Caught!

On September 18th, Hot Air posted an article about the Hezbollah pagers that exploded yesterday. There were some very interesting people who had those pagers.

The article quotes The New York Times:

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and severely injured his other eye when a pager he was carrying exploded in a simultaneous wave of blasts targeting wireless electronic devices, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed on the attack.

The Guards members, who had knowledge of the attacks and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Amini’s injuries were more serious than Iran initially reported and that he would be medevacked to Tehran for treatment.

Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, the main Revolutionary Guards news website, confirmed the extent of Mr. Amini’s injuries in a post on X. “Unfortunately the injuries sustained by Iran’s ambassador were extremely severe and in his eyes,” Mr. Soleimani wrote.

Why was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon carrying a Hezbollah pager?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reported on the news that on Thursday handheld radios were exploding.

The article at Power Line notes:

Apparently fires have broken out in seemingly random buildings, and loudspeakers are telling people to take the batteries out of their phones. I haven’t seen any reports, however, of exploding cell phones.

The usual suspects are up in arms over yesterday’s pager attack:

The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss Israel’s wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month.

How many emergency meetings have they held over Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of Israel, which has gone on for months?

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has criticized the pager attack as a violation of international law and called for those behind it to be held to account.

So, does sending thousands of rockets into Israel violate international law? What does the U.N. propose to do about it?

Nothing, of course. Hence the need for Israel to defend itself.

That is the current state of the United Nations.

 

Where Was This Information In 2020?

On Wednesday, Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog posted an article about The New York Times’ reporting about Hunter Biden’s efforts in landing a Burisma deal.

The article reports:

Ken Vogel reports in the New York Times that “Hunter Biden Sought State Department Help for Ukrainian Company.” Subhead: “After President Biden dropped his re-election bid, his administration released records showing that while he was vice president, his son solicited U.S. government assistance.” The New York Post has an accessible account of Vogel’s story by Victor Nava in “Hunter Biden asked US embassy in Italy for help landing Burisma deal while Joe was VP.”

It’s interesting to see the lengths to which the government went to protect President Biden from the story. The Times had to bring a FOIA lawsuit to obtain the documents it suspected had been withheld from an earlier production. Vogel seems to be afraid that Republicans will “pounce” on this element of his story:

The Times challenged the thoroughness of the [State Department FOIA] search, noting that the department had failed to produce responsive records contained in a cache of files connected to a laptop that Mr. Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The department resumed the search and periodic productions, but had produced few documents related to Mr. Biden until the week after his father ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination.

The article concludes:

The more apt headline for Vogel’s story in the Times would be Now it can be told! I would like to say that Miranda Devine apparently could not be reached by Vogel for comment. On X, Devine drily observes of Vogel’s story “[t]his might all come as a surprise to @nytimes readers but @nypost readers have known the score for four years.”

Rush Limbaugh used to talk about low-information voters. Now we have voters who read the New York Times who are uninformed and often misinformed.

The Part The Media Has Played

On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about the mainstream media’s role in covering up the failing mental acuity of our current President. The cover-up began in 2019 when President Biden was hiding in the basement ‘because of Covid.’

The article credits Drew Holden, someone who has posted a lot of the history of the cover-up on Twitter, with a lot of the information the article reports.

The article notes:

I have been pounding the drum on what I think is the most important thing to focus on right now, and it’s not the decline of the president. Everybody knows that, can see it, and it is baked into the cake. What conservatives need to do is open everybody’s eyes to the real villains in this story, and that is the mainstream media.

…Without their conscious decision to engage in a full-on conspiracy to perpetrate a hoax, Biden would never have become president. He probably would not even have become the 2020 Democrat candidate for president. Biden was already in mental decline in 2019–even George Clooney admitted that in his Opinion piece in The New York Times in an aside–and the media helped Biden and his aides to cover that fact up.

…Biden ran the “basement campaign,” in which he made few appearances and did only scripted events. The media called every criticism of Biden a lie or “misinformation.” They put Biden on their back and carried him over the finish line. Biden wasn’t as bad as he is now, but everybody with a brain could see his decline if they cared to look.

…And it is the media’s job to look and tell everybody what they see.

They also pushed every anti-Trump hoax as if it were reality, turning him into a moronic demon while Joe Biden was a wonderful, compassionate genius who just wanted to save the world from Orange Hitler.

The article concludes:

Politicians come and go, but the media, like the bureaucracy, is permanent. They help make or break the politicians. They pick and choose who gets in to a great extent, and thus they help push the most poisonous narratives and policies destroying our country.

Look at alphabet ideology–especially transgenderism. The media was all-in LONG before the politicians. They created the issue and the politicians hopped on board after the media made it necessary for them to do so.

…There is much more to say, but let me end with this:

Our job is to destroy the mainstream media. It is now a cancer in the body politic. Sure, we have to defeat the Democrats, but recognize that the Democrats are this way because it is what the media wants, or at least the media enables the Democrats to pursue their insane policies.

That’s why you see so many former politicians and operatives in the media–they are basically the same thing. It’s time to destroy their influence.

It’s time to stop watching or listening to the mainstream media and let their advertisers depart due to the lack of audience. That is how you defeat them.

How About Sharing With Homeless Veterans?

On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is expanding his program that rewards newly arrived migrants with pre-loaded debit cards for food — paid for by New Yorkers who remain some of the most tax-burdened residents of the United States.

Adams started the debit cards-for-migrants program in February, noting that it would cost about $53 million to provide roughly 500 migrant families with the prepaid cards meant only for food. The program came even as a study recently found that 56 percent of New Yorkers live near the poverty line.

According to The New York Times:

The debit cards are expected to be distributed to more than 7,300 migrants over the next six months at a cost of about $2.6 million, city officials said, building from a pilot program that began earlier this year with roughly 900 families, or nearly 3,000 migrants. [Emphasis added]…

With more than 60,000 migrants currently in the city’s care, the program — which is expanding from three hotels to 17 — could serve about 1,230 people per month, or roughly 2 percent of the total migrant population. [Emphasis added]

The program is part of a contract with Mobility Capital Finance, known as MoCaFi, that could eventually cost the city as much as $53 million, with as much as $2 million going to the company and the rest being distributed to families, city officials said. Under the pilot program, a family of four with young children received about $350 per week for a month. [Emphasis added]

I don’t want anyone to go without food, but why can’t we just send them home since we can’t afford them?

Hotels are being paid to house the illegals. Again, why weren’t hotels being paid to house homeless veterans?

If You Believe This…

On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article about a recent claim made by The Washington Post about the impact of illegal immigration on America’s economy. Of course The Washington Post did not call it illegal immigration–they simply called it ‘immigration.’

The article reports:

Then on Tuesday morning, I came across this headline in The Washington Post: “The economy is roaring. Immigration is a key reason.” 

I immediately wondered if I might be concussed. 

Upon further review, I had no head injuries, and I hadn’t touched a drop of booze since last Friday, so I was indeed reading the headline correctly. Sorry, Burger King, there’s a new Home of the Whopper. 

Last fall, I began reminding readers that the MSM Biden bias was going to have to be at least three times stronger than it was in 2020 to get the slurring idiot in the White House reelected. They created a fictional Joe Biden out of whole cloth back then. He’s become such a mess that they are now creating a fictional version of their fictional version. They aren’t even pretending that the real Joe Biden is right in front of our eyes. 

The cheerleading for the economy is to be expected. It’s a kitchen table issue that they hope they can hide somewhere in a cluttered pantry. Over at The New York Times, Paul Krugman writes an almost weekly column telling readers not to believe their lying household budgets and dwindling savings accounts. His most recent effort has a headline that almost rivals the one we’re discussing today: “Bidenomics Is Still Working Very Well.” 

The article includes this quote from The Washington Post article:

There isn’t much data on how many of the new immigrants in recent years were documented versus undocumented. But estimates from the Pew Research Center last fall showed that undocumented immigrants made up 22 percent of the total foreign-born U.S. population in 2021. That’s down compared to previous decades: Between 2007 and 2021, the undocumented population fell by 14 percent, Pew found. Meanwhile, the legal immigrant population grew by 29 percent.

The article at PJ Media notes:

The authors don’t mention the inconvenient fact that record numbers of people are crushing the border and have been for months. The numbers are so overwhelming that the government is scrambling to keep tabs on as many as they can by putting them up in hotels on the taxpayer’s dime. 

This immigration isn’t much of a boon to state and local economies. We continually cover stories here about the financial strain that the “immigrants” are placing on states and cities all over America, like this recent one that Catherine wrote

Even if, as the authors posit, the economy is “roaring,” because of the “immigrants,” it’s only in one area. The southern border crisis is dragging the economy down in many ways. The “Rah! Rah!” in this article is akin to celebrating a $5000 bonus check on the same day that your mechanic tells you that your car needs $7000 worth of work to get back on the road again. 

I wonder if anyone still believes The Washington Post.

It’s Amazing How Justice Works In America

PLEASE SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE!

On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn. In case you don’t remember, Mr. Littlejohn was the person who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans. That is obviously illegal. So what price will Mr. Littlejohn pay for his actions? Is the fact that he leaked President Trump’s tax returns to the public going to play a role in the penalty he pays? We now have the answer to those questions.

The article reports:

Former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans, could face little or no jail time when he’s sentenced later this month, because the DOJ allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony count.

In a new court filing, prosecutors acknowledge the plea deal “does not account for the fact that he leaked thousands of individuals’ tax returns. His [sentencing] range would be the same today if he had leaked only a single return.”

But instead of seeking prison time for each of his offenses — or even for the two separate mass thefts he committed, one in 2019 and another in 2020 — the DOJ is asking a federal judge to sentence Littlejohn to just 60 months, the maximum for a single offense under the statute. Some political leaders angry over the plea deal say he should get 60 years, not months, for his crime — the biggest heist of IRS taxpayer data in history.

Attorneys for Littlejohn, 38, argue he actually deserves an even lower sentence, closer to the presentencing report’s range of four to 10 months, in part because he leaked the reams of stolen private income-tax data to “reputable news organizations — The New York Times and ProPublica — that he knew would handle the information responsibly.” They say a 60-month term is “equivalent to a 15-level upward departure” from the range prosecutors originally agreed to in the plea deal, and such a wide departure would be unprecedented.

The D.C. judge deciding Littlejohn’s fate “does not have unfettered discretion to depart from the applicable sentencing guidelines,” Littlejohn’s attorney Lisa Manning advised the court in papers filed last week.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee who has a record of meting out lenient sentences, will decide his punishment on Jan. 29.

I guess it depends on who’s tax returns you leak.

UPDATE!  GOOD NEWS!   JUSTICE STILL EXISTS IN AMERICA!

According to Hot Air on January 19:

Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October, and prosecutors sought the statutory maximum of five years in federal prison, saying that he “abused his position by unlawfully disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to multiple news organizations.” Prosecutors said that Littlejohn “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law.” …

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.

Things President Trump Got Right

First of all, why is President Clinton always referred to as President Clinton and President Trump often referred to a Donald Trump? Subtle manipulation by the media?

On Sunday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

New York Times Columnist Admits ‘ Trump Got Three Big Things Right’

If you honestly look at President Trump’s accomplishments and record as President and compare it to where we are now, your choice in November is obvious.

The article analyses The New York Times article:

The January 11 article was posted under the headline: “The case for Trump … by someone who wants him to lose.”

Stephens wrote that “you can’t defeat an opponent if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable [and] too many people, especially progressives, fail to think deeply about the enduring sources of his appeal.”

…“Enforcing control at the border — whether through a wall, a fence or some other mechanism — isn’t racism,” Stephens wrote. “It’s a basic requirement of statehood and peoplehood, which any nation has an obligation to protect and cherish.”

Trump also caught the public’s mood of decline and pessimism, Stephens wrote. “Far too little has changed since then … If anything, Trump’s thesis may be truer today than it was the first time he ran on it,” Stephens admitted.

Trump also amplified the public’s falling trust in experts, professionals, and merit institutions that were supposed to be independent of politics, Stephens wrote.

…Many voters in 20224 will remember Trump’s first term fondly, he said. “Americans have reasons to remember the Trump years as good ones … Wages outpaced inflation, something they have just begun to do under Biden.

I question the claim that wages have begun to outpace inflation. What used to be a $75 trip to the grocery store is still about $125. President Trump represents the hope of the American people that someone will speak up for them in Washington. We don’t want the government meddling in the home appliance market. We don’t the government performing S.W.A.T. raids on citizens that are not a threat to society. We don’t want the government refusing to enforce the law when Supreme Court Justices have their homes unlawfully picketed.

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.

 

Does Anyone Else Have A Problem With This?

On Thursday, The U.K Daily Mail reported that a CNN journalist was embedded with Hamas on October 7th and had prior knowledge of the attack. CNN has since fired the journalist.

The article reports:

CNN has ‘suspended all ties’ with a freelance photojournalist who appears to have been embedded with Hamas on October 7 at the time of the terror group’s barbaric assault on Israel. 

Hassan Eslaiah has been filing photographs of the conflict to CNN and The Associated Press since the Hamas attack on October 7. They include images of a burning Israeli tank from which soldiers were kidnapped.

Now, photos have emerged of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. He also posted a now-deleted video to Twitter in which he described how Hamas fighters kidnapped Israeli soldiers from the burning tank. 

The article concludes:

Honest Reporting notes that photographers Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih ‘happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration.’

In response to the reporters, a Reuters spokesperson said that the agency acquired pictures on October 7 from photographers that it did not previously have a relationship with. 

‘The photographs published by Reuters were taken two hours after Hamas fired rockets across southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border. Reuters staff journalists were not on the ground at the locations referred to in the HonestReporting article,’ the statement also reads.  

‘Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically,’ the HonestReporting feature read. 

In his video front of attack, Eslaiah appears to be wearing his own clothes and is not identifiable as a member of the media. 

In 2021, it was widely reported that the Associated Press used the same office space as Hamas in Gaza. 

Eslaiah was previously pictured in a loving embrace with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in an undated photo. 

Honest Reporting was founded by veteran Israeli journalist Gil Hoffman. Its motto is the ‘audience deserves to know.’ 

‘When international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it,’ one section of their report on Eslaiah reads.

‘And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism.’ 

There should be a more severe penalty for withholding information about a surprise attack on innocent civilians.

The Political Spectrum Has Significantly Shifted

Our Founding Fathers had a very different political spectrum than the one commonly referred to by the media. Today’s media has a spectrum of right wing (conservative extremism) and left wing (what they endorse). Our Founding Fathers had a different political spectrum–it had anarchy at one end and tyranny at the other end. Their goal was to create a government midway between the two. Today the tyranny of the left wing goes mostly ignored (lawfare against political opponents, suppression of free speech, censoring information, etc.). but any standard held by a conservative is regarded as a threat to our democracy (we are a republic–not a democracy).

On Saturday, Newsbusters posted an article that illustrates how ridiculous our media has become.

The article reports:

Washington Post associate editor and New York Times columnist freaked out on Friday’s PBS NewsHour at the news that Republicans selected Mike Johnson to be the new Speaker of the House by portraying him as a “far-right” religious extremist out to impose “Christian nationalism” on the country.

Noting Johnson’s relative obscurity, Capehart (Jonathan Capehart at The Washington Post) predicted, “And the more information we find out about him and the more information the American people find out about him, the more I think they’re going to be uncomfortable, from his pushing for a national abortion ban, to introducing legislation for a federal so-called Don’t Say Gay Bill, his comments on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.”

Just for the record, as a Christian, I do not support a national abortion ban. Legally, a national abortion ban would be no different than Roe v. Wade–it would be unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment.

The article concludes:

Brooks (David Brooks, writer for The New York Times), again declining to live up to his billing as Brooks and Capehart’s conservative half, agreed with his liberal colleague, “You know, for me, the bad news about Johnson is the wing of the evangelical world he emerges from.”

Elaborating, Brooks explained, “And so, for example, one of the people he’s praised is a pseudo-historian named David Barton. And Barton has been — has a powerful bloc in a subculture of the evangelical world that has been arguing, falsely, that our founders never believed in separation of church and state, that Thomas Jefferson was an ardent Christian who wanted to make this a Christian nation.”

One doesn’t have to defend the anti-historical view that Jefferson, who cut portions out of the Bible he didn’t like, was an ardent Christian to defend the larger point. As for Johnson, Brooks proclaimed, “he is coming from a world where Christian nationalism is very much in the air. And so that’s got to be concerning if he’s coming from this world.”

Nobody who freaks out about “Christian nationalism” ever seeks to define it. Is it just being pro-life or forbidding elementary school teachers to talk about sexual orientation and gender ideology as Capehart mentioned earlier? Mostly, it is just a phrase people like Brooks throw out to scare voters.

John F. Kennedy, Jr., would not have been welcome in today’s Democrat party–he would be considered radically conservative!

What Has Happened To Many Unaccompanied Minors Crossing The Border

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about an investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General into violations of child labor laws involving unaccompanied minor children who have crossed the southern border into America.

The article reports:

It’s the latest development in a scandal involving the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House.

The New York Times first broke the story in April, when it showed documents proving the administration was quickly releasing unaccompanied migrant children into the country by the thousands. Many of those children ended up working grueling jobs, often for long hours and in dangerous conditions where they worked with chemicals and industrial equipment.

The probe comes amid rising cases of illegal child labor, Bloomberg reported:

Agency officials said in July that over the past 10 months alone, the DOL’s wage division has concluded 765 cases involving 4,474 children employed in violation of federal child labor laws. Overall, the department reported that it’s seen a 69% increase child labor violations from 2018 and 2022.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) slammed the Biden administration in June for its failure to address the widespread crisis.

“This administration has let tens of thousands of children be sold into slavery,” Hawley said. “They are doing nothing about it.”

How many times have you heard Democrats say that they were doing something ‘for the children”? Closing the southern border would be one thing that would definitely protect many children.

The article notes:

Five former HHS employees said they were pushed out of the agency after they raised concerns about children’s safety.

The Times report also implicated former domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. Rice and her team reportedly failed to act, even as administration staffers called for stricter vetting of the sponsors migrant children were placed with to prevent human trafficking. A week after the Times report, the White House announced that Rice would step down.

Has anyone in the mainstream media reported this?

Thank God For Whistleblowers

On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article about the case against Hunter Biden.

The article reports:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) planned to let Hunter Biden off the hook without charges until two whistleblowers came forward to expose political interference in the investigation, despite the claims of Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The New York Times exposed the inside dealings of Hunter Biden’s attorneys with senior officials at DOJ, who had constrained U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss even as Garland was testifying to Congress that Weiss had full authority to act in the case.

The New York Times reported:

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.

…As the testimony from the I.R.S. agents took hold, Mr. Biden’s legal team felt the ground shift beneath them. The U.S. attorney’s office suddenly went quiet.

The article concludes:

The whistleblowers, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary A. Shapley Jr. and IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, told the House of Representatives that prosecutors would not let them pursue Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, and had sometimes tipped off the president’s son about impending searches or interviews.

The result was a “sweetheart” plea deal that would have prevented Hunter Biden from being investigated further — until federal judge Maryellen Noreika, a Donald Trump appointee, balked.

Earlier this month, Garland named Weiss a Special Counsel in the case, raising suspicions that his real purpose was to continue the cover-up. Charges were withdrawn from Noreika — ostensibly to be pursued elsewhere, but possibly to avoid her jurisdiction.

Does anyone really believe that Hunter Biden is being treated the same way any American would be who committed the crimes he is accused of?

One Vote Makes A Difference

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the importance of one vote.

The article reports:

A new database created by the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that one single vote has altered the outcome of hundreds of elections.

First, the fraud.

The Heritage Foundation has a unique Election  Fraud Database that provides a sampling of proven election crimes from across the country. So far, the Heritage database has found over 1,400 cases of proven election fraud , and new cases are constantly being added. You can search by state or type of election crime.

The documented cases include people voting for a deceased relative, voting in multiple states in the same election, casting fraudulent absentee ballots, and even foreign nationals casting ballots. There are many ways a person can engage in wrongdoing in connection with an election, hoping to affect its outcome. If you spend time perusing the data, it’s hard to argue credibly that fraud hasn’t had a role in American political history.

Remember, the Heritage database only includes cases that went to completed adjudication, such as a criminal conviction or finding of civil liability. It doesn’t document instances of fraud that were never reported by election officials to law enforcement or that were never pursued by prosecutors.

Part of the problem is that too many prosecutors don’t want to prosecute election fraud . There are numerous reasons why.

We saw this when we both worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice . With few exceptions, the attorneys we worked with were openly hostile toward prosecuting election fraud. Even raising the issue of election crimes was considered controversial and evidence of “discriminatory” conduct, because they falsely claimed any such prosecution is “voter suppression.” After all, The New York Times tells its loyal readers in the civil service that election fraud is a myth. Biased advocacy organizations that our colleagues admired, such as the Brennan Center, also told them that voter fraud  is a myth .

The article concludes:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation ’s Tied Election Database catalogs 589 elections that have ended in ties in the U.S. The vast majority of these elections were within the last 20 years, although this is by no means a complete or comprehensive list. This database just scratches the surface.

These tied elections illustrate that one vote, legal or illegal, can determine the winner of a race.

No one wants an illegal vote to stop the true will of the people from being heard on Election Day. We should all care whenever an election crime happens. It dilutes every single legal vote. And sometimes it can determine the winner of an election.

One illegal vote cast is too many. States must get serious about prosecuting election crimes. Otherwise, there is no deterrence to stop people from committing them.

This is a solvable problem. All we need is elected officials with the will to solve it.

Tying The Hands Of President Trump’s Legal Team

Based on everything I am seeing, I am convinced that the threat President Trump represents to the Washington establishment must be monumental. The political establishment has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at him since he came down the escalator and announced that he was running for President. I will admit that I did not take him seriously as a candidate. I was also not sold on his ability to make necessary changes to our government. I was wrong. We need to bring him back to finish what he started–understanding that he now has a much better understanding of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article detailing the deep state’s latest effort to stop President Trump from becoming President again. I am posting a lot from the article because much of it is legalese that I do not fully understand.

The article reports:

One of the ways you can immediately detect federal Lawfare deployment is to look at how media articles are written when they outline court filings without direct citation for review.  The Hill began SEE HERE. The New York Times is similar, SEE HERE.

Notice both national publications talk about a DOJ court filing, presumably made under seal, that limits President Trump’s defense access to materials and documents used in the case against him.  Notice the media do not say how they gained insight into the details of the sealed filing itself; nor do they provide any source context for how their reporting is structured.  Nothing like, “according to sources with familiar with the matter” or anything similar. Just nothing; no attribution at all.

That media context is a BIG red flag indicating the need to ‘create a narrative’ is more important than the actual substance of the evidence material underpinning it.

Notice that the media seems to have access that is being denied to President Trump’s defense. Are we supposed to think that is fair?

The article also notes:

Both stories hit on the issue of the DOJ filing a (presumably sealed) motion with the Florida court, to place limits, rules and restrictions on evidence against President Trump, that limits his ability to review it, talk about it and/or provide context for it.  THIS IS A LAWFARE MOVE.  This is what happens in the prosecutorial star-chambers where they hide information in order to create the appearance of something nefarious, where nothing nefarious exists.

When we see this legal approach, we can be assured the case that uses the evidence is built upon fraud and pretense.  Do not be afraid to tell your family, friends and others about this dynamic.  President Trump is being accused of the crime of violating 18 U.S. Code § 793(e) – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, a violation of the espionage act, and the DOJ is requesting that President Trump must not permitted to defend himself by discussing the evidence against him.

The DOJ wants to limit public knowledge of the material evidence, not because it would harm national security – but rather because the nature of the evidence itself would highlight to the nation how fraudulent the targeting is.  This is the guaranteed DOJ motive, that’s why everything is under seal and even the media will not talk about how they are gaining their leak knowledge.  This is LAWFARE narrative engineering at its apex deployment.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We are definitely descending into a banana republic scenario here.

When Will Washington Politicians Decide To Honor The Constitution?

The Biden administration has done an end run around the U.S. Constitution since coming into office. Executive orders have decimated our energy independence, and various agencies have interfered is things as minute as the appliances we cook on. We have long passed the point where our laws are made by legislators–they are now made by regulatory agencies that are unelected and unaccountable. Now the President is discussing ignoring the role of Congress as ‘keepers of the purse’ and threatening to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to raise the debt ceiling without the consent of Congress.

On Tuesday, NewsMax reported:

President Joe Biden confirmed that he is floating the idea of utilizing the 14th Amendment to work around congressional gridlock on raising the debt ceiling, The Hill reported.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Biden invoked legal scholar Laurence Tribe’s recent editorial in The New York Times, where he backed the theory, which claims the president can unilaterally raise the limit under certain circumstances.

“I have been considering the 14th Amendment, and the man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe … thinks that it would be legitimate,” Biden said, citing the article.

The article concludes:

But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., scoffed at the idea outside the Capitol on Tuesday.

“Really think about this,” McCarthy said. “If you’re the leader … and you’re going to go to the 14th amendment to look at something like that — I would think you’re kind of a failure of working with people across sides of the aisle or working with your own party to get something done.”

The Republican-controlled House has proposed its Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 to solve the debt crisis. Alternatively, the Democratic-led Senate released an economic report condemning the proposal.

Republicans are seeking to make significant inroads to slash government spending in their proposal — a move that Democrats said should take a backseat to pass a “clean” debt ceiling measure.

The un-Republicans in the House before the 2022 mid-terms worked with the Democrats to pass a spending bill that would effectively tie the hands of the Congress that was elected in 2022. Technically this may have been legal, but it was definitely not the right thing to do. Now the Republicans in the House are trying to undo the damage those un-Republicans did. The American people want spending cuts. If the Republicans don’t deliver them, they don’t deserve to be re-elected next year.

 

A Different Perspective On Tucker Carlson’s Departure From Fox

In 2022, Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News ranked No. 2 in total viewers (3.3 million) (The Five was the most watched). (article here) Now Tucker Carlson is among the unemployed. So what happened?

On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article with a very unique perspective on the removal of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.

The article notes:

However, Tucker Carlson’s program had been on life support since December 18, 2018. That is when “progressive” Democrats cancelled most of its sponsors.

On December 13, 2018, Tucker Carlson did a segment on the effects of massive, uncontrolled, and often illegal immigration from poor countries. Tucker showed videos of caravans of illegal immigrants coming to our borders, and of the piles of garbage they left behind. Tucker explained how this was hurting America in many ways. He criticized political leaders of both parties and business elites for ignoring the problem.

…Everything Tucker Carlson said was true, undisputed, and reasonable. It had all been said many times by many political leaders and economic experts. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump won widespread, mainstream support by promising to fix these problems. Trump promised a border wall and strict enforcement of immigration laws. Tucker Carlson was correct to remind his viewers of how the leaders of both parties were ignoring this critical issue.

However, the Left used Tucker’s December 13, 2018 program to begin an orchestrated campaign to eliminate Tucker Carlson’s program, and possibly the entire Fox News network, from cable television.

The following is an important lesson for conservatives:

For the next two days, various “progressives” made phone calls and sent letters and emails to every company and ad agency that bought ads on the Tucker Carlson program.   

For the next week, the mainstream media reported non-stop that there was national outrage over Tucker’s remarks.  They reported that advertisers and ad agencies were angry and embarrassed by what Tucker Carlson had said.

Within days, at least 26 mainstream corporate sponsors publicly announced that they would no longer sponsor the Tucker Carlson program.

…When these sponsors left, Tucker Carlson had only “second tier” sponsors paying much lower rates. They included My Pillow, Relief Factor, and Granite Stone pots and pans. The Tucker Carlson program may have had a superstar, prime-time audience. But it had the income of something like a 1970s late-night TV show sponsored by Veg-O-Matic and Ginsu Knives.

The article concludes:

On May 12, 2022, the New York Times and government-funded NPR falsely claimed that Tucker Carlson created “the most racist show in the history of cable news”.

Periodic attacks like these guaranteed that mainstream corporations would never return to Tucker Carlson. 

Now that the Tucker Carlson program is gone from Fox News, Democrats are emboldened.  I am sure that they are now ready to take down other hosts, or even the whole network.  The Murdoch family and Fox News do not seem eager for a fight.  I suspect they will soon do whatever Democrats demand as the price for ending the attacks, and getting corporate sponsors to return.

Conservatives who love and admire Tucker Carlson are angry.  They are eager to boycott Fox News and turn to other conservative networks like Newsmax.  However, Comcast and Direct TV already proved that they can drop networks like Newsmax at any time.  Even if conservative networks like Newsmax keep their cable access, how long can they survive if they only have “second tier” sponsors like My Pillow and Relief Factor?

News shouldn’t be biased, but it is. Conservatives need to support efforts to keep media outlets alive that at least try to report facts without liberal bias. It is very obvious that any voice they may have in the mainstream media is being systematically erased.

A Sad Day In America

On Saturday, Legal Insurrection reported the following:

There have been reports swirgling the last couple of days that Donald Trump will be charged and arrested next week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office on charges relating to payments to Stormy Daniels. The exact nature of the charges and the basis is not known yet, but based on prior leaks to the media, it appears that Bragg has come up with a novel theory that an otherwise lawful payment become criminal if it is accounted for incorrectly, a so-called falsifying business records offense. Even the NY Times noted this is highly unusual:

In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

In this case, that second crime could be a violation of New York State election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy.

Combining the criminal charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president, raising the possibility that a judge or appellate court could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.

Alvin Bragg is a deeply destructive D.A elected with the help of a Soro-funded polical PAC:

The article concludes:

The charges, if not more substantial than described so far, are a fraudulent abuse of power aimed at manipulating the politicial process as we enter a presidential election cycle. Make no mistake, this has happened before and cost Republicans politically, including the fraudulent prosecution of then Senator Ted Stevens, which was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct but not before Stevens resigned setting in motion events that gave Democrats the votes they needed to pass Obamacare.

The abuse of prosecutorial power by Democrats will, to paraphrase Chuch Schumer’s attack on the Supreme Court, unleash the whirlwind. We just don’t know in which direction it will hit. I think there are several things going on here, including Democrats hope for violence that will allow a J6 crackdown on Trump supporters more far reaching than the prosecution of people for “parading” because they peacefully attended a protest where other committed violence. I also think that keeping the Trump prosecution (with more to come) front and center as he (likely) leads the Republican primaries is a political strategy – it’s no wonder the charges are coming now.

Meanwhile there seem to be no consequences for the Biden crime family and their drug-addicted son.

My Head Is Spinning!

The Covid pandemic has brought us a lot of information and a lot of censorship of information. Oddly enough, a lot of the information that was censored is now being reported as true. Currently the difference between a conspiracy theory and a major news story is a few months.

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights reported the following:

This disinformation business sure has gotten complicated lately.

In the past few days, a key federal agency concluded that COVID was likely the result of a Chinese lab leak. A prestigious medical journal reported that natural immunity is better than vaccines against COVID. Another that mask mandates were worthless. And President Joe Biden’s advanced age is now, according to Biden, a legitimate issue.

All of these claims had been labeled as “disinformation” by the mainstream press, by “independent” fact-checkers, by social media platforms. Anyone who espoused them was attacked as a crazy anti-vaxxer, QAnon racist, Russian stooge who deserved to be de-platformed, demonetized, and discredited.

Take the lab-leak story. The Energy Department, “citing new intelligence,” changed its view on the origins of COVID-19 and now thinks it did, in fact, escape from a lab in Wuhan, China.

The article notes how the lab leak theory was treated in the past:

A-list journalist Anne Applebaum once compared Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to a Soviet propagandist for suggesting that COVID came from a lab. A New York Times reporter said the lab-leak theory had “racist roots.” The editor in chief of Scientific American called it a “conspiracy theory.” CNN said it was “like something out of a comic book.”

Politifact, one of the supposed independent guardians against disinformation, said that any such claim was “inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!” Facebook banned posts mentioning the lab-leak theory.

The article concludes:

One of the articles that Google is right now targeting is our Feb. 23 editorial applauding Congress for investigating COVID vaccines (Congress To Probe COVID Vaccines — And It’s About Time).

Apparently, merely calling for a congressional investigation “promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus,” according to Google’s thought police.

So, let’s review.

The stuff labeled as dangerous disinformation keeps turning out to be true. The supposed guardians of credible information turn out to be some of the biggest peddlers of actual disinformation. And groups that are supposedly targeting disinformation are really just out to defund conservatives.  

In all this confusion, one thing is perfectly clear. If you want to know what will be labeled as disinformation tomorrow, just look at whatever is on the left’s agenda today.

The mainstream media is simply pointing out the need for Americans to find alternative sources for their news.

Misplaced Blame From The Mainstream Media

The Democrats have reached the point where if President Biden trips going up the stairs on Air Force One, it’s President Trump’s fault. He obviously made the steps too high. We are seeing this dynamic at work in the aftermath of the train disaster in Ohio. Not only has the Biden administration been slow to respond, some Democrats and media are blaming President Trump for the crash. The fact that up until January, the Democrats for two years controlled Congress and the Presidency does not seem to play into their thought process. Anyway, The Washington Examiner posted an article on Saturday that provides clarification on what is being said.

The article reports:

Facts are stubborn things. So, the best way for Democrats to push a good partisan narrative is to ignore them entirely.

That’s what many on the Left are doing right now in the aftermath of a disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. They’re attempting to pin the blame for the ensuing chemical disaster on former President Donald Trump and “deregulation” more broadly, arguing that the Trump administration repealed an Obama-era safety rule that could’ve prevented this tragic accident.

…Progressive voices ranging from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the White House to the popular “Pod Save America” hosts and huge liberal social media pages such as Occupy Democrats have made this accusation or insinuation.

…There’s just one problem: It’s complete nonsense. We can debate the pros and cons of that regulation, but it has nothing to do with the current controversy. As a simple matter of fact, it would not have applied to the train that derailed in East Palestine.

You don’t have to take my word for it; take it from the New York Times, hardly a pro-Trump or anti-regulation source.

This is the major quote from the article:

“Since the Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio, some lawmakers and activists have pointed to a 2015 safety regulation adopted by the Obama administration as an example of the changes that they say are needed to make railroads safer. … But after lobbying by the railroad industry, the Trump administration repealed the rule in 2018,” the New York Times reports . Yet it goes on to admit that: “Had the rule remained in effect, it would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine.”

The New York Times’s source for this is Jennifer Homendy, a Democrat and head of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the article. It is quite possible that some regulations need to be looked at in an effort to prevent another ecological disaster like the one that occurred in Ohio, but no regulations impacting the train involved have been changed.

Powered By Unicorns

On Friday, Front Page Magazine posted an article about the future of green energy. There are a lot of things that the people who are trying to turn all of America’s power ‘green’ are either ignoring or unaware of.

The article quotes an article from The New York Times posted on Thursday:

PJM Interconnection, which operates the nation’s largest regional grid, stretching from Illinois to New Jersey, has been so inundated by connection requests that last year it announced a freeze on new applications until 2026, so that it can work through a backlog of thousands of proposals, mostly for renewable energy.

It now takes roughly four years, on average, for developers to get approval, double the time it took a decade ago.

And when companies finally get their projects reviewed, they often face another hurdle: the local grid is at capacity, and they are required to spend much more than they planned for new transmission lines and other upgrades.

Many give up. Fewer than one-fifth of solar and wind proposals actually make it through the so-called interconnection queue, according to research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

So we can create all of the solar and wind energy we want, but if we have no way to distribute it, it is useless.

 

Looking Behind The Numbers

On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about some of the recent employment numbers.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s administration is growing the United States labor market by adding millions of foreign workers for employers to hire, leaving jobless Americans on the sidelines.

Data published in the New York Times shows that the Biden administration is aiding employers by adding millions of foreign workers to the labor force — ensuring wages stay stagnant — even as native-born Americans struggle to get back into jobs since the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

“The foreign-born workforce grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born workforce, Labor Department figures show,” the Times reports:

When the unemployment rate goes down, you would normally expect wage inflation to go up, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “So there must be something else moving in the labor force, and there is a very likely explanation here that immigrants are coming in and taking jobs.” [Emphasis added]

But despite the resurgence in the foreign-born labor force — about four-fifths of it are people legally allowed to work in the United States, by one calculation — there are bottlenecks. [Emphasis added]

The article includes the following charts:

The article notes:

By focusing on adding foreign workers to the labor market, the Biden administration is ignoring efforts to get native-born Americans back into the workforce. The administration’s foreign competition addition to the labor force adds tremendous weight for the nation’s working and lower-middle class looking to find high-paying jobs with decent benefits packages.

The is the place where the uni-party is revealed. The Democrats want future voters; the country club Republican (the Chamber of Commerce party) want cheap labor for their corporate allies. No one is looking out for the middle class right now. The influx of foreign workers, both legal and illegal, creates downward pressure on wages. Corporations are out to make a profit, and many of those corporations have forgotten their scruples. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is destroying the middle class. Remember, a strong middle class is necessary for the survival and growth of our republic.

 

Why Is It Still Up There?

How long do you think an American spy balloon would last over the mainland of China? China has had one sitting over the middle of America for a couple of days now.

On Friday, PJ Media reported:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given the Biden administration’s response to President Xi Jinping and China for their brazenly illegal act of sending a balloon over U.S. territory to spy on the United States.

How do we know it’s a spy balloon? We don’t have to know. We can, should, and must assume that’s what it’s doing.

Blinken, along with his advisors Wynken and Nod, has come up with a brilliant riposte to this Chinese transgression. The United States will deny China the pleasure and honor of hosting the U.S. secretary of state this week as planned.

It’s the well-practiced “comfy chair” response to China. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to impress President Xi. In fact, Xi couldn’t care less if Blinken comes to Beijing or not. He must be watching the diplomatic byplay with amusement.

Blinken and one of his deputies spoke with the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday night, and on Friday morning, he told China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, that the balloon’s course was a violation of sovereignty and “unacceptable,” according to a State Department official.

Oh, dear! Did ya hear that Xi-man? It’s “unacceptable” to fly your aircraft over U.S. territory.

The New York Times reported:

Beijing had sought to defuse tensions with Washington on Friday over the balloon, expressing its regret over the incident, and saying the balloon was for civilian research and had “deviated far from its planned course.”

The explanation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry came after Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had detected a balloon, “most certainly launched by the People’s Republic of China,” over Montana, which is home to about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

The article at PJ Media notes:

The experts at The Drive’s The War Zone disagree that there’s no added benefit to floating a balloon above U.S. military installations: “The idea that a terrestrial aerial platform in close proximity and floating for long periods above major military installations and other sensitive locales is not significantly more of a threat than what can be collected by satellites in orbit is a debatable claim.”

Don’t shoot it down–find a way to make a small hole in the balloon so that it floats gently to the ground, and then reverse engineer whatever electronics it is carrying.

 

Just When You Thought The New York Times Couldn’t Fall Any Lower…

On Tuesday, The Blaze posted an article about a New York Times guest opinion column posted on Sunday.

The Blaze reports:

A New York Times guest opinion column published on Sunday claimed that mating with “shorter people” is a “step toward a greener planet” since smaller individuals are “inherent conservationists.”

The essay by writer Mara Altman, titled “There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be Short,” argued that people of shorter stature live longer and are “better” for the planet because they use fewer resources.

“The short are also inherent conservationists, which is more crucial than ever in this world of eight billion,” the article stated.

Altman’s essay referenced a study by Thomas Samaras, “the Godfather of Shrink Think,” which found that if Americans were 10% shorter, it would “save 87 million tons of food per year (not to mention trillions of gallons of water, quadrillions of B.T.U.s of energy and millions of tons of trash).”

“Short people don’t just save resources, but as resources become scarcer because of the earth’s growing population and global warming, they may also be best suited for long-term survival (and not just because more of us will be able to jam into spaceships when we are forced off this planet we wrecked),” the essay continued.

The article at The Blaze concludes:

The article referenced lecturer and artist Arne Hendriks, who “uses performance and exhibitions to encourage people to embrace fewer inches.” According to Altman’s piece, Hendriks does not allow his children to consume dairy and limits sugar to keep them from getting tall.

“The future I envision is different: I want my children’s children to know the value of short. I want them to call themselves ‘short drinks of water’ with ‘legs for minutes.’ While one yells, ‘I’m the shortest,’ I hope the other will bend his knees to gain an advantage, shouting, ‘No, I’m the shortest!'” the article concluded.

Twitter users relentlessly mocked the article for attributing height to climate change.

In response to the op-ed, Babylon Bee owner Seth Dillon tweeted, “Someone short and single is writing op-eds for The New York Times.”

Former Virginia Rep. Scott Taylor posted on Twitter, “Very heightist of you, @nytimes.”

Did the writer consider the environmental cost of lowering everyone’s kitchen cabinets so that the new generation of short people could reach them?

This Is Not A Good Idea

On Tuesday, One America News reported that Maryland had voted to legalize recreational marijuana and possession up to 1.5oz for people 21+.

The article notes:

It will also create a path to expunge or re-sentence convictions. In MD, police are ~3x more likely to arrest Black people for marijuana despite equal use among white people.

The article includes the following tweet:

ChudsOfTikTok@ChudsOfTikTok
Missouri voted to decriminalize & have recreational sales of marijuana at a 6% sales tax!! Legalize, Tax, Regulate! Congrats Maryland & Missouri!

Image

This is NOT good news. In October 2018, I posted an article based on a New York Times story of a man who was addicted to marijuana. Please follow the link to read the entire article. This is not a harmless drug.

The article at rightwinggranny notes:

On October 6, Neal Pollack posted an opinion piece in The New York Times. The title of the opinion piece is, “I’m Just a Middle-Aged House Dad Addicted to Pot.”

The opinion piece details the author’s journey from using marijuana regularly in his 20’s to the realization that he was hooked on the drug.

Here are some highlights from the article:

I started smoking regularly in the ’90s, when I was in my mid-20s. Pot made everything better — food, music, sex, cleaning — and it made nothing worse. I got depressed less often. I laughed all the time.

But I also lost my temper for no reason. Did I yell at strangers in public? Probably. I barely remember, because I was stoned. But I do remember that once, high as a promotional blimp, I got into a bar fight with a former friend and broke his tooth with a beer bottle.

Back when my writing career was booming, I got invited a couple of times to do readings in Amsterdam, a bad gig for a pot addict. Once, after ingesting a couple of THC pills, I dumped a pitcher of water over my head and insulted the Iraqi representative to National Poetry Day Amsterdam. Another time, I pulled down my pants and flashed a crowd of several hundred. If I had any boundaries, weed erased them thoroughly. The boom ended fast.

…In early November (2017), I had the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream of attending a Dodgers World Series game. I spent way too much money on a ticket that turned out to be fake. So high that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked, I started screaming outside the stadium. If I’d been sober, I would have just called the vendor and gotten a refund. That’s what I ended up doing, eventually. But not before security guards surrounded me.

I looked into a car mirror and saw an old man, sobbing over a baseball game. That was the moment I accepted that I had a problem. Three weeks later, I quit.

The author goes on to say that he believes marijuana should be legal. I disagree.

In January 2019 Imprimis reported:

Most of all, advocates have told you that marijuana is not just safe for people with psychiatric problems like depression, but that it is a potential treatment for those patients. On its website, the cannabis delivery service Eaze offers the “Best Marijuana Strains and Products for Treating Anxiety.” “How Does Cannabis Help Depression?” is the topic of an article on Leafly, the largest cannabis website. But a mountain of peer-reviewed research in top medical journals shows that marijuana can cause or worsen severe mental illness, especially psychosis, the medical term for a break from reality. Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly are about three times as likely to develop schizophrenia, the most devastating psychotic disorder.

After an exhaustive review, the National Academy of Medicine found in 2017 that “cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Also that “regular cannabis use is likely to increase the risk for developing social anxiety disorder.”

Legalizing marijuana for any reason will not solve problems–it will only cause more problems.