Tag Archives: The Federalist

A Short History Lesson

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted the following headline:

If Palestinians Wanted Peace And Prosperity, They’d Already Have It

The article notes:

In 2005, Palestinian Arabs were given autonomy over the Gaza Strip for the first time in their history. To make it happen, the Israeli government forcibly removed thousands of Israelis from the area. Without military protection, Jews would be murdered by Palestinians, who prefer their land Judenfrei.

As Jews were being evicted from their homes, some began to dismantle the farms and hothouses they’d built, reluctant to hand over years of hard work. In the name of peace, however, American Jewish donors purchased the 3,000 remaining greenhouses that stood over 1,000 acres for $14 million and gave it to the Palestinian Authority, gratis. A large portion of the donations were earmarked for “crucial equipment like computerized irrigation systems” and other modern farming systems for Palestinians.

As soon as the Jews were gone, mobs of Palestinians showed up and broke windows, stole irrigation hoses, water pumps, and everything else they could get their hands on, destroying everything they could, as “police” stood by and watched. This happened before Hamas came to power. Before any blockades.

At that point the mobs destroyed the hope of continuing the prosperity that had just been handed to them.

The article also reports:

By 2007, the unity government between the PLO and Hamas had fallen apart after the latter won a landslide election in 2006 and began defenestrating its political opponents. It was a warning. There has not been a real election in the West Bank since. And it’s a good thing because Islamists would surely grab power there as they had in Gaza. Joe Biden likes to say that Hamas doesn’t speak for Palestinians, but the ugly truth is that Hamas is a far better ambassador of the Palestinian people than the “moderate” Fatah party, which we prop up with billions of dollars.

The article notes that the only way to create a successful society in the Gaza Strip would be for Israel to take it over and set up civic institutions. However, that does take into consideration the children who have been trained almost from birth to hate Jews and to fight them.  In the end, “liberating” the Gaza Strip from Hamas would probably be about as successful as liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban was.

The Third Term Of Barack Obama

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President Obama was not a friend of Israel. He was not a friend of peace in the Middle East. The Arab Spring, which he supported as a move to democracy in the Middle East, was simply an attempt to expand Muslim tyranny in the area. When Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House during the Obama administration, he was treated very badly–even forced to leave through the back door. The Biden administration has been slightly more polite, and they say what they think they need to say, but their bottom line is the same.

On October 25th, The Federalist reported the following:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken contends that Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”

You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.

The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.

It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.

The article concludes:

The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.

“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”

…Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.

Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.

When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.

And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs. 

At some point the Democrats will realize that terrorism is never contained. Terrorism against Israel will eventually morph into terrorism against America (again).

When Reality Catches Up With Business Ventures

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On Monday, The Federalist reported that Ford Motor Company is stopping work on a plant in Marshall, Michigan that was going to make batteries for electric cars.

The article reports:

Ford Motor Co. is halting work on a $3.5 billion plant in Marshall, Michigan, that would make batteries for electric vehicles.

The announcement came after the automaker in July projected its EV unit would lose $4.5 billion this year, about 50 percent more than initially expected, and that it was slowing its plans to increase EV production, according to Reuters.

The delay also comes as Ford is in the midst of talks with the striking United Auto Workers union. President Joe Biden plans to join a UAW picket line on Tuesday, a day ahead of a planned visit to the workers by former President Donald Trump.

It is becoming obvious that American consumers are not all that enthralled with electric vehicles. The high cost of the vehicles, the time consumed in charging the vehicles, issues regarding how far the vehicles will travel on a charge, the fire hazard of an electric vehicle, the cost of replacing the batter in an electric vehicle, and the increased insurance rates insurance companies are charging for electric vehicles are all unresolved issues in the minds of consumers.  (Also, in my humble opinion, the electric Ford Mustang is a disgrace to its heritage! I realize that it can go really fast, but it doesn’t look good doing it!)

Do We Have Any Idea Who The Federal Government Is Working For?

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In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln stated, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (source here). Currently it seems as if government of the people, by the people, for the people has been replaced by government of the ruling class, for the interests of the ruling class, and only for the ruling class. There is a lot of money floating around Washington, D.C., and I am sure there are a lot of skeletons in the closet in Washington, D.C., that many politicians don’t ever want to see the light of day. So when someone is actually held accountable or not held accountable, there are probably more reasons behind it than we will ever know. However, recently it seems as if a lot of chickens are coming home to roost.

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

A third IRS official confirmed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss faced roadblocks when attempting to bring charges against Hunter Biden, contradicting denials issued Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf told the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed-door interview on Sept. 12 that he felt “frustrated” by the refusal of the Justice Department to approve tax charges that IRS agents viewed as well-supported by evidence, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the Washington Examiner.

He also said the IRS removed agent Gary Shapley, a whistleblower, from the Hunter Biden case at the direction of Weiss despite having done nothing wrong.

Batdorf’s testimony was the latest piece of evidence to suggest Weiss did not enjoy the unfettered authority to pursue Hunter Biden that Garland and others claimed he had.

In July, The Federalist reported:

Shapley said U.S. Delaware Attorney David Weiss waited out the statute of limitations related to 2014-2015 financial crimes allowing the president’s son to evade additional charges. In June, news broke of a plea deal struck between Weiss and Hunter Biden limited to two misdemeanor tax crimes and a single felony charge over illegal firearm possession. The latter is forgiven after 24 months of sobriety, an agreement placed in jeopardy if the mysterious White House cocaine was linked to the first family’s son, who wrote a book on his struggle with drug addiction.

“In November of 2022, the statute of limitations was set to expire for the 2014 and 2015 charges in D.C., which included the 2014 felonies for the attempt to evade or defeat tax and fraud or false statement regarding Burisma income earned by Hunter Biden,” Shapley said.

Hunter Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company raking in excess compensation despite having no prior experience in the industry.

“The statute of limitations had been extended through a tolling agreement with Hunter Biden’s defense counsel, and they were willing to extend it past 2022. Weiss allowed those to expire,” said Shapley.

It would be nice if Hunter Biden and those who let the statute of limitations run out on Hunter Biden’s crimes were held accountable for their actions.

What Did You Get Done This Week?

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On Wednesday, The Federalist  posted an article about the federal budget discussions. Personally, I am not opposed to a government shutdown. During the rather drawn-out election of Kevin McCarthy, one of the things that was discussed (and I thought agreed to) was a return to the budget process requiring individual votes on the 12 appropriations bills that make up what’s known as the “omnibus package. This supposedly would be the end of the omnibus packages and the threat of government shutdowns.

On March 10, 2022, I posted the following:

Someone asked the website Quora when the last federal budget was passed using the conventional budget process.

The website posted the following answer:

Usually a President’s first year in Office is under the previous President’s budget. However knowing that Barack Obama was winning, the Congressional Democrats used Continuing Resolution to push the budget forward. With Obama in Office, they passed the full budget in April 2009. I think since then we have only operated in a world of continuing resolutions and an omnibus budget. After gaining the control of the congress in 2014, Republican promised to return to regular order and it hasn’t happened yet.

To answer your question, the 2007–08 budget was probably the last regular budget passed.

The Federalist reports:

While we gleefully await the federal government’s bankruptcy at the end of the month, here’s my favorite Elon Musk quote: “What did you get done this week?”

Every Republican in Congress should have to answer that question to the American taxpayer (you and me) before even thinking about giving another cent to Ukraine, the Pentagon, the DOJ, Health and Human Services, and every other department that is, at best, useless, and at worst, packed with paper pushers overtly harassing the people who pay their outsized salaries (you and me).

The Musk quote came in a strikingly similar context. In a text chat, some overpaid Twitter executive lectured him about the “internal distraction” that Musk’s public comments about the company had made after he purchased a large portion of its shares. “Next time we speak, I’d like to provide you perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work,” the executive said.

“What did you get done this week?” Musk replied.

What makes it so good is that there is no answer to the question. Just some Twitter nerd versed only in talking about “optimization” (meaningless) and “company culture” (zero productivity value) blankly staring in a freeze.

The article concludes:

Members of Biden’s own party are dogging his open-border policies. Health and Human Services melted its own credibility on “science,” then recently flirted with recommending public masking again. The Justice Department is found out over and over again to be hostile toward the rule of law and the will of the people.

Which of the seven heads on this monstrosity is even bothering to smile at me? Why would I care if the federal government is funded when it does nothing for me? What’s worse, it functions in ways that make clear it deeply resents me.

Tell me, Republicans. What did you get done this week?

That’s a really good question.

 

 

Is Anyone Surprised?

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During the Congressional hearings regarding the Biden family corruption, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation. However, there are currently questions as to the accuracy of that statement.

On Thursday, The Federalist reported:

Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal a glaring gap in the documentation maintained by the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office: There is nothing memorializing the authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claims he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss for the Hunter Biden investigation. 

For more than a year, Garland represented to Congress that Weiss held ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation — which the eventual appointment of Weiss as special counsel contradicted. But now there is more evidence — or rather a lack of evidence — indicating the claimed authority was always a charade. 

The Friday before the long holiday weekend, the DOJ provided the Heritage Foundation with the second batch of documents it was ordered by a federal court to produce in response to Heritage’s FOIA lawsuit. This installment concluded the DOJ’s production of the non-exempt documents in Weiss’s custody which concerned his authority for investigating Hunter Biden. But none of the documents produced addressed Weiss’s authority or any authority promised by Garland.

Mike Howell, the director of the Heritage Oversight Project and a co-plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ, stressed the significance of this omission to The Federalist.

“The DOJ lives on paper.” Anything as important as granting Weiss ultimate authority over an investigation or promising to give him authority to bring charges in another venue, if necessary, “would have been written down,” Howell explained. To Howell, this last batch of documents constitutes an admission by Garland that “there was nothing written down at the DOJ and sent to Weiss, indicating Weiss had any of the authority that Garland claimed he did.”

The thing to remember when evaluating all of the information that is currently coming out about the Biden family business is that the media, the Department of Justice and the Democrat party are all in control of what you hear and when you hear it. There are some serious questions as to whether or not the Democrats want President Biden to run for a second term. Releasing a lot of information about some of his questionable business dealings may be the way to prevent him from running. Indictments against the Biden family will not have the same impact as indictments against President Trump. There is a strong possibility that the Biden family actually did things that were illegal.

I suspect that the Democrats are desperate to take over the House of Representatives to stop the current investigations.

What Has Happened To The FBI?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist reported the following:

Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. 

As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.” 

However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.

Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

Until we begin to hold those in the FBI who are responsible for the lies and the leaks accountable, the bad behavior will continue. Meanwhile, the American public is being treated to public lynchings done by the mainstream media and the Justice Department working together.

The article concludes:

The Federalist has also learned from a source with knowledge of the matter that the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office kept the Hunter Biden laptop secret from the Pennsylvania-based U.S. attorney’s office, which surely limited the investigators’ ability to assess the credibility of the evidence it was screening for disinformation.

Nonetheless, through its independent investigation of the CHS’s reporting, Pittsburgh corroborated several details of the FD-1023 and briefed Wolf on those details, telling her they believed the CHS’s information warranted further investigation.

But did Wolf tell that to Weiss? Did anyone tell that to Weiss? Or did Weiss’s team, after sharing The New York Times’ false narrative that Brady was on a political witch hunt of the Bidens and demanding an investigation into Giuliani disinformation, remain mum? Or did Weiss know about the FD-1023 and do nothing?

The emails don’t answer those questions, but they do confirm that Weiss and his top deputies were fed the Times story. Which leads to a final question: Which FBI agent(s) fed the Times the lies?

The ‘Elephant’ In The Room

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article about the question that was not asked during the Republican debate on Wednesday night.

The article reports:

The first Republican presidential primary debate hosted by Fox News on Wednesday featured no questions on election integrity, despite polls showing the issue is important to conservatives.

“Not one question about election Integrity tonight,” former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake posted on X. “If we can’t talk about our broken elections, how are we ever going to be able to fix them?”

Could that possibly be that no one wants to fix them?

The article notes:

A recent poll conducted by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) from July 13-16 showed that the vast majority of U.S. voters support election integrity initiatives such as voter ID requirements and limiting mail-in voting, according to a report last month by the Federalist.

The poll found some 88 percent back voter-ID rules — including black (82 percent) and Hispanic voters (83 percent), according to the report. It also found three-fourths of voters think in-person voting is better than mailed-in ballots, and “overwhelming opposition” to noncitizens and minors voting in U.S. elections.

The article concludes:

Former U.S. Senate candidate for Pennsylvania Sean Parnell posted on X, “For the most part, this debate was not in anyway representative of where the base of the Republican Party is. Most of these candidates miss the moment. It’s not difficult to see why Trump is by far & away the front runner.”

None of the candidates on the state last night have any idea what Americans are thinking. This is illustrated by where their campaign money comes from. It is interesting that (according to The Daily Caller on August 3rd):

Over 80% of Trump’s campaign fundraising has been financed by small donors, contributing less than $200, which political experts say underscores his large advantage over DeSantis, who is reliant on wealthy donors.

According to The Tampa Bay Times on August 22nd:

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy

Campaign’s cash on hand: $9 million

Cash on hand at super PAC supporting the candidate: $225,000

Portion of individual contributions that came from small-dollar donors: 52%

Notable facts: Ramaswamy personally loaned his campaign more than $15 million, providing by far the largest chunk of his campaign’s cash. His small-dollar donor percentage is high in part because the total sum of donations from individuals is only about $3 million. Still, the roughly $1.6 million his campaign has received from those small-dollar donors is comparable or higher than some other, more established political veterans.

Who is backing the majority of the Republican candidates? That is something that voters need to investigate before they vote?

For Those Of Us Who Dream Of Owning A Tesla…

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On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about a husband and wife who rented a Tesla for a week-long trip.

The article reports:

While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.

We agreed it would be an interesting learning experience despite our objections to the eco-agenda to phase out gas-powered vehicles. We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt. The World Economic Forum knows this very well and is likely looking for heavy limits on EV mobility after eliminating gas-powered vehicles.

The article notes:

…we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids. Read on for seven big reasons why. (Yes, “mileage may vary.”)

1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing

2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There

3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey

4. Texting While Driving Is Required

5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting

6. How to Lock the Car?

7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline

The article concludes:

But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country.

Granted, there are some moments of fun when driving a Tesla. “Regenerative braking” is a system that recharges the battery. So once your foot is off the accelerator, the car slows down quickly. We rarely needed to use the brake at all, even at red lights. And once you accelerate, expect a fast pick-up! The tinted glass roof was kind of cool. The seats were comfortable enough. But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. It seems as if the science has not caught up to the dream.

The Long-term Impact On Children

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about one of the drugs used in ‘transgender care.’ The article was written by someone who was prescribed Lupron as part of a cancer treatment protocol. Lupron is one on the puberty blockers used in ‘transgender care.’ Just for the record, the reason I keep putting ‘transgender care’ in quotes is that it is not care at all–it is setting up a person for a lifetime of necessary and frequent medical treatments.

The author notes the side effects she suffered from taking Lupron:

Instead, I now suffer from osteoarthritis and chronic bone pain, most likely caused by a drug called Lupron, the very same drug used to stop puberty in children claiming to be transgender.

I received a Lupron injection on my first day in the hospital as part of the other supportive care I received. The drug was prescribed for two reasons; the first was because I had a hemorrhagic type of leukemia, and Lupron was used to stop the risk of my period transforming into hemorrhaging. The second reason was to protect fertility, operating under the theory that by temporarily shutting down fertility by inducing temporary menopause, the inactive system wouldn’t be exposed to the chemotherapy agents.

Although the use of Lupron to protect fertility is newer and not one that the FDA has approved, it was prescribed matter-of-factly compared to chemotherapy agents. Ironically, none of my chemotherapy agents caused hair loss, but I lost over half of my hair during treatment from the Lupron and wore a wig for over six months after my treatment ended.

Lupron caused both general and abdominal weight gain, but because it also caused decreased bone density, I also have chronic pain in my pelvis and arthritis in my knees from osteoarthritis that I didn’t have before treatment. I now get injections in my knees to walk comfortably; I’ve given up my passion for trail running and generally cannot use cardio exercise to control my weight. I have to sit on a cushion at work and when I drive.

The author also notes that the dosage of Lupron given monthly as a puberty blocker is twice what she was given as a cancer treatment.

The article concludes:

Thus, we must ask ourselves, as a society, whether children or even their parents can consent to drugs and procedures that create a permanent dependence on medical care absent life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer or diabetes. Moreover, can they consent during periods of intense emotional distress? The side effects I continue to experience from only nine months of Lupron, first administered in an authentic life-and-death situation, are far less severe than those on children, but they are permanent.

I have a high degree of faith in science and medicine. Still, it’s becoming evident that we must prevent the medical exploitation of children and work to keep the temporary distresses of adolescence from being permanently medicalized and pathologized. The time for live and let live is over, and states must continue intervening. We must stop the needless sterilization of children.

What are we doing to our children?

Creating Policies That Are Unconstitutional

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about a new policy that the Biden administration is creating. Recently, Forsyth County Public Schools (FCPS), a school district outside of Atlanta, reviewed their school libraries to flag age-inappropriate sexual material for removal.

The article explains what happened next:

Though the review process focused exclusively on sexual content and ended with the return of nearly all of the books under inspection to school library shelves, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) nevertheless opened an investigation into whether the district’s book review had created a “hostile environment” based on race and sex that the school district had unlawfully failed to remedy.

Rather than invite federal sanctions, FCPS cut short this investigation by entering into a resolution agreement with OCR. One particularly concerning provision of that “voluntary” agreement requires the school district to issue a statement reassuring students “that the District strives to provide a global perspective and promote diversity” in curating its library catalog — despite the fact that no federal civil rights law mandates such acts of worship at the altar of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On June 8, the White House made clear that the FCPS matter was not an isolated investigation, announcing that OCR will appoint a new “coordinator” to warn state and local education agencies that heeding parents’ calls to remove sexually explicit books from school libraries could trigger the agency’s enforcement authority, including the withholding of federal funding.

The article concludes:

The Biden Education Department’s illegal interference in school library decisions is calculated to intimidate parents and school districts that want to ensure children do not read graphic sexual content at school. The real civil rights violation at issue here is OCR’s impermissible chilling of First Amendment rights regarding what books are appropriate for public school students. The president’s claimed authority to silence concerned parents and restrain school districts from curating library books is nothing more than fiction.

Something is very wrong here. What kind of people want our school students reading sexually explicit material? What are they attempting to do to the minds of the children? At this point, any parent with any common sense needs to remove their children from public schools.

About That Climate Change Thing…

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about the deadly summer heat Americans experience in the summer.

The article reports:

“Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard,” is the first claim in this Washington Post piece warning about the deadly summer heat — and it is almost certainly false.

First off, the only reason “extreme” temperature kills more people than other weather hazards is that deaths from weather have plummeted over the century, even as doomsday climate warnings about heat, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and droughts have spiked. Extreme weather accounts for only about 0.1 death for every 100,000 people in the United States each year. The Post should be celebrating the fact that humans have never been less threatened by the climate.

The Post warns that 30 million people in the U.S. may be “exposed” to dangerous heat “today.” That’s a lot of people, even considering nearly all of them live in the southernmost spots in the country and it’s the middle of the summer. The Post counts anyone exposed to heat over 90 degrees as being in some level of danger. Fortunately, most Americans enjoy the luxury and health benefits of air-conditioning, one of the great innovations of the past century.

Nowhere in the piece, however, do the authors tell us exactly how many Americans have perished from the oppressive heat. Anyway, it’s around 700 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — if you liberally count heat as both the “underlying” and/or “contributing” causes. It is about 400 people when heat is the underlying cause. And that’s terrible. But, also, it’s around 3,600 fewer people than those who drown every year.

The article also notes:

And most of those deaths, despite the Post’s claim, are from the cold, which is far more lethal. I come to this information via a Washington Post piece that ran this very winter, which noted that for “every death linked to heat, nine are tied to cold.” That piece relied on a peer-reviewed Lancet study. Another peer-reviewed study in The BMJ found that “cold weather is associated with nearly 20 times more deaths than hot weather.” Other studies have come to the same conclusion.

During extreme heat, you have the option of filling up the bathtub and sitting in it until you cool down. During cold weather, if you lose power and have no way to heat your house, it will be a matter of hours before you either have to leave your home or find some way to keep your family warm.

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE)

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On Saturday, The Federalist posted an article about an election integrity group known as Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE).

The article reports:

It’s no secret by now the 2020 election was fraught with complete chaos and confusion. In addition to leftist billionaires pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into local election offices to alter election operations, the contest was marred by Democrat-backed groups’ orchestrated legal campaign to change state election laws in their favor.

Regime-approved media were even running stories months before the election forecasting such a strategy. In February 2020, for instance, Politico ran an article detailing how “a constellation of left-leaning groups” were “spending millions of dollars” to launch “an avalanche of voting-rights lawsuits against state laws they say suppress participation in elections.” The lawsuits were widespread in nature, targeting provisions related to voter ID requirements, voter-roll maintenance, ballot signature verification, and more. Whether it was Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, states all over the country were barraged with Democrats’ legal blitz.

In order to prevent similar chicanery from continuing in future electoral contests, an election integrity group known as Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) is launching its counterstrategy ahead of the 2024 election. While speaking with The Federalist, RITE President Derek Lyons described how his organization is employing a three-pronged game plan to halt the left’s legal jihad, the first of which involves protecting existing statutes to ensure states have “the best election[s]” possible.

Their goal is to “protect the integrity of the ballot box from dilution, mismanagement, errors, [and] fraud,” Lyons said. They also want to make sure election integrity laws “are well defended and that they’re in place and operational for the upcoming election.”

The group is working to support voter ID laws and to assist in legal cases where left-funded groups are attempting to interfere in elections.

The article concludes:

According to Lyons, the final prong of RITE’s election integrity game plan involves “taking tools” out of leftist attorneys’ toolboxes so they don’t have “as many litigation options when it comes to elections.” Specifically, the strategy is aimed at limiting “abuse” of the “materiality provision” of the Civil Rights Act, which according to Lyons, has become Democrat lawyers’ new “favorite tool to get into federal court to try and dismantle state election laws.” Cases involving the provision normally deal with absentee ballot issues, such as witness certification, signature matching, and the dating of ballots, according to Lyons.

“At the end of the day, elections are a critical component to our democracy,” Lyons said. “It’s the instrument that normal, everyday Americans have at their disposal to try and shape the outcome of this country and it’s vitally important that they believe that it’s an effective tool for doing that.”

Additional information on RITE’s ongoing election litigation can be found here.

An Important Question That Probably Will Not Be Asked

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On June 6th, The Federalist posted the following headline:

Here’s The Single Most Important Question 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates Must Answer

I will admit it was a question I had not considered.

The article reports:

The million-dollar question for 2024 contenders is: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?

The article notes the problems with the present voting system:

Ballot harvesting is becoming an accepted norm. Candidates not only have to earn votes but figure out how to collect as many votes as they possibly can. Are Republicans overnight going to out-harvest their opponents, or figure out some new means to identify and turn out voters otherwise sitting on the sidelines in sufficient numbers to overcome Democrats’ ballot-harvesting superiority?

“Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states. The left is doing everything it can to steer private money toward public election administration — administration done in conjunction with left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seemingly targeting the Democrat ballots needed to win.

The Biden administration is working to leverage federal agencies to mobilize presumed Democrat voters as well — also potentially in conjunction with the same NGOs — under a March 2021 executive order, “Promoting Access to Voting,” that has remained shrouded in mystery as the bureaucracy stonewalls over inquiries about its implementation. Republicans have started to engage in election administration, but largely in the context of monitoring over execution. What is the plan to combat Democrat control over election machinery?

The article also notes:

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money. And filing suit over election policies and practices after votes have already been cast of course has proven a losing proposition, as demonstrated by courts’ unwillingness to grapple with fundamental issues around the 2020 election largely on technical grounds.

Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in efforts to ruin the lives of Republican election lawyers — in their own words to “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms” — seeking to kneecap their competition before it ever reaches the courtroom.

This is an important election. If the people who want a one-party America where the Democrats are in control and opposition is silenced win, it is the end of our freedom as we know it. The corruption and manipulation that has occurred in our election process in recent years is going to be hard to combat.

More Questions For The Federal Bureau Of Investigation

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

The article reports:

The FBI is continuing to stonewall congressional oversight of the agency’s investigation into a pair of pipe bombs found at the Democrat National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Wednesday, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee re-upped demands for a comprehensive briefing on the two-year-old case over which the FBI has refused transparency.

…Earlier this month, an FBI whistleblower told the Washington Times the FBI identified the vehicle the suspect entered shortly after planting the bombs but has not pursued the individual.

“The FBI had surveillance video that showed the person entering a car with a visible license plate after exiting a Metro stop in Northern Virginia,” the Times reported.

Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who worked on the case, told the paper that the agency “tied whoever the person was that dropped the bombs with [surveillance] cameras all the way through the train and getting into a car with that license plate.” Seraphin also told the Washington Times that the two bombs were inoperable.

It is interesting to me that the two bombs were inoperable.

The more we know about January 6th, the more it looks like a false-flag operation. There were some people who behaved badly, but many of them were the people who were supposed to be upholding the law. It also should be noted that the events of January 6th prevented the questioning of the electoral votes in the presidential election. Based on what we now know, that was probably the purpose of the operation. Also remember that even since Speaker McCarthy supposedly released the video tapes of January 6th, we have seen very little of those tapes. Also note that the person who aired those tapes was fired. There is a lot about January 6th that just doesn’t add up.

Sometimes The Contrast Is Amazing

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On Wednesday, The Federalist noted:

According to the contemporary left, it’s “authoritarian” for local elected officials to curate school library collections but fine for a powerful centralized federal government to issue an edict compelling a major industry to produce a product and then force hundreds of millions of people to buy it.

Lately, the federal government seems to believe that it can control the tiniest details of the lives of Americans. Covid was a glaring example of this–you can’t work in certain places unless you have an untested vaccine, you can’t go to church, but you can go to a casino, children can’t attend school, etc. Well, the federal government got away with all those unconstitutional acts, so it’s going to try more. Hang on to your car–they are coming for it if it’s not electric.

The article reports:

President Biden is set to “transform” and “remake” the entire auto industry — “first with carrots, now with sticks”— notes the Washington Post, as if dictating the output of a major industry is within the governing purview of the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing draconian emissions limits for vehicles, ensuring that 67 percent of all new passenger cars and trucks produced within nine years will be electric. This is state coercion. It is undemocratic. We are not governed; we are managed.

In fascist economies, a powerful centralized state — often led by a demagogue who plays on the nationalistic impulses of people — controls both manufacturing and commerce and dictates prices and wages for the “common good.” Any unpatriotic excessive profits are captured by the state. All economic activity must meet state approval. And crony, rent-seeking companies are willing participants. Now, I’m not saying we already live in a fascist economic state. I’m just saying the Democratic Party economic platform sounds like it wishes we were.

The article concludes:

“I want to let everybody know that this EPA is committed to protecting the health and well-being of every single person on this planet,” the EPA’s Michael Regan explained when announcing the edicts. No one is safer in an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. The authoritarian’s justification for economic control is almost always “safety.” But the entire “safety” claim is tethered to the perpetually disproven theory that our society can’t safely — and relatively cheaply — adapt to slight changes in climate. If the state can regulate “greenhouse gases” as an existential threat, it has the unfettered power to regulate virtually the entire economy. This is why politicians treat every hurricane, tornado, and flood as an apocalyptic event. But in almost every quantifiable way, the climate is less dangerous to mankind now than it has ever been. And the more they try to scare us, the less people care.

So let the Chinese communists worry about keeping their population “safe.” Let’s keep this one innovative, open, and free.

Elections matter, and the 2024 presidential election REALLY matters.

This Isn’t A New Strategy

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The deep state has been around for a while. I just finished reading The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe by Donald H. Wolfe. I was genuinely shocked by some of the behavior of J. Edgar Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, and a lot of other people. J. Edgar Hoover consistently broke laws in his surveillance of American citizens and was never held accountable. The activities of some of our leading political figures of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s were routinely kept hidden from the public with the cooperation of the media. There really isn’t anything new under the sun.

As shocking as the indictment of President Trump is, that is a political trick that has been done before in a presidential campaign.

On Monday, The Federalist reminded us:

But in evaluating whether Bragg’s charges against Trump are politically motivated, it’s worth remembering that Trump is the second major GOP presidential candidate in less than a decade that has been indicted by a local Democratic district attorney. And in that case, involving former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the prosecution was redolent of corruption and naked attempts to harm Perry’s national political ambitions.

In 2014, Perry was indicted on two felony charges. The first charge was abuse of official capacity, and the second was coercion of a public servant. Perry’s crime was using the veto power granted to him in the Texas Constitution.

What happened was this: Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, was convicted of drunk driving and incarcerated. Working from the Travis County DA’s office, Lehmberg managed the state public integrity unit, a legal office responsible for rooting out public corruption. After she refused to resign her position following a fair bit of criticism over the fact that a person in charge of rooting out public corruption should not be known for being convicted of a crime, Perry threatened to veto the public integrity unit’s $7.5 million budget and eventually did veto the budget.

So the Travis County DA’s office, the very same office where Lehmberg worked, convened a grand jury and indicted Perry. It wasn’t difficult; aside from the old saying that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, Travis County is where “the People’s Republic of Austin” is located. It’s a notoriously liberal enclave where it is easy to find a jury politically hostile to Perry, who was an otherwise popular three-term GOP governor.

The outcome was predictable:

As for the charges against Perry, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals eventually dismissed the charges against Perry in a 6-2 ruling. The abuse of official capacity charge was dismissed on the grounds that it violated the separation of powers in the state constitution. It was always the case that Perry had wide latitude and authority to issue a veto in this instance. “The governor’s power to exercise a veto may not be circumscribed by the Legislature, by the courts, or by district attorneys,” noted the ruling by Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

The second charge, coercion of a public official, was dismissed on the grounds that it was a violation of the First Amendment to say the governor could not threaten to lawfully wield power on the grounds he was intimidating other public officials.

Unless they are stopped, the Democrat party will continue with using the court system to interfere in elections.

Misplaced Priorities?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist posted an article about some of the financial activities of the Silicon Valley Bank. Admittedly, the Biden economy has made life for banks more challenging, but that should encourage careful use of depositors money–not reckless spending by banks.

The article reports:

Silicon Valley Bank might have been able to make good on $74 million promised to customers had it not pledged the money to leftist causes.

According to a new database by the conservative Claremont Institute, the collapsed bank donated or pledged to donate nearly $74 million to groups related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Federalist that SVB’s failure on the heels of its left-wing activism “is yet another indication that SVB was focused on woke virtue signaling instead of protecting their customers’ deposits.”

“Time after time we see the same pattern: companies that are the most concerned with ESG scores and woke politics do the worst jobs serving their customers,” Hild explained. “The rest of corporate America should learn from SVB’s failure now, before they are the next company to make headlines for comically poor management.”

Public reports published on the company’s website offer a window into the bank’s leftist corporate apparatus that prioritized Wall Street’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards over its fiduciary duty to shareholders.

Robert DuChemin at Substack points out:

Something that is suspicious about Joe’s (Biden) behavior is that on Monday morning he guaranteed repayment of depositors such as Roku (that had $580 million on deposit in Silicon Valley Bank). On Monday night Joe had a “private” fundraiser in the neighborhood, at which executives of RoKu and other Silicon Valley Bank depositors were present.

So, on Monday morning China Joe gave them hundreds of millions of dollars from government funds and on Monday night they gave some of that money to the democrat party. Nothing to see here.

BTW, Roku only has 1,600 employees worldwide. There is no way in hell they needed $580,000,000.00, to make payroll this month. It is just one more lie from the Biden Administration, a gang that lies every time they speak.

This is corruption on a level that could even make Hillary Clinton jealous.

It’s where we are, folks.

A Real Solution To Medicare Funding

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the Biden administration’s plan to solve Medicare’s funding difficulties.

The article reports:

If anyone doubted President Joe Biden’s commitment to running for re-election next year, they need only examine his administration’s “plan” for extending Medicare’s solvency, published in advance of Thursday’s budget release. Rather than taking a serious approach to solving Medicare’s funding difficulties, the plan instead engages in political gamesmanship over the health care of millions of seniors. But an administration that wants to play games over Medicare should be careful what it wishes for because Republicans have ammunition to respond in kind.

The plan fails serious policy tests on several fronts. First, by relying largely on revenue to close shortfalls in Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, it ignores the program’s structural imbalances. None other than President Barack Obama said in 2011 that “if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.” Four years after those comments, Obama signed legislation that restructured elements of the Medicare benefit to lower program costs. If Obama remained active in politics today, Biden would likely attack him for “cutting” seniors’ benefits.

The article suggests that the Republicans might  have an answer to the request for higher taxes:

If the Biden administration wants to engage Republicans in political games over Medicare, the president’s tax returns provide the GOP with ample opportunity to respond in kind. Multiple tax experts believe that Biden not only used the loophole his administration now wants to close but abused it in ways that violate IRS guidelines. For these reasons, last year I filed a whistleblower complaint with the IRS about Biden’s returns, which the IRS dismissed within a few short weeks.

If the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to do this, it will definitely be a ‘get out the popcorn’ moment.

About That Speech

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On Thursday, The Federalist weighed in on President Biden’s State of the Union Speech.

Here are a few comments from the article:

Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down, Joe Biden took to the podium tonight to take credit for solving a slew of problems he helped create.

At the top of his State of the Union address, the president boasted that he had “created more jobs in two years than any president created in four years.” No president — not Joe Biden nor Donald Trump — creates jobs. But Biden’s contention was exceptionally misleading, considering he inherited an economy that had been unplugged by an artificial, state-induced shutdown. If the government compels businesses to shutter, it doesn’t “create” jobs when allowing them to open.

Presidents don’t create jobs, but their policies create an atmosphere that either encourages or discourages economic growth. President Biden’s economic policies have not encouraged economic growth.

The article also notes:

Three years ago, the unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent. Today, Biden reminded us that it was at a historic low of 3.4 percent. More than 30 million people lost their jobs to Covid lockdowns. Biden claims to have “created” 12 million jobs during the past two years. The one big difference is that the labor participation rate still hasn’t recovered to pre-Covid numbers. It’s great that people are working again. But millions fewer are in the market for jobs.

The article concludes:

Biden went into his well-worn platitudes and myths about how the rich don’t pay taxes — “[n]o billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter!” — and proposed higher rates on the wealthy and corporations. He also promised to micromanage the economy with a slew of new regulations that would interfere in voluntary contracts struck between employees and employers and consumers and businesses.

Biden implored Congress to pass the PRO Act, a bill that would empower the government to impose unions on businesses and workers who want no part of them. Biden hawked an entire menu of crude economic populism — including price controls and protectionist trade policies that would undermine growth, competition, job creation, and innovation while driving up the cost of virtually every construction project in the country.

There were numerous lies, half-truths, and deceptions. There was a slew of antiquated economic ideas and sloganeering. But, surely, the president’s biggest lie of the night was to claim, “I’m a capitalist.”

We have a President who needs to take an Economics Course. He does not understand (or chooses to ignore) basic economic facts.

Rejecting Change That Would Have A Negative Impact

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On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about a positive change that came out of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting.

The article reports:

While most corporate media coverage of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting was devoted to the contested leadership race between Ronna McDaniel and Harmeet Dhillon, the organization’s conference yielded a significant win for election integrity.

During the meeting, RNC members unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in U.S. elections. In an RCV system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. Such a process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

The process is confusing to the voters and can allow a person who really does not have the support of the majority of the voters to win an election.

The article concludes:

Should they adopt ranked-choice voting, state lawmakers would be subjecting their citizens to a process that disenfranchises both candidates and voters alike. Moreover, the chaotic system would further undermine voters’ already-waning confidence in America’s elections.

State legislatures across the country would be wise to follow the RNC’s lead in rejecting the use of RCV. With its multiple rounds of counting and confusing methodology, the RCV system will almost assuredly end in disaster. (Just ask Alameda County, California).

“Every state should strive to increase voter confidence through procedures that tighten election protections, not turn them into a demolition derby. Everyone should oppose rigged choice voting,” Taylor said.

Ranked-choice voting would further undermine confidence in our elections and would likely put people in office that the majority of the voters did not support. It is a really bad idea that needs to go away.

Why I Don’t Want To Give The Government Any More Money

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On Monday, The Federalist reported the following:

While millions of jobless Americans struggled to make ends meet during devastating government-mandated lockdowns, thousands of federal employees double-dipped from taxpayer-funded pandemic unemployment funds while mostly working from home.

Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak, and the Secret Service defrauded taxpayers out of millions more dollars under the guise of Covid unemployment fund and wage assistance programs.

…Thanks to rushed and lax standards, whereby “claimants only needed to self-certify they met eligibility requirements when they filed for [pandemic unemployment assistance] benefits,” more than $8.8 million in taxpayer funds were funneled to 638 DHS employees unlawfully. FEMA’s state workforce agencies also paid out $1.2 million in “lost wages assistance” to 935 DHS workers who were “fully employed.” At least 366 of those ineligible DHS officials were actually paid overtime during the period they were approved, receiving up to hundreds of dollars per week on top of normal unemployment benefits.

I have no way of knowing whether this was corruption or simply bad record keeping, but either way it is totally unacceptable. Unless the government can show us that it is capable of managing the money it collects in taxes, we should not increase the amount of money (or the debt ceiling) that we are giving it.

The article concludes:

Already, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an oversight committee within the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, determined that “tens of thousands” of federal employees applied for and received Small Business Administration loans even though their status as government-employed disqualified them from taking the handout.

Ernst (Republican Sen. Joni Ernst), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, noted in her letter that the PRAC’s investigation into loans is ongoing and could yield even more deception and taxpayer money wasted by government workers.

Federal employees weren’t the only ones who wrongfully raked in millions of pandemic dollars. Hundreds of state and local government staff in Georgia, Indiana, and Louisiana also defrauded taxpayers.

This is not acceptable.

When The Federal Government Interferes With The Press

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Unfortunately, the federal government seems to be intent on interfering with the press only when it protects important Democrats–Republicans they attack.

On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article listing eight times the federal government played a part in covering up the crimes of the Biden family.

The article lists those incidents:

1. Censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

2. Quietly Seizing Hunter’s Laptop from Repair Shop

3. Seizing and Returning Hunter’s Second Laptop

4. Downplaying or Ignoring Intelligence Threats to Provide Plausible Deniability

5. Running Sham Investigations and Burying Information

6. Stepping Up When Hunter’s Gun Goes Missing

7. Stepping In When Ashley Biden’s Diary Shows Up

8. Keeping the Ducks in a Row and Quiet

The article concludes:

Attorney General Merrick Garland represents the final and biggest protector of the Biden family, with the investigation into Hunter Biden continuing under the oversight of the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. Similarly, the DOJ, through the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, “is still overseeing the criminal investigation into the bankrupt health care business from which James Biden allegedly siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance repairs to his beach house.” 

Notwithstanding the clear conflicts of interest, Garland has ignored calls by congressional leaders to appoint a special counsel to investigate the financial dealings of the Biden family. Instead, Garland appointed Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate Trump. 

Apparently, the only thing as strong as the get-Trump attitude of the deep state is the protect-the-Bidens stance of the federal government. 

I don’t know how long a republic can stand without equal justice under the law.

Concerns About ERIC

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ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) is a voter-roll management system used by many states. Unfortunately, ERIC is not politically neutral.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article saying that Alabama will withdraw from ERIC.

The article reports:

However, member states may not realize ERIC was started by far-left political activist David Becker, who has dedicated his life to attacking conservatives and advancing left-wing policies. Becker also started the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two leftist groups that funneled $419 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg to mostly blue counties of swing states, funding Democratic get-out-the-vote operations from government election offices in 2020. ERIC shares voter roll data – including records of unregistered citizens – with CEIR, which then reportedly creates targeted mailing lists for unregistered but likely Democrat voters and sends them back to the states for voter registration outreach.

Additionally, per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them. Though member states are allegedly required to clean their voter rolls, nothing happens. A March 2022 audit by Michigan’s auditor general found the state’s Bureau of Elections failed to sufficiently clean its voter rolls, though Michigan had joined ERIC in 2019. Likewise, the District of Columbia (another ERIC member) has also been sued for its failure to clean its rolls.

The article concludes:

While Alabama’s outgoing secretary of state, John Merrill, has repeatedly signaled his support for ERIC, Allen campaigned on removing the state from the system. Instead of relying on ERIC to clean Alabama’s voter rolls, Allen plans on using change-of-address information from the United States Postal Service, driver’s license records from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and death records from the Alabama Department of Public Health to maintain accurate rolls.

Alabama is the second ERIC member state to withdraw from the pact. Louisiana suspended its participation in January over similar concerns.

If we are going to have honest elections, we need clean voting rolls. That’s really not that hard. When I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina, I got a census letter from the town I lived in asking me to confirm that I still lived there. I suppose I could have lied, but it is a relatively small town, and eventually any lie would be discovered. Anyway, letters like that are how they keep their voter rolls updated. I also think that using information from the Post Office, Division of Motor Vehicles, and other public sources would be helpful in keeping voting records straight.