simply allow every state to set its own rules regarding abortion. There have been a number of judicial scholars who have stated that the Roe v. Wade decision was flawed. The political left is well aware of this and wants to protect the decision.
Planned Parenthood (through its political action spin-offs) has invested a lot of money into Congressional campaigns to protect the abortion industry (which is a million dollar industry). This investment has allowed abortions and the practice of selling aborted baby parts to continue without interference from Congress. I have often wondered how history will view this practice.
The Democrats are quietly trying to blunt the impact of the Republican National Convention on voters. Unfortunately, the people who put the Republic convention together had a better understanding of television production than the people who put the Democrat convention together. The latest effort by the Democrats was putting out a list of Republicans voting for Joe Biden. That was almost impressive until you looked at the list.
Nothing says “authentic” like a list of “Republican” supporters who aren’t Republicans. That’s the sleight of hand Joe Biden just tried to pull. On Monday afternoon, his presidential campaign blasted out a “[h]uge list of Arizona Republicans … endorsing @JoeBiden today,” in an attempt to paint the Democratic ticket as bipartisan. We in Arizona were a little confused, though, because most of the endorsees on the list aren’t exactly what you’d call Republicans. Right at the top of the list (you guessed it) is former senator Jeff Flake, who suddenly dropped out of his reelection race in 2017 after realizing that Republican primary voters didn’t like him — and neither did anybody else. Most of the time, the former senator is out of sight (and out of mind). But every now and then he’ll pop his head above ground to remind the media how woke he is and get a sniff of that “Strange New Respect.” This week’s endorsement is just another example of that. In 2016, Flake announced that he wasn’t voting for President Trump. In 2019, he bragged that “I would support a Democrat” for president, adding: “… obviously Joe Biden comes to mind.” Finally, in early 2020, he reiterated that November “won’t be the first time I’ve voted for a Democrat.”
…Following Flake on Biden’s list is Jim Kolbe, who left Congress while George W. Bush was still in office. The former congressman soon after became an Obama appointee and subsequently crossed “Republican” off of his voter registration. Following him is Grant Woods. You might be asking: “Who is that?” So are we. Woods, a politician from the 1990s, gained a reputation as a liberal Republican before disappearing from the political world for a decade while working as a trial lawyer. He came out of the woodwork in 2010 to endorse Felecia Rotellini (now the Arizona Democratic Party’s chairwoman) for state attorney general and again in 2014 to endorse Democrat Fred DuVal for governor. Woods then endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 — he called her “one of the most qualified nominees to ever run” — and endorsed Democrats Hiral Tipirneni and Kyrsten Sinema in 2018 before formally changing his own voter registration to Democrat. But, yes, definitely a Republican.
You get the picture. After a while you begin to wonder why President Trump is such a threat to the Washington establishment. Remember the statement by Hillary Clinton, “If That F-ing B*stard Trump Wins, We All Hang From Nooses.”
A video of the incident is posted at YouTube. Also here.
People who lose elections in America do not generally hang from nooses. This statement has always made me wonder what she was guilty of that put that thought in her mind.
As we continue through the political silly season, be aware that most of what you read from the mainstream media is simply not true or simply incomplete information. Be your own best fact-checker.
