Public Safety vs. Green Energy

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries from e-bikes in the last two months.

The article reports:

FDNY Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn told The Post that fires related to lithium-ion batteries have gone up nearly nine-fold since the pandemic, with more blazes related to the batteries happening in the last two months than in all of 2019.

“It’s the prevalence of these e-devices on our streets, there’s way more of them now than ever before,” Flynn said.

The fire chief attributed the popularity of the e-bikes and scooters to the “gig economy” boom in 2020, which saw people purchase the devices on the cheap-side in droves to do delivery jobs.

He added that the vehicles have also become popular among commuters.

“People bought these devices some three years ago, and now they’re aging,” he said, noting that many don’t know the dangers caused by the wear-and-tear on the batteries’ energy cells.

“We’ve seen people try to fix it or modify it themselves, go to shops from unauthorized vendors or take it on themselves to replace the old batteries,” he added. “We tell people not to go with the cheapest option and seek out the manufacturer directly.”

It’s this improper maintenance and defects from older models that have caused a number of blazes related to lithium-ion batteries to soar, according to the FDNY.

While there were only 30 fires related to the batteries in 2019, the number more than tripled by 2021, with 104 fires reported. That year also saw four fatalities, while no one was reported to have died from the blazes in 2019 or 2020.

Part of the problem is the use of improper replacement batteries:

FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh vowed in February to continue cracking down on businesses that offer to replace individual battery cells from old ones, a fire code violation that creates what she called “Frankenstein batteries.”

“They kill people, they have killed people and they will kill more people if businesses continue to operate in this manner,” Kavanagh said.

But while New York has pushed businesses and consumers to follow new UL standards for the batteries, Flynn noted that there was little the city could do about older units coming in from other states that do not require such regulations.

I think the technology needs some work.

The Recent History Of The Porous Border

On Sunday, Rich Lowry posted an article at The New York Post about the decisions made early in the Biden administration that created the border crisis we have now. You might be able to convince some people that the crisis was simply the unintended consequence of bad decisions (not done deliberately), but the fact remains that those bad decisions were made.

The article recalls the decisions made almost immediately after President Biden took office:

The Feb. 2 order emphasized an effort to “enhance lawful pathways for migration to this country” and revoked a slew of Trump rules, executive orders, proclamations and memoranda.

The sense of it was that there’s nothing we can or should do on our own to control illegal immigration; rather, we had to fix deep-seated social, economic and political problems in Central America instead.

It called for getting more refugees into the United States, using parole to let more migrants join family members here, enhancing access to visa programs and reviewing whether the United States is doing enough for migrants fleeing domestic or gang violence, among other things. 

And it put on the chopping block numerous Trump policies that had helped establish order at the border, from Trump’s expansion of expedited removal, to his termination of a parole program for Central American minors, to his memorandum urging the relevant departments to work toward ending “catch and release.”

Most important, it targeted two of the pillars of Trump’s success at the border: the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as Remain in Mexico, and the safe-third-country agreements with the Northern Triangle countries that allowed us to divert asylum seekers to Central American countries other than their own to make asylum claims. 

 

Changing The Rules

On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The New York Post detailing how the Democrat party has changed some of the basic rules of our Republic in recent years. It’s a long list.

Here are the highlights of the list:

1. When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2. Call for the end of the Electoral College — but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3. In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4. Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5. Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6. Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate, any Supreme Court officials, politicians or citizens you oppose.

7. Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

8. Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear anyone as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9. Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault — but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10. Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda — but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

That’s just the top ten. Please follow the link to the article to read the next ten. It’s amazing how far we have fallen in recent years. When you read the list of things that used to be considered out-of-bounds that have been done since 2016 or so, it is scary.

 

 

 

What An Incredible Coincidence

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about the new minimum wage law in California.

The article reports:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that exempts Panera Bread from a new $20-an-hour minimum wage hike for fast food chains after the billionaire owner of several of the chain’s locations donated to his campaign, according to a report.

In September, Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a measure that raises the minimum wage of food fast workers from $16 an hour to $20 an hour.

But the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (FAST Act) includes an unusual carve-out that exempts “chains that bake bread and sell it as a standalone item,” according to Bloomberg News.

Newsom reportedly sought the exemption, which benefits among others Greg Flynn, the billionaire CEO of Flynn Restaurant Group, the company that owns some two dozen Panera Bread locations in the state.

Flynn, who attended the same high school as Newsom, has been involved in business dealings with the California governor, according to Bloomberg News.

He has also contributed to Newsom’s political campaigns.

…The governor’s office told Bloomberg News that the law was the “result of countless hours of negotiations with dozens of stakeholders over two years.”

Flynn was publicly critical of the legislation when it was first floated in 2022.

He said that raising the minimum wage of fast-food employees would have an adverse business effect on franchise owners.

Flynn quietly lobbied Newsom’s aides to reconsider whether Panera Bread can be considered fast food, according to Bloomberg News.

The exemption for bread sellers was inserted into the legislation after the union that was pushing for the hike in minimum wage accepted it as a concession aimed at getting the governor’s support, the report stated.

I would not be disappointed if In-N-Out Burger decided to get out of California and come east!

Finally!

On Wednesday, The New York Post reported that Mitch McConnell will step down as Republican leader in the Senate in November. He became a Senator in 1985. It was not mentioned in the article, but I suspect Senator John Thune will be selected by the uni-party to replace Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader.

There have been a few problems with Senator McConnell–mainly  the fact that his wife is part of one of Communist China’s richest families (they are involved in the shipping industry). Obviously, you don’t get rich in Communist China without the approval of the government. To me that is an uncomfortable connection.

The article at The New York Post reports:

He noted that when he arrived in the Senate, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name.” During his campaign in 1984, when Reagan was visiting Kentucky, the president called him “Mitch O’Donnell.”

McConnell endorsed Reagan’s view of America’s role in the world and the senator has persisted in face of opposition, including from Trump, that Congress should include a foreign assistance package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine.

…Trump has pulled the party hard to the ideological right, questioning longtime military alliances such as NATO, international trade agreements and pushing for a severe crackdown on immigration, all the while clinging to the falsehood that the election was stolen from him in 2020.

McConnell and Trump had worked together in Trump’s first term, remaking the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in a far more conservative image, and on tax legislation. But there was also friction from the start, with Trump frequently sniping at the senator.

Their relationship has essentially been over since Trump refused to accept the results of the Electoral College. But the rupture deepened dramatically after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. McConnell assigned blame and responsibility to Trump and said that he should be held to account through the criminal justice system for his actions.

President Trump has not pulled the party hard right–he has pulled it back to where it was before the days on George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. President Trump seems hard right because the uni-party, the press and the culture have moved so far left.

Where Can We Sign Up?

On Monday, The New York Post reported that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to illegal immigrants. Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that if you want to discourage people from coming to your city, you don’t hand them $10,000 without any kind of an identification check. The possibilities for fraud are endless. Also, what impact does putting $50 million into the New York City economy have on inflation. Didn’t we learn a lesson about that from the Covid stimulus payments?

The article reports:

Earlier this month, The Post broke the story that Mayor Eric Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to migrants.

Unusually for the mayor, Adams didn’t publicize this story himself, and his administration for nearly a month has failed to correct several public misperceptions about it.

One misperception is that the program allows the city to give out just $50 million to migrants.

No wonder the mayor has been reticent.

This debit card program — if you read the actual contract — has the potential to become an open-ended, multibillion-dollar Bermuda Triangle of disappearing, untraceable cash, used for any purpose.

It will give migrants up to $10,000 each in taxpayer money with no ID check, no restrictions and no fraud control.

The article also points out that the company overseeing this program is Newark-based Mobility Capital Finance, which also has an office in Harlem. The article explains some of the background of the company and some interesting aspects of the program.

The article notes”

Yes, the city can ask MoCaFi to activate or deactivate certain merchant or spending codes.

But these restrictions are not built into the contract; they are at the city’s changing discretion.

The city can even enable cardholder “consumers” to withdraw cash from the cards at domestic and international ATMs. “ATM withdrawal amounts per day can be restricted as required by the city,” the contract reads. “Should ATM access be included as part of the program, card fees will be subject to the schedule provided.”

The article concludes:

As the mayor told radio host Gary Byrd earlier this month, “it’s important for us to speak directly to you to separate the facts from fiction … Fact from fiction is the migrant cards that we gave out to migrants to purchase food. Just some quick bullets that you need to know about these cards. They are not American Express gold cards, folks. This is a pilot project we’re doing with 500 migrants.”

The fiction is in what the mayor says.

The fact is in the contract documents.

The city has given itself the full contractual and technical authority, under a supposed “emergency,” to disburse billions of dollars in cash to unidentifiable people who otherwise are not eligible to access the American financial system, in untraceable global cash.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. I wish our veterans were treated this generously.

The Border The News Is Ignoring

Illegal immigration has been a problem for a long time. The problem was exacerbated when President Biden took office and undid the Executive Orders President Trump had put in place to stem the tide of illegals entering America through our porous southern border. The problem was further exacerbated when the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) realized they could get money from the United Nations (mainly funded by U.S. taxpayers) and the U.S. Government for providing resources for illegal immigrants. The invitations went out throughout South America. Now the invitations are going out throughout the world. The impact on America is obvious–our cities and states are struggling with housing and food for the illegal immigrants and the taxpayers are providing food, housing, and medical care while we can barely take care of our own. But now we also have a problem on our northern border.

On Sunday, The New York Post reported:

Unsettling Post footage and interviews with US residents along the Canadian border offer a rare glimpse into the thriving migrant smuggling operation that has taken hold up north in addition to the debacle to the south.

Residents of bucolic Swanton, Vt. — a town of about 6,500 people located just across Lake Champlain from New York and about a 10-minute drive from the Canadian border — have been getting a troubling firsthand look at the US’s northern illegal migrant crisis for months.

The town’s plentiful woods make the leafy hamlet an ideal spot for hunters — and also provide ample camouflage for smugglers, who have become so rampant that some locals are packing pistols to protect themselves and turning into amateur sleuths to help thwart them.

“Now I’ve got the Border Patrol guys on speed dial,” local Chris Feeley, 52, recently grimly acknowledged.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the number of migrants illegally entering the US at the northern border last year topped 12,200 — a 240% spike from 2022.

The article notes:

Feeley told The Post he has been hunting in the area since he was a teenager, with his favorite vantage point a tree stand about 18 feet above the ground on the property of a local farm.

The elevated perch not only provides a bird’s-eye view of any approaching white-tailed deer but also the area around the Canadian border, which sits just 250 yards from his lookout.

He said that in the past, it was not unusual for him to go an entire day of hunting without encountering another person. But that all changed around three years ago.

Feeley recalled being in his tree stand one morning when a startled group of deer unexpectedly ran by — followed by two men “of Mexican descent” with backpacks and walking sticks, one of whom was looking intently at the screen of his smartphone.

At least the Border Patrol is free to protect our northern border.

 

The Real Purpose Of The Raid At Mar-a-Lago?

If you don’t have your conspiracy hat on, you are probably going to need it for this article.

An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the illegal spying on President Trump during the presidential campaign of 2016 and afterward. Obviously, that was illegal, but it seems as if Democrats are not required to abide by laws.

The article reports:

The US Intelligence Community asked foreign spy agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, which triggered the allegations that the former president’s campaign had been colluding with Russia, according to a report. 

Former CIA Director John Brennan identified and presented the targets to the US’s intelligence-sharing partners in the so-called “Five Eyes” agencies – the intelligence-gathering organizations in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – according to a report published Monday on Michael Shellenberger’s Public Substack

The report by independent journalists Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag has not been confirmed by The Post.

They cite multiple unnamed sources, including ones close to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). 

The article concludes:

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation in 2021 after admitting that he falsified an e-mail to renew a wiretap against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. 

​​Page had been wiretapped after intelligence sources suspected he might have been targeted by Russian spies. The wiretap, which was approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was renewed several times after it was first granted.

Last March, Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence, after a four-year review of the probe. 

In response, the FBI said it had “implemented dozens of corrective actions” since the improper Trump probe and that “the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented” had the reforms been in place in 2016. 

In 2022, Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the publishing of the Twitter Files expose, which detailed how the social media giant’s previous management team sought to silence controversial voices and suppress news items such as The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Do you really believe all necessary corrective actions have been taken? What if there is more to this than meets the eye? What if documents detailing exactly who was involved in this illegal activity exist and the FBI does not know where they are? Would they logically be at Mar-a-Lago or in President Trump’s possession? Is it possible that was what the raid at Mar-a-Lago was really about since other Presidents have never been treated that way?

President Trump is a smart man. I suspect (and I would also suggest that the parties who broke the law spying suspect) that somewhere in a very secret place the documents showing the abuse of our justice system are in President Trump’s possession. I also think that those who engaged in the illegal spying will be brought to justice if President Trump is re-elected. That is why the deep state is working so hard to prevent President Trump from being our next President.

Are You Surprised?

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article reporting that President Biden will not take a cognitive test during his upcoming annual physical.

The article reports:

The White House says President Biden will not take a cognitive test — even after a damning report from his own Department of Justice highlighting his “poor memory” and voters expressing major concerns about his mental acuity.

“The president proves every day [in] how he operates and how he thinks — by dealing with world leaders, by making difficult decisions on behalf of the American people — whether it’s domestic or national security,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, quoting from Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor.

“That is how Dr. O’Connor sees it, and that is how I’m going to leave it,” she said, adding that she has known the now-81-year-old Biden since 2009 and he is still “sharp.”

“When we have meetings with him and his staff, he is constantly pushing us, trying to get more information, and so that has been my experience with this president,” Jean-Pierre said.

I am not willing to demand that every candidate for President take a cognitive test, but I would support a law that said every President over the age of 70 in office should include a cognitive test as part of his annual physical.

The article also notes:

Last year, O’Connor did not put Biden through any cognitive tests. The doctor has also never taken questions from the press — in a clear break from White House precedent.

Jean-Pierre, asked about finally letting O’Connor take reporters’ questions after the oldest-ever president’s annual physical, which is expected to take place as soon as this month, refused to commit to whether that would occur.

At this point, I think the only thing that is keeping President Biden from being forced to step down from the presidency is the fact that Kamala Harris is Vice-President.

One Consequence Of “No Bail” Laws


On Thursday, The New York Post posted an article about four of the eight migrants who beat up two New York policemen on Saturday.

The article reports:

Four of the migrants cut loose without bail after allegedly ganging up on two NYPD cops near Times Square may be on the run, The Post has learned.

Cops believe the group could have hopped on a bus bound for California on Wednesday after giving phony names to a church-affiliated nonprofit group that helps migrants get rides out of the city, according to law enforcement sources.

The four accused cop-attackers believed to have skipped town were charged with assault on a police officer and obstruction immediately after the shocking, caught-on-video attack Saturday in Midtown.

Darwin Andres Gomez, 19, Kelvin Servita Arocha, 19, Wilson Juarez, 21, and Yorman Reveron, 24, were released without monetary bail by a Manhattan judge.

But Reveron, who had prior arrests on his rap sheet, was put on supervised release. Sources said hightailing it out of the city would likely be a violation of his court-ordered release.

…A fifth asylum-seeking suspect, Jhoan Boada, 22, was hit with the same charges and also released without bail Wednesday.

Two more migrants, Jandry Barros, 21, and Yohenry Brito, 24, were arrested by cops later that night, the NYPD said.

We should not even consider giving asylum to a person who beats up policemen!

The article notes:

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said the $15,000 cash bail or a $50,000 bond was warranted because Brito had been positively identified on the video footage of the attack through a “distinct tattoo.”

He has four prior arrests for petty larceny, with two open cases and a guilty plea on a disorderly conduct charge in September, according to sources and a criminal complaint.

Assistant District Attorney Zachary Kotin also argued that Brito didn’t have a permanent address or ties to the community, warranting the bail to ensure his return to court, and Judge Marisol Martinez Alonzo agreed to the amount.

The article concludes:

The DA’s office previously said investigators were still reviewing the footage to determine the extent to which the earlier five suspects were involved.

The spokesperson on Thursday also said the office was investigating the allegations that the four released migrants had skipped town.

“The Court is not aware of the defendants’ whereabouts but they are obligated to return to Court on their scheduled dates,” which is Feb. 6, said Al Baker, spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration.

The defendants should be tried quickly and deported quickly if they are found guilty.

 

Your Tax Dollars At Work

On Monday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

Don’t believe the lies: The UN is paying illegals using US taxpayer cash

Why are we still supporting the UN? Can’t we kick them out of New York City and use the building for kitchy condos?

The article reports:

In 2021, early on in America’s historic border crisis, I wrote that the United Nations was abetting the problem by handing out debit cards and cash vouchers to aspiring illegal border crossers on their way north.

One outraged group of 21 border security-minded lawmakers pitched a bill that would require the United States, the UN’s largest donor, to turn off the taxpayer money spigot.

H.R. 6155 never caught fire, though, in no small part because “fact checks” from outlets such as the AFP claimed that the UN was doing no such thing.

Those fact checkers lied.

The UN’s just released the 2024 “Inter-Agency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela” (R4V for short), a planning and budget document for handing out $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries.

It confirms the UN, with the helping hands of 248 named non-governmental organizations, is indeed giving debit cards to illegal migrants — funded, in large part, by US taxpayers.

Despite the R4V plan title naming Venezuelans as recipients of this aid operation, the document’s fine print (footnote on page 14 and paragraph on page 43, for instance) says the largesse goes to “all nationalities” and “multiple other nationalities.”

We are sending foreign aid to these countries which is being misused and stolen by the tyrants who govern them, and then we are giving money to the people who flee those tyrants. Until the citizens of those countries are willing to stay in those countries and fight for freedom, nothing is going to change. America is the country it is because our Founding Fathers fought for it. Admittedly we are not currently going in the direction that they planned, but their system of government has generally held. It’s time to cut off the funding that is not going directly to the people in need. American money does not need to uphold tyrants or encourage people to break the law, either directly or through the UN.

The Department Of Justice Is Hoping No One Is Paying Attention

On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It seems that the Department of Justice has finally admitted that the laptop belongs to Hunter Biden and the information on it is valid.

The article reports:

Nearly four years after the damning evidence of Biden family corruption on Hunter Biden’s laptop was disclosed in 2020, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice admitted in a court filing on Tuesday that the Mac and its contents are real.

If you’ve been following this story since it broke in October 2020, you know there was never any true reason to doubt The New York Post’s reporting or the word of the Delaware computer repair shop owner that the abandoned Mac belonged to Hunter. Yet truth was no defense. The Post was quickly banned from social media for spreading “disinformation” — a decision based on actual disinformation — and dozens of U.S. intelligence officials rushed to back the censorship. So did Joe Biden.

The DOJ’s confirmation the laptop’s contents came from Hunter arrives years after complicit media outlets quietly admitted the truth about the computer in 2022, and even longer after conservative media verified the laptop’s authenticity ahead of 2020 election day.

Does anyone actually believe that this was an honest mistake by the DOJ and that they were not trying to influence an election?

The article concludes:

To this day, Biden claims the hundreds of emailstexts, voicemailsbank recordsreceiptsWhite House visitor logsphotos, and sworn witness testimonies from Biden business associates proving his involvement in the family corruption business are a “bunch of lies.” He and everyone else who knew the laptop and its contents were legit faced zero consequences for their lying and treachery.

Election Day 2024 is fast approaching, and not one of the Americans who was lied to during the 2020 election will ever receive an apology from the FBI, corporate media, Big Tech, or the Bidens, because those institutions and people are not sorry. Getting away with dodging, deflecting, and burying what should have been the biggest corruption scandal story of the century was the plan all along.

Can you imagine how the scenario would have been different if the laptop had belonged to Donald Trump, Jr.?

As we go into this election season, don’t trust the mainstream media–do your own research.

Slowly Uncovering The Spider’s Web

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the tunnels the Israeli Defense Forces are uncovering in Gaza.

The article reports:

Hamas’ sinister network of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip may be over 350 miles long – or hundreds of miles more than initial estimates, sources said this week.

The tunnels may run for anywhere between 350 to 450 miles, and boast a staggering 5,700 entrance shafts, senior Israeli officials told The New York Times.

The new estimates – which could not be confirmed – are over 100 miles longer than the original numbers, which placed the tunnel network at around 250 miles long, the outlet noted.

The tunnels’ vastness is “extraordinary” given that Gaza’s longest point only stretches about 25 miles, the Times said.

…There are believed to be about 130 hostages left in Gaza – many of whom are suspected to be held somewhere in the vast tunnel network.

Thanks to new intelligence gathered during the campaign, the IDF can now quickly detect a single tunnel – a task they previously took up to a year, one anonymous official told the Times.

Some of the crucial information was found on the computers of Hamas operatives who were involved in digging the tunnels, as well as a list of families that “hosted” the tunnel shafts underneath their homes, the insider said.

The money used to build the tunnels was given to Gaza to create infrastructure that would result in the prosperity of its citizens. Obviously, those ruling Gaza had no concern for their citizens. That alone is reason to refuse to allow Gaza to rule itself–it has proven to be incapable of successful self-government.

The Accusers Have NO Moral Ground To Stand On

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about some of the activities surrounding the legal case against President Trump in Georgia. The shenanigans are unbelievable.

The article reports:

The special prosecutor that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is accused of having an “improper” relationship with billed the Fulton County DA’s office $4,000 for two eight-hour meetings with White House officials while overseeing the election interference case against former President Donald Trump, according to court documents.

The apparent meetings attended by Nathan Wade, an Atlanta-based private attorney hired by Willis to assist in the prosecution of the Trump and his co-defendants, took place in 2022 after he was tapped for the role, according to invoices included in a bombshell court filing by Michael Roman, a former Trump 2020 campaign official.

Roman argues in the court filing that Willis should be disqualified from the case and the charges against him dropped because of her alleged “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Wade.

The services rendered by Wade in conjunction with the case seemingly included attending an event with White House counsel in Georgia and a meeting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, the invoices show. 

Not only are the taxpayers paying for the lawfare against President Trump, they are paying for an inappropriate relationship between the District Attorney and one of the prosecuting attorneys. The chutzpa of these people in amazing.

The article notes:

Last September, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that Willis detail any contact her office has had with federal officials about her prosecution of Trump, a request the DA refused to comply with. 

Jordan, a staunch defender of Trump, argued that Willis’ case could be “designed to interfere with the 2024 presidential election,” in which the 77-year-old is the Republican front-runner against President Biden.

Willis, in a chiding response to Jordan, accused the committee chairman of lacking “a basic understanding of the law” and attempting to “intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case.”

Roman’s filing claims that “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney” have confirmed that Willis and Wade had an ongoing fling, and that Wade filed for divorce in Cobb County, Ga., “a day after his first contract with Willis commenced” in November 2021. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in Wade’s divorce proceedings. 

Does anyone in the Democrat party have a sense of decency or a respect for the Constitution?

The Whoppers Of 2023

On Thursday, The New York Post listed twelve of the most outrageous lies told by politicians and the media during 2023. Please follow the link to the article for the details, I will simply post the  list.

This is the list:

#1

“The Middle East . . . is quieter than it has been for decades.”

— National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, November/December (print edition)

#2

“We ended cancer as we know it.”

— President Biden, July 25

#3

“Age jokes can’t diminish Biden’s unrivaled experience and wisdom.”

— The Hill, Dec. 11

#4

“Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say

— The New York Times, Oct. 17

#5

“Let’s always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far, while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So we have achieved a lot.”

— VP Kamala Harris, June 23

#6

“In the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive.”

— Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Dec. 11

#7

“Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink.”

— The Washington Post, July 13

#8

“We have seen the effectiveness of our approach [to the border].”

— Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas, May 10 

#9

“We have been [in Israel] for more than 1.5 million years.”

— Palestinian National Council President Rawhi Fattouh, May 22

#10

“There would be no climate crisis if there was no racism.”

— Jane Fonda, May 27

#11

“People Are Getting Real Heated Over a Gas Stove Ban That Isn’t Even Happening.”

— The New Republic, Jan. 12

#12

“Biden is extremely well-liked.”

— MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski, Feb. 10

Reality is merely a state of mind.

 

A Word From Someone Who Has Been There

On Thursday, The New York Post posted an article quoting one of the freed Hamas hostages on what she saw while she was held hostage.

The article reports:

A 21-year-old Israeli-French tattoo artist who was abducted by Hamas has recalled the horrors that she faced in Gaza in her first interview, saying she “went through a holocaust” during her 54 days in captivity.

Mia Schem was asked in a preview clip of an interview with Channel 13 why she decided to open up about her experience at the hands of the terrorists.

“It was important to me to relay the truth about the nature of the people who live in Gaza, who they are truly are and what I experienced there,” the young woman tells journalist Lior Veroslavski in the clip released Thursday.

Veroslavski replies, “It was important to you that the world understands what?”

“That I went through a holocaust,” the former hostage says, matter-of-factly. “Everyone over there is a terrorist.”

The article notes her realization that she was held prisoner by a family:

“Suddenly I realized that I’m with a family,” she says. “Suddenly I’m asking myself questions: Why am I in some family’s home? Why are there kids here? Why is there a wife?”

Do families in peaceful countries host hostages?

 

Sad News From Israel

On December 22nd, The New York Post reported the following:

An elderly American Israeli with deep ties to New York has become the first US citizen confirmed to have died while being held hostage by Hamas terrorists, it was announced Friday.

Gadi Haggai, 73, was murdered by the terrorists who are still thought to be holding his 70-year-old wife, Judi Weinstein, according to the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum representing the families.

“Gadi was a man full of humor who knew how to make those around him laugh,” the families group told the Times of Israel.

“A musician at heart, a gifted flautist, he played in the IDF Orchestra and was involved with music his whole life.”

Kibbutz Nir Oz also said Friday the Israeli Defense Forces informed Haggai’s family that he had been murdered.

His body is still in the Palestinian territory.

The article concludes:

According to Israel’s official tally, 129 people are still in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

Of those, 22 are dead, the Israeli government says.

The forum said that between five and 10 of the hostages hold US citizenship. The US Embassy had no immediate comment.

Israel needs to finish what Hamas started.

Do You Like Having Electricity 24 Hours A Day?

Years ago, I remember talking to someone from another country who was very impressed that Americans had electricity for 24 hours every day. In her country they thought four or five hours of electricity a day was good. That was a foreign concept for me. I would like it to remain a foreign concept.

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s plans for American energy.

The article reports:

The Biden administration made two virtue-signaling proclamations at last week’s COP28 conference in Dubai that it says will help save the planet from climate change.

The policies aren’t likely to change the planet’s temperature by even one-tenth of a degree, but they might just destroy the 21st-century American industrial economy as we know it.

First, Team Biden announced it will stop production of all new coal plants in the United States.

This comes on the heels of President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency saying this year it would impose new power plant emission regulations that are virtually impossible for coal plants to comply with.

The article also notes comments from the Vice-President:

Vice President Kamala Harris trumpeted the next day new rules to “sharply reduce methane from the oil and natural gas industry.”

The administration calls methane a “super-pollutant” that it wants to eliminate because it’s “many times more potent than carbon dioxide.”

But methane is effectively a hydrocarbon that comes from natural gas.

Eliminating methane is a de facto ban on natural gas power plants.

Here is the most sinister part of this story that no one in the Biden administration is telling you: Eradicating coal and natural gas plants will ravage America’s electric power capacity.

These regulations will cause rolling blackouts and brownouts across the country, much like we’ve already seen in California — America’s forerunner of radical anti-fossil fuel policies.

The lights will go out intermittently, and home heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer will have to be turned off or rationed.

Without gas and coal plants, hospitals, schools, the internet, construction projects and factories will be routinely shut down when unreliable alternative energy sources like wind and solar power aren’t delivering enough juice.

Upward of 60% of America’s electric power generation will go away — and soon.

Does anyone want to make a wager as to whether or not the mucky-mucks who are making these policies will continue to have electricity 24 hours a day while the rest of us have electricity for maybe eight hours a day?

When Taking Bribes, Make Sure The Origin Of The Product Is Not Traceable

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.

On December 4th, The New York Post reported the following:

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.

A Question That Needs To Be Asked

On Monday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?

The article reports:

Hamas used Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital as a base of terror operations. That’s the obvious conclusion following Sunday’s discovery of a large terror tunnel under the hospital along with videos of Hamas bringing Israeli hostages inside.

Now comes an important question for Congress: Which US-funded international organizations knew the truth about al-Shifa and helped Hamas conceal its war crimes?

The Israel Defense Forces this weekend discovered a tunnel beneath al-Shifa Hospital that extends 10 meters down and 55 meters across — leading to what might be a booby-trapped door. Special units that specialize in handling explosives have been summoned to break through to the next section.

Meanwhile, Israel also released security footage showing two hostages brought through al-Shifa by Hamas terrorists following the Oct. 7 massacre as hospital workers looked on — suggesting a widespread conspiracy to conceal both the presence of hostages at al-Shifa and Hamas’ terror infrastructure within the compound.

The article notes:

Within days of the Hamas massacre, Fabrizio Carboni, the Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, began spreading Hamas disinformation — telling international media that Gaza “hospitals risk turning into morgues.”

When Carboni said this, he may have already known that hospitals in Gaza were used as terror bases and hostages were being stashed under those hospitals.

…In its 2022 annual report, the ICRC says it received $689 million from the United States last year — roughly one-third of contributions received from all countries combined. That’s a lot of taxpayer money sent to an organization that may have betrayed its most fundamental duty to uphold the Geneva Conventions by covering up Hamas war crimes and abandoning Israeli hostages.

The article concludes:

The ICRC and WHO have strong lobbies in Washington that will fight to protect their flow of taxpayer money. If, as expected, the State Department does nothing to hold these groups accountable, Congress — which holds their purse strings — should intervene. The first step: Investigate. The next: Put a pause on US funding until leadership changes and reforms guarantee that complicity in terrorist war crimes will never happen again.

How much American taxpayer money paid for Hamas headquarters?

Hopefully This Results In Some Major Lawsuits

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about a group of people headed to the pro-Israel rally from Detriot.

The article reports:

Hundreds of Jewish people headed to Tuesday’s pro-Israel rally in DC were left stranded when bus drivers staged “a deliberate and malicious walk-off,’’ a major Jewish organization said.

The “anti-protest” left a charted flight from Detroit — about 300 people — on the Dulles Airport tarmac for about 11 hours before being sent back home, causing them to miss the entire March for Israel event.

“I thought it was nuts, I thought it was crazy that we’re blocked from getting to the rally,” Jonathan Kaufman told The Post, adding that there were “frantic” calls to find out what was happening as they were stranded for hours.

“Our right to assembly is a constitutional right — and this was straight up blocking that.”

Kaufman and 900 others hopped on three private planes out of Detroit chartered by the Jewish Federation of Detroit, which also booked several buses to transport the massive group to the march at DC’s National Mall.

A third of the passengers weren’t allowed to leave the tarmac, however, after several buses failed to show up on the tarmac upon their 10:30 a.m. landing, according to a federation spokesperson.

The article notes:

The drivers had organized a “mass sick out” day to prevent Jewish ralliers from attending the much-anticipated march, leaving just a handful available to meet their obligations.

“We have learned from the bus company that this was caused by a deliberate and malicious walk-off of drivers,” the spokesperson told The Post.

The bus company — which the federation repeatedly refused to name — told the Jewish Federation of Detroit that a “significant number” of drivers called out sick when they learned they would be taking hundreds of Jewish Americans to the pro-Israel rally, the organization’s David Kurzmann told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.

…They were also forced to wait several hours for their team members who did make it to the rally to finally return before the chartered flights could fly back to Michigan.

Throughout the day-long fumble, organizers from the Jewish Federation of Detroit were giving updates to the passengers about the supposed counter-protest through the speaker on the plane.

Kaufman — who spent hundreds of dollars to attend the march with his mother — called the walkout “a deliberate antisemitic act,” that “would have been called a hate crime” if it happened to any other ethnic group.

“This is a historical moment — and I would have loved to be part of it.”

This was a criminal act and needs to be treated as such.

People Vote With Their Feet

On Saturday, The New York Post reported that in the past four years, ten billionaires have changed their residences from New York to Florida.

The article reports:

New York has lost 10 billionaires in the last four years — three of whom fled to Florida — leaving tax coffers lighter by tens of millions of dollars annually.

This year 62 New York-based billionaires appeared on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, compared to 72 in 2019 and 65 last year. 

Investor and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, whose net worth was valued at $5.7 billion last year, has grown his fortune to $6.9 billion — but he packed his bags for Florida.

Other billionaires who have relocated from Gotham to the Sunshine State in the last four years include hedge funder Daniel Och — whose net worth now stands at $3.6 billion — and investor Carl Icahn, who’s worth $6.9 billion. 

“You have this incredibly high rate imposed on all of the income of the highest earners [in New York], and living just about anywhere else will substantially reduce your tax burden. Going to Florida will obviously eliminate your individual tax burden, and many of these billionaires clearly have that flexibility,” the National Tax Foundation’s vice president, Jared Walczak, explained.

The article notes:

New York relies on the top 1% of taxpayers to pay for 42% of its tax receipts, and billionaires’ incomes are taxed at the state’s highest rate — a staggering 14.8%, according to Walczak.

Although it’s impossible to quantify the exact loss in state taxes from billionaires’ fleeing without access to private income documents, “If you had someone who was earning $100 million [a year] in New York suddenly move to Florida, that’s something like a $11 million-a-year hit per year recurring to the state,” said Ken Girardin, the research director for the Albany-based think tank, Empire Center for Public Policy.

Even with the tax accountants and tax lawyers that billionaires can afford to hire, eventually they reach the point where it is not worth it to stay in a state that takes more money from them then the Medieval Lords took from the peasants. I just hope that when the leave New York, they leave their big spending government ideas behind.

Don’t Know Or Don’t Care?

On Thursday, The New York Post posted an article about how some of the pro-Hamas protestors in England view recent and current events in the Middle East.

The article includes the following:

Two girls interviewed at one pro-Hamas protest in London were asked what their reaction was when they first learned that Hamas had attacked Israel on October 7.

“I don’t believe they did, did they,” said one.

“Honestly, I think I need to be a bit more clued up on everything that’s going on, so I feel I’m not really qualified to answer that too well,” said the other.

Well, she appeared to feel “qualified” enough to turn up at an anti-Israel demo.

Her friend, holding a banner, actually said, “I mean, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that shows that that’s actually happened.”

That is frightening.

The article continues:

These two ignoramuses should have come to Israel with me this week.

Specifically, they should have come to the site of the music festival massacre, and seen the remains of that “peace rave” where people their age, and very similar to them, were gunned down and raped just as the party was “coming up.”

Or perhaps they should have come with me to the small community of Nir Oz on the border of Gaza.

I have been to kibbutzim like this many times in the past. The citizens of these small towns and communities are often very left-wing. Often “peaceniks.” They have been accustomed to rockets for years.

Douglas Murray, the author of the article, walked through some of the areas that were attacked on October 7th. The article includes pictures of the destruction. We should not be concerned about the Israeli attack on the military strongholds in Gaza, we need to be concerned about the monsters that attacked innocent civilians and butchered them while celebrating their actions. The people who purposely killed women, young children and babies on October 7th need to be killed themselves. There is no chance of rehabilitation.

The Consequences Of Bad Government

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the number of people who are leaving New York State. I personally can attest to that–I currently have one relative planning to leave this year and two who left last year. New York State is becoming a place that is very expensive to live in addition to rising crime and expanding restrictions put on law-abiding citizens rather than criminals.

The article reports:

It’s an Empire State of decline.

Beset by high taxes and quality of life woes, 545,498 New Yorkers left for other states in 2022, according to US Census data.

Top destinations included Florida — the most popular choice — followed by New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania as well as more distant states like Texas and California.

The exodus was partly offset by more people moving to the Empire State in 2022 than any year over the last decade, with 301,000 new residents making the transition.

Despite that uptick, New York still suffered a net population loss of 244,000.

The departures have yet to impact New York City housing costs, with median rents continuing to hover near all-time post COVID-19 highs.

It’s interesting to see that many New Yorkers are choosing to remain in the same general area–New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, all of which are generally headed in the same direction as New York.

The article also notes:

The number of New Yorkers moving to Texas surpassed 30,000 for the first time in 2022 — up from 18,000 in 2019 for an increase of 67%, the data show.

North Carolina, Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia rounded out the top ten destinations.

The least popular choices were Wyoming, Montana, Iowa, Mississippi and South Dakota which all saw less than 500 people move from New York in 2022.

South Dakota was the least preferred, with just 52 people scampering to the Mount Rushmore State last year.

…A Post analysis of the census bureau’s state-to-state migration figures shows a steady decline from New York each year since 2012, with departures vastly outpacing inbound moves and roughly 4.6 million people waving goodbye to New York over the past decade

Roughly 2,700,000 people relocated to New York over that span — resulting in a net population loss of 1.9 million residents.

It will be interesting to see if the New Yorkers that move to states with more conservative values adapt or try to recreate what they left.

Pay Attention To The Country Making The Announcement

Today, The New York Post posted the following headline:

Iran says Hamas ready to release hostages if Israel stops airstrikes as at least 199 now known taken

It is interesting that Iran is making that announcement–as if there were ever any doubt as to who is pulling the strings of the Hamas operation.

To understand what is going on here, you need to understand one of the basic principles of Islamic law.

According the Reliance of the Traveller (a contemporary volume on Islamic law), this is the definition of HUDNA:

Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers of material, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim. 

…Even in modern times, it remains common for Muslims to refer to a proposed peace treaty or peace talks a hudna.

The source for the above information is Stephen Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure, published in 2015.

Israel has shut off the water to the Gaza Strip and cut off imports of food, etc. Just for the record, the purpose of “hudna” is to regroup and rearm for a future Islamic victory.

The New York Post article reports:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed Monday that Hamas was ready to release its hostages if Israel ceases its airstrikes along the Gaza Strip — as the number known to have been taken by the terrorist group rose to at least 199.

Hamas officials are “ready” to release hostages, but doing so would be “impossible” under Israeli airstrikes in the region, Iranian Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani relayed at a news conference in Tehran.

The terror group “stated that they are ready to take necessary measures to release the citizens and civilians held by resistant groups, but their point was that such measures require preparations that are impossible under daily bombardment by the Zionists against various parts of Gaza,” Kanaani said.

In the past, Israel has had a policy of never negotiating with terrorists. We saw the positive results of that in 1976 when Israel mounted a daring raid on the airport at Entebbe rather than negotiate with terrorists. Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed in that raid. Prime Minister Netanyahu totally understands what is at stake.

Anyone with a knowledge of Islamic terrorism will tell you that if the bombing stops and the hostages are released, it will only be a matter of time before more hostages are taken. The only way to end this cycle of violence is to end the lives of those who are perpetrating it.