Making Room For People Who Tell The Truth

On February 3rd, The New York Post posted an article about changes being made in the Pentagon office space designated for news organizations.

The article reports:

The Trump administration has ordered four left-leaning news organizations including the New York Times and NBC News to vacate their dedicated office space at the Pentagon, making room for new media outlets such as The Post and the right-leaning Breitbart News and One America News.

The decision was announced late Friday in a Department of Defense memo issued by spokesman John Ullyot, who wrote that the Times, NBC News, NPR and Politico must relinquish their Pentagon office space by Feb. 14.

According to Ullyot, the move is part of a new annual media rotation program designed to allow access by “a new outlet from the same medium that has not had the unique opportunity to report as a resident member of the Pentagon press corps.”

As part of this reshuffle, The Post will replace the Times as a print outlet, OAN will take NBC News’ spot as a cable network, Breitbart News will assume NPR’s role as a radio outlet and HuffPost, owned by BuzzFeed, will take Politico’s space.

The reaction is predictable:

She urged the Pentagon to expand media office space to ensure equal access for all news organizations.

Other affected outlets voiced similar concerns.

Politico’s senior managing editor Anita Kumar called the decision “troubling,” while an NBC News spokesman expressed disappointment over losing a broadcasting booth that had been in use for decades.

Where were the complaints when the organizations now given space didn’t have space?

The article concludes:

The reshuffling of Pentagon media access marks another chapter in the Trump administration’s strained relationship with the press.

With accusations of press favoritism and concerns over media transparency mounting, the decision is likely to fuel further debate over the role of independent journalism in government reporting.

If the reporting of the news organizations that lost their space had been accurate, they would still have their space.

Follow The Money

Some of us were appalled by the message given at the National Cathedral Prayer Service. It was not Biblical and was not appropriate. (article here) Well, as usual, it turns out that there was more to the story than meets the eye.

On Friday, The New York Post reported the following:

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon to President Trump during an inaugural prayer service, coupled with her church’s advocacy for humanitarian immigration programs, reveals a striking hypocrisy — one that could be seen as self-serving and even a conflict of interest.

That’s because the federal contracting arm of the church, Episcopal Migration Ministry (EMM), is paid to bring in people on resettlement programs that Trump has temporarily paused and targeted for re-evaluation.

EMM budget figures for 2024 are not available yet, but in 2023 it earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government programs to resettle 3,600 individuals.

…Unlike everyday immigrants, these new arrivals receive government assistance and, most importantly, are immediately eligible for all forms of welfare, such as Medicaid and cash assistance, on the same basis as a US citizen.

Further, they can immediately sponsor friends and relatives under a recent Biden expansion of the refugee resettlement program.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement was projecting 656,500 new arrivals in 2025, who would fall under its care. Clearly this is a program wildly out of control.

In an wild understatement, a 2012 Government Accountability Office report quotes an official noting that “funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”

The article concludes:

Of course, it is not fair to question the Episcopalians alone on this.

Their resettlement contractor is the second smallest of the 10 contractors in the industry. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) dwarfs EMM.

Forbes reported that USCCB affiliate Catholic Charities USA, which has its hand in all aspects of immigration and seems to get money from every government agency except NASA, received $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2021. That’s 68 times more than EMM got that year.

It was never intended that the sponsoring organizations, formerly known as “Voluntary Agencies,” would be purely federal contractors, with all the behavior, untoward incentives, money, and influence-peddling that this brings, not to mention questions of church-state relations which are never raised in this context.

Any re-tooling of our humanitarian immigration programs must put the bulk of responsibility back on the “sponsoring” entity and limit new arrivals’ access to welfare.

As for encouraging the church to practice true sacrificial charity, Bishop Budde may have put it best when she said in an interview with Rachel Maddow, “the first and primary role that we have is [to lead] by example.”

I would have no problem with the church sponsoring immigrants if the church took care of them after they got here rather than making the taxpayer pay for the church’s generosity. This is a racket. These facts make the Bishop’s remarks seem even more hypocritical than they seemed to be at the time they were given.

Another Consequence Of The Biden Administration

In June of 2024, The New York Post reported that the Biden administration had fast-tracked the takeover of the Audacy radio network by George Soros. Audacy reaches 165 million monthly listeners and includes a handful of conservative shows from hosts including Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson.

This week we saw one ugly result of that takeover.

On Monday, Newsbusters posted the following:

This weekend, a radio station owned by the George Soros-controlled Audacy outrageously identified the vehicle whereabouts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operating in San Jose, California, which is known for violent gang activity.

KCBS 740 AM – not to be confused with the Los Angeles CBS affiliate – elevated the insane unmasking of ICE agents from the leftist Rapid Response Network, which fights against deportation initiatives during the January 26 edition of KCBS Radio Weekend News.

But to make matters worse, anchor Bret Burkhart gave exact descriptions of the vehicles the ICE agents were reportedly using, including specific locations. NewsNation confirmed January 27 that the agents were conducting an operation in the area around that time, meaning their cover was potentially blown.

Post Millennial senior editor Andy Ngo noted the agents were allegedly working “undercover.” KCBS, in effect, “put the law enforcement officers at serious risk while an operation was ongoing targeting violent, criminal foreign nationals,” Ngo concluded. 

The article notes:

KCBS 740 was one of the stations prominently implicated in that deal. The Federal Communications Commission, in a bizarre act, fast-tracked Soros’s purchase of the radio giant, which was also backed by foreign money.

I am not sure if there is a definitive law that covers this activity, but there should be a penalty for this action.

Be Careful When You Donate

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about some of the donation sites collecting money for the victims of the California wildfires. When you donate to anything, be sure to read the fine print.

The article reports:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom sparked fierce outrage for soliciting donations to victims of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires via his super PAC, which pushed users to add their personal information to a Democratic fundraising site.

Newsom, 57, posted a link on X to californiafirefacts.com, a website set up by his campaign committee, in response to what he claimed was misinformation on the wildfires. 

But the site urges users to give money to the California Fire Foundation and links them to a module from ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s fundraising platform. The ActBlue donation box says the money is being raised by Campaign for Democracy, Newsom’s super PAC. 

…The California Fire Foundation, which helps firefighters, their families and victims, allows users to donate directly without relying on a service like ActBlue to make those transactions. 

Users who donate via Newsom’s fundraising appeal are also automatically signing up for text messages from his super PAC, if they provide their phone numbers.

ActBlue isn’t doing this for nothing:

Observers online also quickly pointed out that ActBlue takes a portion of all donations as a processing fee. ActBlue claims to “charge a flat rate of 3.95% on each donation” to “cover the processing cost.” The Post has contacted ActBlue for comment. 

The article notes:

“Both Gavin Newsom and Elizabeth Warren were exposed for using the California fires to push Democrat fundraising efforts. It doesn’t get much worse than this. Americans, remember these receipts when you head to the polls,” X user Jack wrote.

“Getting a great preview of how a President Newsom would handle a national emergency—hop on a left wing podcast, have the hosts use Act Blue for relief donations (where $ will ultimately get funneled to Dem causes), and then retain the donor lists for future Dem fundraising,” user Vanessa wrote on X, referencing Newsom’s appearance on the liberal “Pod Save America” podcast.

“Newsom….never let a fundraising opportunity go to waste,” user Andrew Laing wrote on X.

Donations directly to The California Fire Foundation, Operation Blessing, Samaritan’s Purse of the Salvation Army might be more effective.

Common Sense Would Have Prevented This Tragedy

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about some of the policies that have resulted in the severity of the California fires. Frankly, I don’t know how they will rebuild from this. The losses are staggering. Many of the homes destroyed were multi-million-dollar homes. In California a one bedroom home can cost over $600,000, so the losses in every area affected are going to be monumental. However, there are common-sense precautions that could have been put in place that might not have prevented the fires, but would have made them less severe.

The article reports:

President-elect Trump, during his first administration, put Gov. Gavin Newsom on notice for his handling of repeated wildfires in the state, years ahead of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires currently raging.

“The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers,” the former and upcoming president posted to X in 2019.

“Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states,” the thread continued.

President Trump also stated:

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,”Trump posted to Truth Social on Wednesday. /pal

“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”

This is not playing politics–this is telling the truth. If the Governor had taken the proper action, the disaster could have been prevented.

All Americans will wind up paying for the neglect of California’s forests and California’s misplaced priorities regarding its water systems. That is the result of irresponsible leadership in the State of California.

Making Life Harder For Those On Fixed Incomes

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about a recent regulation put in place by the Biden administration. First of all, why are we being governed by regulations instead of laws passed by Congress? It is time to go back to the government envisioned by our Founding Fathers. I want every regulation voted on by Congress and their votes made public.

The article reports:

A Biden administration ban on certain natural gas water heaters as part of the lame duck president’s climate agenda could send prices soaring for the elderly and the poor.

Under the policy, new non-condensing, natural gas-fired water heaters will be prohibited for sale starting in 2029 due to concerns about carbon-dioxide emissions. The policy comes during President Biden’s twilight days in the White House and was quietly announced without a press release.

If the policy takes effect, as it is slated to on March 11, a little less than 40% of the tankless water heaters currently on the market would be banned, according to an estimate from the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. 

First of all, carbon-dioxide emissions have been proven to be beneficial to the planet–not detrimental. Farmers blow carbon-dioxide into their greenhouse to help the plants grow. Would they be doing that if it were killing their plants?

The article notes:

Customers will be pushed towards buying models that are more expensive or lean on non-instantaneous storage tank water heaters, which are generally cheaper but tend to be less efficient than the ones that are facing a ban, per the report. 

For example, a Rinnai America tankless non-condensing natural gas water heater goes for roughly $1,000 at Home Depot, while a comparable condensing tank goes for about $1,800.

Tankless technology is frequently used in smaller apartments or housing spaces, which means that a lot of lower-income and elderly people tend to use those types of water heaters.

“Forcing low-income and senior customers to pay far more upfront is particularly concerning. DOE’s decision to go ahead with a flawed final rule is deeply disappointing,” Matthew Agen, the American Gas Association’s chief counsel for energy, told the outlet.

By the Department of Energy’s estimate, the costs saved over the long run by the new rules will be about $112 over a roughly 20-year stretch, Agen emphasized.

This regulation needs to be struck down as soon as possible.

Here’s A Medal For Attempting To Destroy America

On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s list of people he will be presenting with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The article reports:

President Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, billionaire Democratic megadonor George Soros and several others at a White House ceremony on Saturday. 

The White House said Clinton, Soros and the 17 other recipients of the prestigious award are “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.” 

“President Biden believes great leaders keep the faith, give everyone a fair shot, and put decency above all else,” the White House said in a statement. “These nineteen Americans are great leaders who have made America a better place. They are great leaders because they are good people who have made extraordinary contributions to their country and the world.” 

The article includes the entire list. There are actually some people on the list who have made a positive contribution to America, but I am not sure I would use the term decency in my description of either Hillary Clinton or George Soros.

The President (or whoever is currently running the country) gets to choose the recipients of the award, but I think the current choices have greatly reduced the prestige of the award.

One Possible Solution To Rising Crime On The New York City Subways

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article citing one possible solution to the increasing level of crime on the New York City Subways.

The article reports:

The Guardian Angels are resuming their patrols of the Big Apple’s subways as if it were crime-riddled Gotham in 1979, after the horrifying arson murder of a sleeping straphanger on a train last week, founder Curtis Sliwa said Sunday.

The red-beret-wearing volunteer vigilante squad is beefing up its ranks to its level 45 years ago, Sliwa said.

“We’re going to have to increase our numbers, increase the training and increase our presence as we did back in 1979,” Sliwa said at the Stillwell Avenue-Coney Island station in Brooklyn where the woman was killed.

Curtis Sliwa is now 70, but  he still loves his city as much as he did then. He has been a fighter for the city for a long time.

In August of 2005, The New York Times reported:

Testifying in the federal racketeering trial of John A. Gotti, Mr. Sliwa said he thought he had “hit the lottery” when he climbed into the back of the cab he had hailed near his apartment in the East Village before dawn on June 19, 1992. The driver recognized him and seemed to know that he was going to the WABC radio studios near Madison Square Garden, where he was host of a morning show. Within moments, Mr. Sliwa said, a second man popped up from under the dashboard “like a jack-in-the-box,” pointing a silver-plated pistol at his belly.

“Take this, you son of a bitch,” Mr. Sliwa recalled the gunman saying. He said he heard at least three shots, and felt blood spurting under his shirt and then searing pain in his legs, “like a knife through hot butter.”

Mr. Sliwa managed to escape the taxi and survived. Now he is back to help again.

In 1994, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton instituted what is called the Broken Windows Theory which resulted in a decrease in crime in New York City. One of my daughters was a freshman at Cooper Union in New York in 1992. The difference in the city the year she began her education there and the year she ended it was noticeable. New York City needs a mayor like Rudy Giuliani again (and the help of the Guardian Angels).

Equal Treatment Of Accused Offenders

On Friday, The New York Post reported:

Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene called on Congress Thursday to release the names of current and former members on a secret list of lawmakers that have used taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment claims. 

“Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices,” Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on X.

“Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives? I do,” he added. 

Massie’s suggestion was quickly endorsed by Greene (R-Ga.).

…“Taxpayers should have never had to pay for that. Along with all the other garbage they should not have to pay for,” she argued. 

Since 1997, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights has paid out more than $17 million in public money to settle nearly 300 cases of workplace disputes at the US Capitol – including claims related to sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation and pay disputes. 

The obscure office does not release the identities of those have reached settlements and does not break down how much of the money disbursed over the last 27 years is specifically related to sexual harassment claims. 

This is in response to making public the ethics committee report on Matt Gaetz. The report was filled with unproven allegations with evidence so flimsy that even the Merrick Garland politicized Department of Justice chose not to pursue the case.

The article concludes:

“Yes. Taxpayers deserve to know,” former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) tweeted in support of Massie.

The demands from Massie and Greene follow the release of a House Ethics Committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). 

In the aftermath of the controversial release of the report, which came after Gaetz resigned from Congress, the Florida Republican floated the idea of briefly returning to Capitol Hill for the sole purpose of exposing those on the secret list.

“Someone suggested the following plan to me,” Gaetz wrote on X last week. “1. Show up 1/3/2025 to congress 2. Participate in Speaker election (I was elected to the 119th Congress, after all…) 3. Take the oath 4. File a privileged motion to expose every ‘me too’ settlement paid using public funds (even of former members) 5. Resign and start my @OANN program at 9pm EST on January 6, 2025.”

Politico reported last week that some GOP lawmakers are already passing around a draft resolution that would do just that. 

If you are willing to publish unfounded accusations against one Congress member, you should be willing to publish unfounded accusations against all Congress members.

When Do We Start Talking About Treason?

Periodically America holds elections. We elect people to run our government and represent us. Some people represent us better than others. However, no one elected the numerous bureaucrats that seem to think they run the country (they think that because it’s probably true).

On Thursday, The New York Post reported:

Spy chiefs “silenced” researchers in the Defense Department and FBI who discovered strong evidence that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab, The Post has learned.

As a result, their findings were kept out of an August 2021 report to President Biden on the origins of the global pandemic.

That report concluded that the virus behind COVID “was probably not genetically engineered.”

After the pandemic erupted in Wuhan, China, three scientists from the Defense Intelligence Agency began trying to figure out exactly where it came from — whether SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats into humans, or whether the virus was man-made and came from a lab accident.

The “zoonotic origin” theory was backed by powerful members of the public health establishment, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and questions about a possible “lab leak” were repeatedly dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

But the researchers’ analysis compiled dozens of data points in favor of a lab leak — compared with a “paucity of evidence supporting the natural origin theory,” a source familiar with their investigation told The Post.

…Rather than amplifying these findings, they were all but ignored as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was preparing her report on COVID origins — which Biden ordered in May 2021.

“The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced,” the source said, noting that Biden and others remained “completely unwitting” about the evidence that SARS-CoV-2 likely leaked out of a lab.

The spy chiefs further forbade the scientists from sharing the information with Congress — even after Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) expressly requested them in a March 2021 letter — or from rebutting a since-disgraced May 2020 paper — prompted by Fauci — that sought to discredit the lab leak theory.

The spy chiefs did not have the right to prevent the sharing of information about the origins of COVID from the President. He is an elected official–they are not.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a lot of information on why scientists believed the lab leak theory and what was withheld from the President.

Somehow Taxes, Once In Place, Never Seem To Go Down

Remember when New York State Governor Kathy Hochul put the congestion tax in place in New York City after the election so as not to lose Democrat votes? Remember when she told you how much money she was saving you because she decided that the tax should be $9 instead of $15? (article here) Well, don’t be too grateful all at once, because changes are coming.

On Wednesday, The New York Post reported:

The new $9 toll to drive into Midtown Manhattan could soar another 25% — to $11.25 — on “gridlock alert days’’ starting next year, The Post has learned.

The MTA’s right to jack up the already hotly controversial commuter tax was listed in a footnote in the revised congestion pricing plan filed with the state’s rule-making publication, the New York State Register.

“If whacking hardworking Jersey and New York families with a new, $9 a day Congestion Tax wasn’t enough, the MTA is now pouring extra salt on the wound with a 25 percent extra Uber-style surge pricing tax on so-called ‘Gridlock Alert Days’ — whenever they want,” seethed Dem Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who represents northern New Jersey communities that border the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan.

“It’s a huge insult to our families trying to make ends meet,’’ said Gottheimer, who is running to become Garden State governor next year.

When you give a mouse a cookie…

It’s Time To Find The Children

On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about one of the priorities of the incoming Trump administration.

The article reports:

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” incoming Border Czar Tom Homan stated that the Trump administration will attempt to locate and rescue as many missing migrant children as possible and “We’ll deal with the immigration consequences later, we’ve got to get these kids back with their families, and we’ve got to make sure they’re protected.”

Homan said, “[U]nder the Trump administration, we had a DNA testing. We vetted everybody in the household, not just the sponsor…to make sure there wasn’t a gang member or a child predator living in that household. So, this isn’t incompetence, this isn’t mismanagement, this is by design, this is about moving as many people into this country as possible, because they see a future political benefit in all of this. Do I think they meant to put [children in harm’s way]? I don’t know that. I have my suspicions. But what they did is harming hundreds of thousands of children, and I’ll tell you right now, some of these children, we’re never going to find. Some of these children are dead. Some of these children are living a life of hell every day.”

In August, The New York Post reported:

The Biden-Harris administration has lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents, according to a shocking new report.

Untold numbers of the children — who were released into the US to “qualified sponsors” — are now at risk of sex trafficking, forced labor and other forms of exploitation, a Homeland Security Inspector General’s report released Monday said.

As of May 2024, there are 291,000 migrant children who arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors who were set free and never given a date to appear in immigration court — meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts.

That is in addition to the 32,000 children that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities released into the US with hearing dates but then failed to show in court, according to the 14-page report — which tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.

One federal whistleblower said that she believes many of these vulnerable kids could already be in the hands of criminals and sex traffickers.

It’s time to close the border to illegal immigrants, and locate the missing children and provide them with the safety and protection they deserve.

 

Commuting The Sentences Of People Who Committed Horrible Crimes

On December 23rd, The New York Post posted an article about a number of prison sentences commuted during the final days of the Biden administration. Some of the people whose sentences were commuted as simply scary.

The article reports:

President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row — a list that includes at least five child killers and several mass murderers — while leaving off three notorious fiends.

…“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

The article lists some of the beneficiaries of President Biden’s largess:

Among those receiving the holiday cheer is Thomas Sanders, who in 2010 kidnapped and then shot 12-year-old Lexis Roberts four times and cut her throat in Louisiana — days after the girl watched as Sanders murdered her mother on a road trip near the Grand Canyon.

Christmas also came early for Anthony Battle, who murdered an Atlanta prison guard with a hammer in 1994 while serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his wife, a US Marine, in 1987 at Camp Lejeune, NC.

Jorge Avila-Torrez sexually assaulted and stabbed to death two girls — Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 — who had been riding their bicycles in their neighborhood in a suburb north of Chicago in 2005.

Four years later, he strangled naval officer Amanda Snell, 20, inside her barrack in Arlington, Va.

Iouri Mikhel, another clemency recipient, was convicted of murdering five Russian and Georgian immi­grants after kidnapping them for ransom, which in some cases was paid before he killed them anyway.

Kaboni Savage, meanwhile, was convicted of committing or ordering the deaths of 12 people including four children as a Philadelphia drug dealer — while James Roane, Jr. participated in the murder of 11 people as a drug dealer in Richmond, Va.

Follow the link to the article if you want to see the rest of the group.

My first thought is to wonder who exactly is making these decisions. Is President Biden aware enough mentally to study these cases and make the decisions?

Something To Remember As The Trump Administration Approaches

On January 5th, 2017, there was a meeting among President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI boss James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. (source here) Susan Rice wrote a memo about that meeting to herself. These people have not gone away, although thankfully most of them have much less influence.

The New York Post article reports:

Rice sent the Jan. 20, 12:15 p.m., note (recently declassified) to herself at literally the last minute: President Trump was sworn in at noon that day; her administration was headed out the door.

Oh, and Rice’s lawyer says she drafted it “upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office,” Fox News reports.

The point? Ostensibly, to memorialize the meeting with her, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI boss James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, following a briefing on Russian hacking.

Obama, the memo claims, stressed that “every aspect of this issue” be handled “by the book” and then “reiterated” that law enforcement proceed “by the book.” Comey “affirmed” he’s “proceeding ‘by the book.’  ” That’s right: She used the term three times.

So let’s look at some of that meeting.

The article continues:

Comey, she wrote, had “concerns” about her replacement, Michael Flynn, and said the National Security Council should “potentially” withhold “sensitive information” on Russia from Team Trump. But Rice admits it was Obama who asked whether information should not be shared.

Yet they had no legitimate grounds to keep the new team in the dark about anything. The Obama folks knew full well by then that the FBI had found zero evidence of collusion or of Flynn betraying his country. Because they were listening in on his phone calls to foreign officials.

Another New York Post article reported:

Flynn had to be stopped. Obama had urged Trump not to hire him, but the new president ignored the advice. If they didn’t kill Flynn, he could take them all down.

Comey had the transcripts so he already knew that there was no criminal evidence against Flynn growing out of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, but this wasn’t about guilt or innocence. This was a fight for survival.

So, just four days after Trump’s inauguration, Comey sent two agents to the White House to try to trap Flynn into lying. Comey would later boast he took advantage of the helter-skelter start of the administration and did not follow the usual custom of getting approval from the White House counsel.

That alone is an unforgivable act of treachery against a sitting president.

The agents, one of whom was the odious Peter Strzok, misled Flynn about the nature of the interview, advised him not to get a lawyer and withheld the fact that they had listened to his calls with the Russian ambassador, hoping he would lie about the contents.

Thanks to a leak of classified information to The Washington Post about those calls and Yates’ intervention, Flynn soon was fired for not being straight with Vice President Mike Pence. Special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey’s friend, and his anti-Trump zealots later used the rigged interview to prosecute Flynn.

For more than three years, that kept a dangerous man quiet and out of the way.

So what if he was railroaded. It was all done “by the book,” just as Obama ordered.

This is what the new Trump administration will be up against. However, all of us are now wiser, and the mainstream media is less powerful.

Whoops!

On December 16th, The New York Post posted an article about a CNN story about a prisoner released from jail in Syria. The Syrian regime was knows for its horrific prisons and its brutal treatment of prisoners.

The article reports:

The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check.

The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting.

But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence with a long history of alleged war crimes.

“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN acknowledged to The Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”

…Known as “Abu Hamza,” Salama worked at several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion and coercing residents into becoming informants for Assad, local residents told the fact-checkers.

He also killed civilians during the Syrian civil war in 2014 — and allegedly detained and tortured young men on bogus charges, many of whom refused to pay bribes, Verify-Sy reported.

Locals claim he was locked up in the prison where he was discovered for less than a month due to a dispute with a high-ranking officer over sharing the extorted money.

This is the picture of the prisoner:

His coat doesn’t even look worn, and he appears to be well-groomed. CNN has been fooled again.

Good News From New York City

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

A Manhattan jury has cleared Daniel Penny of criminal wrongdoing in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a crowded subway — a caught-on-video killing that sparked fierce debate over the city’s mental health system and crime underground.

The panelists acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide — which could have put him behind bars for up to four years — in Neely’s chokehold death aboard a crowded uptown F train in May 2023.

Manslaughter, the top charge against Penny, was tossed on Friday after jurors twice said they couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.

Jurors sided with Penny’s defense attorneys, who had argued that the Marine veteran was justified in rushing to protect his fellow subway straphangers when he subdued the erratic homeless man. The lawyers had also questioned whether there was sufficient evidence that the chokehold caused Neely’s death.

This is wonderful news. Basically, the story is that a heroic former Marine saved a subway car full of innocent travelers from possible serious harm at the hands of someone who belonged in a mental institution. I pray that if I ever ride the New York City subways again (I rode them to commute to school in the 1960’s), there will be someone like Daniel Penny on the train with me.

The Case Is Falling Apart In A Trial That Should Never Have Happened

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the murder trial of Daniel Penny that is taking place in New York. As you remember, Daniel Penny is being tried for the subway murder of Jordan Neely in May 2023.

The article reports:

On Friday, the defense rested in the Daniel Penny trial, leaving many observers to ask what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was thinking in pursuing this case.

Over the course of the second-degree manslaughter trial, Bragg’s prosecutors tried to sell the narrative that the Marine vet overreacted and behaved “recklessly” when he restrained Jordan Neely on that F train back in May 2023.

But a host of prosecution witnesses, Penny’s fellow passengers, knocked massive holes in that tale, as one after another veteran subway rider described how terror-stricken they felt while trapped in the train car with the angry, unstable, threatening Neely.

One woman said she “was scared s–tless” by Neely’s behavior and recalled him yelling: “I don’t give a damn. I will kill a motherf—er. I’m ready to die.”

She stuck around after the ordeal to thank Penny for defending her and everyone else in the car that day.

Another, a high school student, said she was “so nervous” that she feared she “was going to pass out,” and said she didn’t hear other passengers’ warning to Penny to let go of Neely during the struggle.

The article concludes:

Closing arguments begin Dec. 2; it’s hard to think the jury will need to deliberate long.

It’s Bragg and his team who’ll have to put in time figuring out why they took such a weak case to trial.

There are some real questions in my mind as to how New York is making decisions regarding who to let off for crimes committed and who to put on trial. It seems to me that Daniel Penny is the least of New York’s worries as far as criminals are concerned.

Now That The Election Is Over…

On Thursday, The New York Post reported that New York State Governor Kathy Hochul is restarting the congestion pricing plan. The cost of entering midtown Manhattan was originally set at $15, but the Governor has magnanimously reduced it to $9. She did wait until after the election so that voters wouldn’t be influenced by her adding the tax.

The article reports:

Hochul had abruptly paused the program just before it was set to go into effect in June with a base rate of $15 — and then relaunched with with the lower fee just before President-elect Donald Trump’s administration had an opportunity to block it.

Critics argue the first-in-the-nation toll — which was first approved by state lawmakers and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2019 — is just a cash grab for the MTA that’ll saddle New York City drivers with yet another fee.

The article includes the details:

When does congestion pricing start?

Cars will be tolled beginning at midnight on Jan. 5, Hochul said.

How much will drivers be charged?

Standard passenger vehicles using an E-ZPass will be charged $9 per day for entering the tolling zone during daytime hours, defined as 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

That base amount is set to increase to $12 in 2028.

Other types of vehicles, like motorcycles and trucks, pay at different rates as follows:

    • Motorcycles: $4.50
    • Small trucks and non-commuter buses: $14.40
    • Large trucks and tourism buses: $21.60
    • Taxi and Black Car Drivers: $0.75 per ride
    • Uber, Lyft and other rideshare drivers: $1.50 per ride

The toll is reduced by 75% during overnight hours, between 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., to around $2.25.

Drivers without an E-ZPass will will receive a bill via mail and pay an inflated toll amount, though it wasn’t immediately clear how much.

Where is the toll zone?

The toll zone encompasses all areas below 60th Street – effectively all of Manhattan south of Central Park.

The article concludes:

Currently, the Biden administration is on board with the congestion pricing program. A spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration confirmed that it is working to sign off on Hochul’s revised plan and get the toll up and running by Jan. 5.

The incoming Trump administration will almost definitely feel differently, with the president-elect telling The Post that he considered the toll the “most regressive tax known to womankind.”

Hochul has previously said she believes the toll can survive court challenges, even at its reduced $9 base rate.

This is one more reason tourists might want to stay out of New York City.

A Familiar Story

Recently, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supervisor was fired for telling workers to avoid houses with Trump signs. Now, Marn’i Washington, the fired employee, is saying that she is a scapegoat and the problem is much higher up. Before we dismiss this as the complaint of a disgruntled ex-employee, there are some things we should consider.

On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article reminding us:

And the New York Post reported yesterday that:

A former FEMA official backed up Washington’s claims, telling The Post that the practice of skipping Trump-supporting houses is an open secret at the agency that has been going on for years.

The rest of the mainstream press seems utterly uninterested in this new revelation. We couldn’t find a story in either the Washington Post or the New York Times about it in the past 24 hours.

If this all sounds familiar, it should.

Those who’ve been around a while will remember the IRS scandal during President Barack Obama’s tenure, when the IRS was caught red-handed targeting conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election by holding up their applications for non-profit status.

At first, the IRS claimed it was the work of two rogue agents in its Cincinnati office. That turned out to be a lie, as evidence started to emerge that the instructions were coming from officials in Washington, D.C., all the way up to the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt division, Lois Lerner.

…And when it turned out there was a coordinated effort – one specifically designed to thwart conservative attempts to get out the vote in 2012 – the press buried it and moved on as quickly as possible.

As a result, the Justice Department let Lois Lerner skate – she retired on a full pension. The head of the IRS at the time, John Koskinen, who lied and stonewalled a congressional investigation, served out his term. Obama dismissed it as a “phony scandal.”

And in the end, nothing was done to root out the politicization of this agency. In fact, as soon as Democrats had a chance under President Joe Biden, they showered the IRS with an additional $80 billion to hire more enforcement agents.

The article concludes:

…And like the IRS scandal under Obama, and the FBI scandals under Trump, the media will show zero interest in finding out just how high this weaponization of government goes or how many other agencies are infested with political vermin who are willing to use their powers to coddle liberals and attack conservatives.

Nope. Instead, they are writing stories about how terrified government staffers are at the prospect that Trump will finally carry out his plan to drain the swamp of political hacks masquerading as non-partisan government bureaucrats.

And that is the reason President Trump was elected.

Actions Have Consequences–How President Trump Got The Amish Vote

On November 12th, The New York Post posted an article explaining how President Trump got the Amish of Pennsylvania to vote for him. There was a serious get-out-the-vote effort on the part of Republicans, but there was also some government overreach on the part of the Biden administration that sealed the deal.

The article reports:

The effort kicked off days before Election Day, when Burwell-Perry took, in her words, “17 seconds” to whip up a flyer with phone numbers to call for free rides to the polls, launching what she called “Operation Help Thy Neighbor” from her Bainbridge church basement.

A longtime area resident, Burwell-Perry knew that Amish weddings typically last from dawn to dusk, with a brief break between church services — offering just a short window of opportunity for wedding guests to get to the polls.

But the time-consuming nature of transportation by horse-drawn carriage made even that challenging to accomplish.

With this knowledge — and “a lot of prayer” — Burwell-Perry said she spent her November mortgage payment printing out 10,000 copies of her flyer and paying locals to drop them off at farms and slip them into buggies parked across the southern Pennsylvania counties home to the majority of the state’s Amish.

Elon Musk’s America PAC later pledged to reimburse Burwell-Perry, and rented her little-operation-that-could about 30 computers and a Starlink device so she and her fellow local activists could run a call center from a church basement.

By the morning of Nov. 5, the organizer had gathered and vetted 200 drivers to offer rides and dozens of phone bank workers to take calls. But first, Burwell-Perry had to find the weddings.

Like Amish church services, Amish weddings are often held in farmhouses, the locations of which are kept tightly secret — with fathers of the brides usually announcing their daughters’ wedding details only by word-of-mouth in church.

With the help of some Amish neighbors, Burwell-Perry learned of just a handful of weddings happening on Election Day.

She then tapped Lancaster County residents Brenda Biesecker Clair and Joe Goody to act as scouts Tuesday morning, looking for Amish families heading to local farms in their Sunday best — a dead giveaway they were headed to a marriage ceremony.

There was also the issue of farmers protecting their rights:

According to dozens of Amish, Mennonite, and ex-Amish who spoke with The Post this week, many of the groups’ deepest-held beliefs — including limited government and freedom of religion, went hand-in-hand with Republican campaign platforms.

For John Henry Smucker, 28, it was Trump’s anti-establishment beliefs that resonated. Growing up on an Amish dairy farm, he saw his family repeatedly raided by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators searching for raw milk products.

“My dad was a farmer who sold all his own products from the farm, so we made cottage cheese, ice cream, yogurt, and we sold raw milk,” he told The Post. “And so I experienced the government overreach myself. We would get raided. We never got stuff taken out, but we would get threats.

The policies of the Biden administration are responsible for their election loss.

This History Should Not Be Repeated

Amsterdam last week experienced the consequences of allowing large numbers of immigrants who do not share your values into your country.

On Friday, The New York Post posted an article detailing the events in Amsterdam.

The article reports:

Israeli soccer fans targeted in the horrific antisemitic attack in Amsterdam described Friday how they were chased through the streets along with Jewish women and kids and left with broken teeth and black eyes.

“It was a pogrom. If there had been Internet in ’38, that’s what Kristallnacht would have looked like,” a shaken victim told the Israeli media outlet Haaretz.

An Israel Defense Force officer in town for Thursday night’s soccer game told The Post that his friend was senselessly beaten by a group of 15 thugs till the bloodied pal shouted, “Free Palestine!’’

Just for the record, ‘Palestine’ was free before they attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005. That is assuming that there is an actual state of Palestine, which there never has been–most Palestinians are Egyptian or Jordanian. Yasser Arafat was Egyptian.

The article concludes:

But after Maccabi Tel Aviv’s stinging 5-0 loss to the Dutch team Ajax, the man quickly realized that the second night would be “worse than the first night,’’ he said.

“I saw a lot of attacks, I saw a lot of people trying to attack but a lot of fans trying to defend themselves,” the Israeli soccer fan said.

The assailants would gang up on victims 15 or 20 to 1, he said.

The soccer fan said he and his friends decided to form a rescue team and roam the streets in search of any lone Israeli who needed their help.

They found a group of four hiding out in a locked restaurant as armed thugs tried to break in and pelted the windows with rocks.

He and his buddies scared the group off and escorted the Israelis back to their hotel.

“The Amsterdam police didn’t really try to help us,” he said, and claimed that the police inaction was due to a mixture of antisemitism and “fear” of the city’s immigrant Muslim population.

“When you see the Jews getting attacked and you do nothing and you tell the Jews you need to go where I say until I decide you can leave but you don’t do anything to the Muslims, there is something problematic about it,” he said.

“Everyone was telling us that we need to go back to Israel, need to leave Amsterdam and go somewhere else in Europe, but we didn’t do anything.”

Israeli photographer Ami Shuman recalled having to walk through the sickening scenes with his son surrounded by a police escort as they tried to return to their hotel unscathed.

“We saw violence, we saw people with black eyes, deep cuts under their eyes,” he told the Times of Israel.

Maccabi fan Tomer Taliasn added to the outlet, “They didn’t distinguish between women, child, men or the elderly.

“They attacked everyone they saw as Israeli.”

This is sad. During World War II, there were many Christians  in the Netherlands who helped and protected the Jews. Anyone who has read the story of Corrie Ten Boom knows that the people of the Netherlands are wonderful people who would not condone this behavior. This is what happens when you allow people in your country who refuse to assimilate and do not share your values.

What Has Happened To Our Freedom?

On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article about the euthanizing of a squirrel in New York State. Normally, an article like that would not be important, but there are some details about this event that are disturbing.

The article reports:

An upstate man whose beloved squirrel was cruelly killed by the state said he was treated like a “terrorist” when 10 government agents descended on his home during a five-hour raid.

Mark Longo, whose pet P’nut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday.

That squirrel was treated more harshly than the illegal aliens in New York City who are routinely robbing stores, assaulting people, and operating drug and human trafficking rings. The argument that they had to kill the squirrel to test for rabies is bogus–he was an indoor squirrel! If they were that concerned about rabies, why didn’t they contact a local vet and ask him to design a rabies shot for squirrels. This whole story is an example of horrendous government overreach.

The article reports:

“They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours,” Longo (Mark Longo) told The Post Saturday.

“They asked my wife, who is of German descent, what her immigration status was. They asked if I had cameras in my house. They wouldn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without a police escort, who then checked the back of the toilet to see if I was hiding anything there.”

But worse than all of that, they delivered his gray fur baby to its death.

The state claimed it had to euthanize both animals Friday so that they could be tested for rabies — because the squirrel sunk its teeth into the hand of an official during the disturbing raid. The test results are not yet known.

Longo noted that the officials were wearing thick gloves and that the biting story is unlikely.

The article notes:

Longo explained it is illegal to house a squirrel and raccoon, but he didn’t have the “heart” to keep them outside.

Would it also be illegal if a child rescued a rabbit whose mother had been killed? This is ridiculous.

The article concludes:

“Everything else our government looks the other way on as far as illegal immigrants but then come down on someone harboring a squirrel,” said state Senator Thomas O’Mara. “It just highlights the priorities of the government we have in New York State, frankly. It’s disturbing and we need answers from both the state DEC and the Chemung County department of Health.”

Ken Girardin, research director at the conservative watchdog Empire Center for Public Policy, said that the raid that ultimately led to Peanut’s death demonstrates how the DEC is “arguably the most powerful state agency.”

“They have sweeping authority that, as this case shows, allows them to enter private homes and seize private property with what appears in this case to be questionable justification,” he said, adding, “Some of the blame falls on New York state lawmakers, who haven’t provided adequate oversight.”

When You Don’t Confront A Problem Early…

Unfortunately, in recent years the American Justice Department has been more concerned with parents attending school board meetings and Catholics who are pro-life. While the Justice Department was watching innocent Americans, groups with less than innocent intentions grew and remained unmolested.

On Tuesday, Andy Ngo posted and article in The New York Post about the recent arson attacks on ballot drop boxes in Washington State and Oregon. Andy Ngo is a reporter who has been reporting on Antifa and other anarchist groups operating in America for years. During that time the groups have remained pretty much unmolested by the Justice Department of local law enforcement. (Remember the autonomous zone in Portland). The anti-Israel protesters have also been handled with kid gloves.

The article at The New York Post reports:

Ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington may have been set on fire by an anti-Israel protester, as investigators found a note that said “ALL DROP BOXES WILL BURN. FREE GAZA,” The Post has learned.

Between 3 and 4 a.m. on Monday, fires caused by incendiary devices were discovered in ballot boxes in Vancouver, Wash. and neighboring Portland, Oregon.

A built-in fire suppressant stopped most of the flames at the Portland location, but hundreds of ballots were destroyed at the drop box at Fisher’s Landing Transit Center in Vancouver. 

The FBI is now heading the investigation into the two Monday fires, which are believed to be linked and also connected to a third attempted arson attack earlier in the month in Vancouver.

The article notes:

All elections in Washington and Oregon are vote-by-mail.

The arson attacks come amid a closely-watched congressional race rematch in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District between incumbent Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, and Joe Kent, a Republican US Army veteran. The two are polling neck-and-neck in the district.

By Monday evening, the Clark County Auditor announced that election office employees will monitor 24/7 all 22 drop box locations.

Hopefully, everyone who voted in Washington and Oregon will check online to make sure their ballot was received.

We Have To Overpower The Fraud

If Republicans intend to elect President Trump, they are going to have to turn out in numbers large enough to overcome the fraud that is already in the works. Right now there is a judge in Virginia that is preventing the Commonwealth of Virginia from removing people who have stated that they are not United States citizens from voter rolls. Since the U.S. Constitution states that only citizens may vote in federal elections, this case may go higher than that judge.

On Friday, The New York Post reported:

Lancaster County officials announced an investigation Friday after election workers found some 2,500 voter applications that they suspect are fraudulent.

Two batches of applications were dropped off last-minute at the county elections office to meet Pennsylvania’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline, officials reported at a Friday news conference.

District Attorney Heather Adams said investigators found problems with 60% of the voter registration forms they’ve reviewed so far, including incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that don’t match Social Security information.

“Staff noticed that numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting [and] were filled out on the same day,” Adams said.

The article mentions that the registrations include both political parties. I wonder if by bringing in the applications at the last minute, the people who dropped them off thought that the applications would not be closely examined.

Voter fraud exists. Any fraudulent vote cancels out a legitimate vote. Voter fraud is something all of us need to be aware of and report when we see.

Mistreating Our Veterans

Today, The New York Post posted a disturbing article about the improper actions of an ignorant flight attendant on Delta Airlines.

The article reports:

A Marine Corps veteran was removed from a Delta flight before she was ordered to change clothes when a flight attendant ruled that the passenger’s shirt which brought attention to military suicides was “threatening.”

Catherine Banks, a 22-year veteran of the Marines, was onboard the Delta flight at San Francisco International Airport to visit family on Oct. 16, when she wore her dark gray outfit and sat in her extra-legroom seat she paid extra.

“Do Not Give In To The War Within. End Veteran Suicide,” Banks’ shirt read.

A male flight attendant approached Banks and was confused when he tried to get her attention.

“‘Ma’am, ma’am.’ I looked around, like, ‘Who was he talking to?’ And it was me. He said, ‘You need to get off the plane,’ and I was like, ‘What did I do?’” Banks told KNTV.

Banks complied and was escorted off the plane and onto the jet bridge where she finally learned why she was removed.

“He said that shirt you’re wearing is threatening,” she said. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?”

A dumbfounded Banks questioned the Delta employee before explaining that she was a veteran.

“I’m a Marine Corps vet. I’m going to see my Marine sister. I’ve been in the Marine Corps for 22 years and worked for the Air Force for 15 years. I’m going to visit her.”

Banks’ military background did not phase the flight attendant who issued her an ultimatum to return to the plane.

“I don’t care about your service, and I don’t care about her service. The only way you’re going to get back on the plane is if you take it off right now,” Banks recalled.

After she changed her shirt and got back on the plane, she was given a different seat than the extra-legroom seat she had paid for.

The article reminds  us:

The shirt is sold by the Til Valhalla Project as part of the “22 a day collection,” which brings awareness to the estimated 22 veterans who commit suicide each day.

Suicides among active-duty military members are reportedly at an all-time high since 9/11, when records began, according to the USO.

Over 30,000 active duty personnel and veterans who served in the military after 9/11 have died by suicide – compared to the 7,057 service members killed in combat in those same 20 years, according to research published in 2021.

The ignorant flight attendant needs to be educated and penalized for his actions. The veteran deserves free flights on Delta for the rest of her life!