Tag Archives: The Washington Free Beacon

Is Anyone Surprised?

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The bailout of the Silicon Valley Bank was a little odd–depositors are going to be paid for bank deposits above the $250,000 limit of the The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). That’s very interesting when you begin to examine who these large depositors are.

On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article revealing who some of the depositors in the Silicon Valley Bank whose money will be paid back are regardless of the supposed limit.

The article reports:

Prominent tech companies, liberal news outlets, and a Democratic politician’s vineyards are among the thousands of businesses that breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when the Biden administration moved to bail out Silicon Valley Bank.

It’s good to have dishonest friends in high places.

The article continues:

Silicon Valley Bank maintained $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in total deposits, making it the 16th-largest bank in the country. It was the second-largest bank to fail in American history when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took control of the institution on Friday.

President Joe Biden has insisted that the FDIC’s move was not a bailout, and claimed his administration is working to protect “American workers and small businesses.” But average Americans won’t benefit the most from the bailout. Ninety-three percent of the bank’s depositors kept more than $250,000 in the bank.

While the California bank was famous for its rolodex of tech clients, it happily accepted deposits from all manner of people, including some of the individuals and institutions involved in pushing the Biden administration’s bailout.

Here are some of the companies and individuals involved:

Gavin Newson

BuzzFeed

Vox Media

Black Lives Matter

The Green Energy Racket

The article concludes:

Silicon Valley Bank’s failure could have delivered a seismic blow to the climate change industry and the more than 1,550 technology companies that specialize in solar, hydrogen, and battery storage solutions that held funds at the bank, had Biden not bailed the institution out.

Still, the bank’s failure will have lingering effects for the industry, with insiders warning that Silicon Valley Bank was often the only institution willing to lend funds for their projects.

“Silicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank,” Kiran Bhatraju, the chief executive of the nation’s largest community solar manager, Arcadia, told the New York Times. “When you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”

Wedbush Securities technology sector analyst David Ives added that the bank’s failure is a “major blow to early-stage and even late-stage tech startups.”

Please follow the link to read the details. Hard-working Americans are bailing out people who make more money than most of us every dreamed of. President Biden really doesn’t want the rich to ‘pay their fair share.’

Undermining America’s National Security Behind The Scenes

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The Iran Nuclear Deal is not a good idea for America or for the world. The deal as it was proposed under President Obama did not attempt to put an end to Iran’s nuclear program–it just fixed things so that Iran would develop an atomic bomb (and delivery system) after President Obama left office. The deal died under President Trump and has not been successfully revived under President Biden, but we may not been done with it yet.

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

A coalition of progressive activists bankrolled by George Soros, Charles Koch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are mounting a secret lobbying campaign to revive the Iran nuclear deal by tying it to the Iranian human rights movement, according to internal correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Activists from groups including J Street, NIAC Action, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are coming together behind a plan to lobby lawmakers to use human rights bills as cover to revive negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran. That’s according to a January email sent from a J Street lobbyist to other activists and obtained by the Free Beacon.

“I’m writing to suggest that this group convene virtually next week to brainstorm and hopefully find consensus on the elements of legislation to support the Iranian people that we could propose to diplomacy-oriented lawmakers,” J Street’s Dylan Williams wrote. “Given the usual need to be discrete [sic], the charged nature of the topic, and the outrageous threats against several members of this group, please do keep this initiative close-hold,” he added.

The activist groups “plan to pursue a dual-track legislative agenda, where they would find a way through legislation to give pro-deal Democrats cover by supporting Iranian women and Iranian human rights, without in any way challenging the revival of a nuclear deal, while at the same time building a coalition of members of the House and Senate willing to write a very public letter to the president urging him to keep the door to diplomacy over on the nuclear file,” a source familiar with the discussions told the Free Beacon.

It is a safe bet that any deal brokered or encouraged by this group of people would result in Iran becoming a nuclear power. What does that look like? I am not sure how much time Iran would waste before getting rid of the ‘little satan’, Israel. At that point, blackmailing Europe would be child’s play. Eventually America would be nuked, but I suspect Europe would suffer first. Remember, the religious fanatics currently in charge of Iran believe that chaos will hasten the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah who will bring Sharia Law to the whole world and reestablish the caliphate. Iran going nuclear would be a nightmare for the entire world.

We Need To Hire Congress As Our Stockbrokers

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On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about some of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s stock trades. It seems that Nancy and Paul Pelosi sold up to $3 million in Google stocks just before Congress began an antitrust probe of the company.

The article reports:

Paul Pelosi sold 30,000 shares of Google from Dec. 20 to Dec. 28, according to a financial disclosure filing the former House speaker submitted to the House Ethics Committee. The Pelosis made an undisclosed profit from the investments, according to the filing.

The trade proved timely. On Monday, the Justice Department and attorneys general from eight states—including California—sued Google over its monopoly on the digital ad market. The lawsuit could force Google to break up its online ad business, which generated nearly $55 billion in revenue for the company in the most recent quarter. Google’s stock has dropped around 6 percent since the Justice Department announced the lawsuit.

The trades are the latest in a string of questionable transactions for Paul and Nancy.

They saved roughly $600,000 in June by selling shares of microchip maker Nvidia weeks before the U.S. government placed restrictions on the company’s business in China and Russia. The Pelosis have seen their fortune grow $140 million since 2008, thanks largely to Paul Pelosi’s stock trades, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

The article notes:

Pelosi’s stock market charades have sparked calls for tougher regulations on members of Congress cashing in on their positions of power.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Tuesday introduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act—the PELOSI Act—to prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from owning or trading individual stocks.

I don’t have a problem with members of Congress owning stocks, I just have a problem with them trading stocks related to forthcoming legislation of investigations. Even blind trusts are not as blind as they should be.

There’s An App For That

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On January 5th, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

Migrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela will have an easier time entering the country thanks to President Joe Biden’s new immigration plan, which he says will stymie illegal border crossings.

The United States will accept up to 30,000 migrants from those countries under a “humanitarian parole” program, Biden announced on Thursday. Migrants who qualify for the program will be able to travel directly from their home countries to the United States after applying to the program through a mobile app, rather than declare asylum at the southern border after crossing from Mexico. Biden in the fall implemented a pilot version of the program for Venezuelans.

…Critics of Biden’s proposal questioned how making it easier for migrants to enter the United States would deter migrants from illegally crossing the southern border. Others raised questions about the legality of Biden’s proposal.

“This is one of the most egregious, unlawful abuses of humanitarian parole authority in the history of our nation—a middle finger to Congress, the American people, and the rule of law,” said Federation for American Immigration Reform director of communications R.J. Hauman.

America needs immigration reform. America was build by immigrants. However, what the Biden administration needs to realize is that we need people who come here to work hard and assimilate into the country–not people who come here to take advantage of our economic safety net.

It’s Time For Parents To Stand Up

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On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Virginia democrats on the state legislature’s rules commission voted 5-4 on Monday to reject Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R.) plan to protect same-sex spaces and increase parents’ role in education.

The article reports:

If the plan is adopted, administrators and teachers would have to seek parents’ consent before referring to children by different names or pronouns. The plan would also preserve sex-specific sports teams, locker rooms, and bathrooms.

That sounds like common sense to me–parents need to know if their children are asking to be addressed by different names or pronouns. I also would like to keep teenage boys out of girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms.

The article continues:

The vote is the latest attempt by Virginia Democrats to block Youngkin’s transgender policies. Delegate Elizabeth Guzmán (D.) in October floated a bill designed to counter the governor’s policies, which would make it a crime for parents to ignore their children’s chosen name, pronouns, or sexual orientation. School districts in liberal enclaves across the state have pledged to flout Youngkin’s plan if implemented.

A spokeswoman for Youngkin said the governor did not support the commission’s decision.

The commission’s vote was largely formal. The model policy, which was introduced in September, will be finalized by Virginia’s Department of Education and does not require legislative approval. The policy improves upon guidelines put in place last year by disgraced former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.), which mandated that schools abide by names, pronouns, and bathroom choices that correspond with a student’s perceived gender.

The article concludes:

Harry Jackson, a parent of Fairfax County students who submitted a public comment, told the Free Beacon that it has been “terrifying to see the politicalization of the K-12 education in Virginia.”

“Parents do not know they are in custody battle with these activists,” he said.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a mother of three from Fairfax County who spoke during the public comment period, said that “a tyrannical minority has taken transgender policy so far that it is threatening freedom and parental rights.”

“Not only are parents’ rights to raise their children formally being dismantled, but many Virginians are afraid to even discuss it,” she told the commission. “We need to reset the scales, and I believe Governor Youngkin’s Model Policies will help us to do that.”

Youngkin was elected in 2021 after campaigning to defend parents’ rights in education. After taking office, he signed nine day-one executive orders to ban critical race theory from classrooms and investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County schools, among other measures.

The True Cost Of Converting To Green Energy

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On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Biden administration’s plan to phase out the use of natural gas in federal buildings in favor of clean energy. This is being described as a “cost-effective” move that will save taxpayers millions each year. That is an outright lie.

The article reports:

In that statement, President Joe Biden’s Energy Department says the proposed natural gas phaseout “would save taxpayers $8 million annually in upfront equipment costs,” a figure that stems from the department’s Dec. 6 estimate of the plan’s budgetary impact. That estimate, however, also acknowledges that so-called clean electricity is roughly four-and-a-half times more expensive than natural gas, leading to “increases in energy costs across the board” that outweigh the savings on equipment expected under the plan. As a result, Biden’s transition away from natural gas will actually cost taxpayers up to $5 million annually, the Energy Department estimate says, a statistic that does not appear in the department’s statement.

Despite the increased costs associated with the plan, green energy groups—which Biden aggressively courted during his campaign in an attempt to win over liberal voters—quickly applauded the move. The Sierra Club, for example, said it was “excited that the Biden administration is making good on its promise” to advance green energy and pledged to “continue to work with the Biden administration.” But as Biden looks to expand his natural gas phaseout beyond the federal government and toward the general public—the Democrat has called for a carbon-free electric grid by 2035 and a decarbonized economy by 2050—he could alienate everyday Americans concerned about energy costs. Earlier this year, electricity prices in California surged to more than double the national average as the Democrat-dominated state worked to “swap gasoline-fueled cars and natural gas heaters for electric models,” E&E News reported in April.

The article concludes:

The Biden administration is set to host a Jan. 5 “webinar” on its proposed federal building natural gas phaseout and will also field public comments on the plan through early February. The American Gas Association has already said it will “vigorously participate” in that public comment process, saying the cost of Biden’s plan “will be borne by every taxpayer.”

“Eliminating natural gas in federal buildings is an impractical, unscientific, and expensive idea that will have no environmental benefit,” the association said in a statement. “AGA will thoroughly evaluate the proposal and vigorously participate in the public comment process.”

At some point, we are going to have to admit that with the current technology, green energy is a boondoggle. Until the technology improves, the cost comes down, and the negative impact of windmills and solar panels are dealt with, green energy doesn’t work.

Our Role Model?

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On November 27th, I posted an article reporting that Klaus Schwab recently stated that China Will Be a ‘Role Model’ in the ‘Systemic Transformation’ of the World. I really don’t like the idea of China as a role model. Currently Chinese protestors are being beaten in the streets, and many will be jailed and tortured for their protesting. The protests began in response to the draconian lockdowns (supposedly due to Covid) that resulted in people in an apartment fire dying because they were locked into their apartment building.

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following:

Uyghur activists are demanding that the Biden administration extract details from China about the fire that the Chinese government says killed 10 people trapped in a building, alleging that the true number of deaths is far higher due to China’s coronavirus lockdowns.

“The Chinese government officially recorded 10 deaths,” said Salih Hudayar, who heads a human rights group focused on China’s genocide of the ethnic minority group. “Photos suggest the number of Uyghurs slain was much higher.”

Social media posts and photos place the death toll at 44, said Hudayar, who on Monday led a protest outside the State Department in Washington, D.C. Residents reportedly couldn’t escape their homes because their doors were bolted and barred for quarantine. Barricades at the building prevented fire trucks from getting close enough to fight the fire—video of the incident shows firefighters spraying water that failed to even reach the building. Huyadar said it took hours for help to arrive.

“Residents stated firefighters arrived three hours after the fire began,” Hudayar said.

The deaths have sparked unrest across the country, with residents calling for the easing of restrictions and the resignation of President Xi Jinping. Chinese authorities have tried to clamp down on the protests, searching residents’ phones in Beijing and Shanghai for use of illegal messaging apps. Chinese bots on Twitter, meanwhile, tweeted pornographic content to drown out posts about the protests and criticism of Xi.

It takes a lot of courage to protest in China. Free speech is not a way of life. Prison and torture are likely to be the results of protesting. China is not a role model we want to follow.

The American Economy Under The Biden Administration

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On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

U.S. business activity contracted for a fifth straight month in November, with a measure of new orders dropping to its lowest level in 2-1/2 years as higher interest rates slowed demand.

S&P Global said on Wednesday its flash U.S. Composite PMI Output Index, which tracks the manufacturing and services sectors, fell to 46.3 this month from a final reading of 48.2 in October. A reading below 50 indicates contraction in the private sector. Activity is slumping under the weight of the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s aimed at curbing inflation by dampening economic demand.

The flash composite new orders index dropped to 46.4, the lowest level since May 2020, from a final reading of 49.2 in October. Outside the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the worst reading since 2009.

The article concludes:

Average input prices increased at the softest rate in two years, but factories still faced challenges finding skilled labor. This suggests the slowdown in inflation will be gradual as wages remain sticky.

The survey’s flash services sector PMI decreased to 46.1 from 47.8 in October. Services businesses also reported weak demand and a moderation in input prices.

I am not an economist, and I do not totally understand what these numbers mean. Generally speaking, inflation is a problem and the rising interest rates that are supposed to combat it are a problem. It is my understanding that the solution to the inflation problem could be found in bringing back domestic energy production and limiting government spending. The new House of Representatives that will be sworn in in January does have the power to cut government spending; however, it is doubtful that they have the power to overrule the Biden administration’s restrictions on domestic energy production. All of us need to be concerned for the people in the colder regions of America this winter. Heating costs will be very high, and many people are going to suffer because of brownouts and energy costs. All of this is the result of the Biden administration’s energy policies. The war in Ukraine is a contributing factor, but not the main cause. Energy prices began to rise in January 2021 and have continued to rise since (with a few pauses). Energy is an international commodity and is subject to supply and demand. The way to bring energy costs down in America is to get back to producing our own energy. That is also the way to curb inflation.

The Voters Got It Right

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On Tuesday The Washington Free Beacon reported that Rachel Mitchell has won in Maricopa County attorney’s special election. Her opponent, Julie Gunnigle, was funded by some very interesting people.

The article reports:

Julie Gunnigle (D.), a George Soros-backed prosecutor whose radical pro-abortion stance made waves throughout the campaign, has lost the Maricopa County attorney’s special election to Republican Rachel Mitchell.

Mitchell was winning by 4 points with 94 percent of ballots tabulated when Gunnigle conceded on Monday. The Democrat said the results prove “a continuation of the legacy of corruption within the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.” Mitchell, a veteran prosecutor who has served as acting Maricopa County attorney since March, declared victory in a press release later that day.

“Public safety isn’t partisan,” she said. “All Arizonans demand safe communities in which to live, work, and raise their children.”

Gunnigle took $6,550 from Way to Lead PAC, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Soros’s Democracy PAC. During the campaign, she caught flak following a Washington Free Beacon report that she partnered with abortion clinics that sold fetal organs. Mitchell allies referred to the story in direct text messages to voters, prompting Gunnigle in a September tweet to dismiss the report as “disinformation.”

The article concludes:

Gunnigle also ran for county attorney in 2020, losing to Republican incumbent Allister Adel, who resigned in March. Gunnigle’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Mitchell is widely known for participating as an expert on sex crimes in the 2018 Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She informed senators that “a reasonable prosecutor” would never have relied on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Kavanaugh.

Mitchell will serve two years before she is up for reelection to a full, four-year term in 2024.

We need to pay attention to who is making campaign donations to candidates. One of the best sources for up-to-date information on candidate funding is Open Secrets. It is helpful to occasionally check in with Discover the Networks just to see the connections the news media somehow overlooks.

A Decision That Upholds The Constitution

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. The program represents the federal government interfering in a signed contract–similar to the government’s interference in contracts between renters and landlords during the Covid pandemic.

The article reports:

The United States government has stopped taking applications for student debt relief, after a federal judge blocked President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, according to a notice on a government website.

A judge in Texas who was appointed by former President Donald Trump ruled on Thursday that Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated. The Biden administration is appealing the ruling.

In July 2021, The New York Post reported the following:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disputed the notion that President Biden has the authority to unilaterally ​cancel students’ federal loans.​

“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness,” Pelosi said during her weekly news conference on Wednesday.

“He does not. He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”

However, the President signed an Executive Order providing student loan forgiveness, and applications have poured in.

The student loan forgiveness program, even if it does not move forward, has served its purpose.

On Wednesday, Breitbart reported the following:

Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast their ballots in favor of Democrats 63 percent of the time in the 2022 elections, exit polling data found.

Data from NBC exit polls found that the demographic, comprised of Generation Z and the Millennials, voted 63 percent for Democrats and just 35 percent for the Republicans.

Generation Z and the Millennials were promised free stuff and do not have the education or the critical thinking skills to understand that free stuff isn’t free. The government has no source of revenue other than printing money or taxing Americans. I suspect we will see more promises of free stuff for this group in the future as this group traditionally does not come out and vote at election time. This time Generation Z and Millennials made the difference.

The Government Needs To Follow Its Own Laws

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In 2018, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act.

This is the summary of that bill from Congress.gov:

Passed House amended (12/05/2017)

Taylor Force Act

(Sec. 4) This bill prohibits certain FY2018-FY2023 economic support assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being made available for the West Bank and Gaza unless the Department of State certifies that the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations:

    • are taking steps to end acts of violence against U.S. and Israeli citizens perpetrated by individuals under their jurisdictional control, such as the March 2016 attack that killed former Army officer Taylor Force;
    • have revoked any law, decree, or document authorizing or implementing a system of compensation for imprisoned individuals that uses the sentence or incarceration period to determine compensation;
    • have terminated payments for acts of terrorism against U.S. and Israeli citizens to any individual who has been fairly tried and imprisoned for such acts, to any individual who died committing such acts, and to family members of such an individual; and
    • are publicly condemning such acts of violence and are investigating such acts.

This assistance limitation shall not apply to: (1) the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, (2) wastewater projects, and (3) children’s vaccination projects.

Withheld funds shall remain available for up to two years before being reallocated.

(Sec. 5) The bill prescribes initial and annual reporting requirements.

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The Palestinian government is still paying imprisoned terrorists stipends and inciting violence against Israel, even as the Biden administration provides nearly half a billion dollars in American taxpayer funds to the government, according to a non-public State Department report recently furnished to Congress.

The Palestinian Authority, which committed to stop these acts to receive new tranches of U.S. aid money, “continued payments to Palestinian prisoners who had committed acts of terrorism, as well as the families of so-called ‘martyrs’ who died while committing acts of terrorism,” according to the report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Official Palestinian government media organizations and social media accounts also “broadcast or published content praising or celebrating acts of violence.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

In 2018 I posted the following picture of a Palestinian kindergarten class learning to be suicide bombers. Unfortunately, things have not changed.

Wishing I Had The Same Stock Advisors As The House Of Representatives

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a recent stock trade by Nancy and Paul Pelosi.

The article reports:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and her multimillionaire husband, Paul Pelosi, saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling their shares in Nvidia about one month before the U.S. government placed restrictions on the tech company, causing its stock price to plummet.

In July, the Pelosis sold all 25,000 of their shares in Nvidia. On Aug. 26, the government ordered Nvidia to stop selling microchips in China and Russia without authorization, which could cost the company up to $400 million, CNBC reported on Wednesday. The day after CNBC’s report, Nvidia’s stock price was down nearly 12 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Maybe we should all just keep a record of what stocks Congressmen are trading and simply follow suit.

The article continues:

By selling the shares before the news broke, the speaker and her husband saved around $600,000, according to multiple Twitter accounts that track the Pelosis’ controversial stock trades.

Paul Pelosi has a long history of making “timely” purchases in companies that his wife has worked to subsidize, the Washington Free Beacon has reported. He purchased the Nvidia stock in June as the speaker oversaw a bill that would grant billions of dollars in subsidies that could benefit the company.

Internet stock traders often follow Nancy Pelosi’s purchases and selloffs for investing tips, Business Insider reported, with some suggesting “she’s making the big bucks off of insider information.”

Stock trading is simply one of many ways that a middle-class American can enter Congress and emerge four years as a millionaire.

Rewarding Bad News Reporting

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Most of us remember this picture from the summer of 2020:

CNN’s intrepid reporter explained that the protests were ‘mostly peaceful’ as we watched the city burn down behind him.

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The CNN journalist best known for reporting from the burning scene of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” following the justified non-fatal police shooting of armed sexual-assault suspect Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., has been nominated for an Emmy award.

CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was one of five nominees in the “Outstanding Emerging Journalist” category. A Washington Free Beacon analysis determined that the word “emerging” is a euphemism for “non-white.” Other nominees included Anna Kook of Al Jazeera Plus, the controversial media outlet funded by Qatari oligarchs, and Vice correspondent Paola Ramos, a “Latinx Communications Strategist” who worked on Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016.

The Kenosha riots in August 2020 lasted nearly a week and caused tens of millions of dollars’ worth of property damage. Rioters took to the streets after a bystander posted a video of Blake’s encounter with police. Mainstream journalists repeatedly spread disinformation by describing Blake as “unarmed.” In fact, he was armed with a knife and was harassing his girlfriend who had previously accused Blake of sexually assaulting her. Blake survived the shooting, which occurred after two officers unsuccessfully attempted to subdue him with a Taser and repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife.

Unbelievable.

On July 28, The Hollywood Reporter reported the following:

”At a time when critical, monumental, and world-changing events are more immediately available and accessible than ever before, the work of the journalists and documentarians that bring us the truth of these stories is under tremendous assault. We honor these individuals’ courage and excellence of craft that allows each of us to be better informed and understanding of the issues of our day,” said Adam Sharp, NATAS (National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) president and CEO.

Just to give you some examples of the nominees:

Outstanding Live News Program

ABC World News Tonight with David Muir ABC

Anderson Cooper 360 CNN

CBS Mornings / CBS This Morning CBS

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt NBC

The Lead with Jake Tapper CNN

Today NBC

Gee, I don’t see anything from Fox News, NewsMax or One America News. Why am I not surprised? How many lies have these news organizations told in recent years. How many stories about the Russian Hoax did they share? How many stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop did they not report? How many lies have they told about January 6th?

Should Political Campaign Money Come From Local Sources?

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When you run for office in a state, should the majority of your campaign donations come from that state (from the people who have to live with your policies if you win)? I am not planning to answer that question, I simply put it out there for everyone to think about.

On July 15th, The Washington Free Beacon reported that only 14 percent of the money raised by Stacey Abrams in her race for governor of Georgia came from inside the State of Georgia.

The article reports:

Nearly half the money raised by Abrams’s campaign and leadership committee ($22.7 million) came from donors in three deep-blue states and one liberal territory that wants to be a state but never will: California ($10.2 million), Washington, D.C. ($6.4 million), New York ($3.6 million), and Delaware ($2.5 million). The result is not entirely surprising given that Abrams recently described Georgia as “the worst state in the country to live.”

Those astonishing figures stand in stark contrast to the fundraising numbers posted by Abrams’s opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp (R., Ga.), who has raised most of his campaign funds from in-state donors. More than 83 percent of the $31.5 million raised by Kemp’s campaign and leadership committee came from Georgia residents, the analysis found.

So the takeaway here is that the people inside George want to see Brian Kemp elected and the people outside Georgia want to see Stacey Abrams elected. If you were a voter aware of this fact, who would you vote for?

It will be interesting to see who wins. Can elections really be bought in America?

The Rest Of The Story…

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On July 6th I posted an article about oil from the United States’ Strategic Oil Reserve being shipped overseas. I was willing to give President Biden the benefit of the doubt because evidently there are international rules that govern where oil is sold. However, new information about the transactions involved is troubling.

Today The Federalist reported the following:

On Wednesday, Reuters revealed that more than 5 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves were sent overseas as part of President Joe Biden’s latest release initiated in March.

Some of that oil went to India, some to the Netherlands, and some was sent to China where the president’s son has engaged in years of potentially criminal business activity embroiling the Biden White House in scandal since the 2020 campaign.

On July 7th, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

“The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would ‘support American consumers’ and combat ‘Putin’s price hike,’” the Beacon’s Collin Anderson reported. “Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, which is commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government.”

…Power the Future founder Daniel Turner admonished Biden for selling “raw materials to the Communist Chinese for them to use as they want.”

“We were assured Biden was releasing this oil to America so it could be refined for gasoline to drive down prices at the pump. So right off the bat, they’re just lying to the American people,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “What they’re saying they did and what they did are not remotely related.”

Turner also said the decision highlights the Biden family’s “relationship with China.” Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is tied to Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm he cofounded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing. Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.

Obviously some of the decisions made have not been in the best interests of Americans, and some of the decisions made have probably enriched the pockets of Hunter Biden. However, I predict there will be no consequences. It is too close to the mid-terms, and there are too many Republicans who are afraid to challenge any of the corruption in the Biden administration. It is a shame there are not enough principled Democrats or Republicans to speak out against obvious corruption.

Using Spin Instead Of Solving The Problem

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On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article detailing how the Biden administration plans to address the problem of rising inflation as they approach what could be a disastrous mid-term election. Mid-term elections tend to lose seats for whatever party holds the White House. If this year’s mid-term is an honest election, the prospects for the Democrat party are looking bleak.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party finally have a plan to get inflation under control and address the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans. It’s not a plan in the conventional sense, but rather a public relations campaign to convince the American people that “despite their current misgivings, the economy is actually doing quite well.”

Inflation is soaring and gas prices are through the roof, but Americans are wrong to be concerned about the direction of the country, the president and his allies will argue this month. Politico reports that Biden has assembled a team of experts and professional communicators to make the case that, actually, the economy is good. The White House effort to “communicate on our accomplishments” kicked off on Monday with a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Biden touted his stewardship of “the most robust recovery in modern history” and cited a bunch of macroeconomic statistics to make his case.

No one who routinely makes trips to the gas station or the grocery store is going to believe that the economy is doing well.

The article concludes:

The dubious public relations campaign is in keeping with the Democratic Party’s longstanding belief that all of their electoral problems could be solved by simply explaining to skeptical voters that they have no good reason to be skeptical. It is also indicative of a White House in disarray. Biden is reportedly furious at his subordinates for failing to come up with a winning message ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, and White House chief of staff Ron Klain is rumored to be on the chopping block. Anita Dunn, a longtime Biden aide who once provided “damage control advice” to disgraced Hollywood rapist Harvey Weinstein, could take his place after the midterms.

Considering all of the information bubbling beneath the surface about Hunter Biden’s laptop and what is on it, Anita Dunn might be a really good choice for chief of staff.

 

This Should Be Called Treason

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On Friday, Gregg Jarrett reported that during the Trump administration as President Trump was attempting to negotiate with Iran, former officials of the Obama administration “engaged in a secret meeting with Iran.”

The article reports:

A group of senior Obama administration officials met with Iran in 2018 as “part of an effort to undermine the Trump administration’s diplomatic push to isolate the hardline regime, according to an internal State Department document” reports The Washington Free Beacon.

“The document is the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive” writes The Beacon. The memo states then-President Trump and his administration were working to increase economic pressure on Iran in 2018, but the delegation of U.S. former ambassadors held a secret, “off-the-record” meeting with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif at his residence in New York City.

The seven-page memo was assembled during the meeting with Zarif, during which Zarif claimed that Trump’s policies have fomented anti-U.S. fervor in Iran and pointed to the popularity of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Trump two years later in a drone strike.

“I was as popular as Soleimani, but now I am at 47 percent and his is up,” Zarif said, according to the memo. “He is closer to 80 percent. People of Iran once preferred engagement, now opted for resistance as the only reality. That is what the polls are telling us now and it is the reality of the region.”

The article quotes The Washington Free Beacon:

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was not aware of these meetings while leading the State Department, said the memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry’s efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel powwows with Iranian officials.

“This memo reflects even more than we already knew about former State Department officials continuing on as if they were still in office,” said Pompeo, who is now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ. “Trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It’s worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials—two years after Obama left office—were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America.”

Everyone involved should be tried for treason.

Remote Learning Is An Oxymoron

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On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the impact the closing down of our schools during Covid had on our children.

The article reports:

Remote learning had an even worse effect on U.S. students’ education than was previously known, new research shows.

K-12 students who attended school from home in the 2020-2021 school year lost 50 percent of their typical math curriculum learning, according to a Harvard study first reported by the New York Times. Even students who went back to school in fall 2020 lost 20 percent of their typical math curriculum learning due to pandemic disruptions in the spring. The learning disparities were the worst for poor, black, and Latino students, a gap that one of the study’s authors called “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

The schools were closed by the Teachers’ Unions. Many teachers were afraid of catching Covid from their students (a largely unfounded fear, but understandable at the beginning of the Covid crisis), and many teachers simply enjoyed teaching remotely from wherever they chose to be.  After scientists realized that children were neither major spreaders of the virus and generally not at high risk from complications from the virus, the schools should have reopened, but not all of them did.

The article notes:

“It’s pretty clear that remote school was not good for learning,” Emily Oster, a Brown University economist and the coauthor of a similar study, told the Times. Oster was one of the first to sound the alarm about the danger of school closures. In October 2020, she wrote a piece for the Atlantic, “Schools Aren’t Superspreaders,” which argued the risk of COVID spread in schools was overblown.

Children are at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19. In-school transmission is also “extremely rare,” according to a 2021 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“In places where schools reopened that summer and fall, the spread of COVID was not noticeably worse than in places where schools remained closed,” the Times‘s David Leonhardt wrote on Thursday. “Schools also reopened in parts of Europe without seeming to spark outbreaks.”

The article concludes:

Students who suffered the greatest learning losses were often in districts that succumbed to powerful teachers’ unions and Democratic officials who fought to keep schools closed. Schools in the poorest areas on average stayed remote five weeks longer than affluent areas.

As late as March this year, Chicago Public Schools, in coordination with its teachers’ union, was implementing at-home learning periods for classes after COVID exposures. Additionally, any school could flip to remote learning provided at least 30 percent of teachers were absent for at least two days or at least 40 percent of students were told to quarantine by the city’s health department.

Let’s hope that the damage done to the ‘children of Covid’ can be undone by the time they reach high school.

While We Were Watching Ukraine

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Biden administration’s negotiations with Iran over a nuclear arms treaty.

The article reports:

Republican lawmakers in Congress are fed up with the Biden administration’s secret diplomacy with Iran and refusal to inform the American public about what concessions will be granted to the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism as part of a new nuclear deal.

With negotiations stuck in their final stage amid Iran’s demands that all U.S. sanctions be lifted on its chief terrorist outfit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Republican foreign policy leaders are pressing top Biden administration officials to publicly brief Congress on the state of diplomatic talks.

“With uncertainty surrounding the status of the negotiation, the American people have a right to know what their diplomats agreed to in Vienna, what alternatives your administration is considering, and how you intend to address the wider range of threats from Iran—including its increasingly dangerous missile and drone programs and taking American hostages,” a group of Republican lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees wrote in a letter sent on Wednesday to the White House and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The secrecy surrounding the talks—and Iran’s demands for billions of dollars in sanctions relief that will likely fund its regional terrorism enterprise—are unacceptable and hint that the Biden administration is poised to enter a deal that is weaker than the original 2015 accord, according to Republican representatives Claudia Tenney (N.Y.), María Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Greg Steube (Fla.), Ronny Jackson (Texas), and Don Bacon (Neb.).

During more than a year of negotiations, the Biden administration has refused to brief Congress in an open setting. Biden administration officials, including U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley, have only consented to classified briefings, unlike the Obama administration, which discussed the talks openly with lawmakers and the public. Classified briefings on the deal—which came after lawmakers from both parties chastised the administration for cutting Congress out of the negotiations—are no longer tolerable, Tenney and her colleagues say.

Keep in mind that theoretically all treaties have to be approved by the Senate. President Obama avoided this by signing ‘accords’ which were not approved by Congress. I would hope that President Biden would not be permitted to sign an Iran Nuclear ‘Accord” to avoid the Senate approval process. Aside from not being transparent, the Biden administration seems to function more like a dictatorship than a functioning republic.

The Perils Of Green Energy

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On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about ESI Energy, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy.

The article reports:

A renewable energy firm that conspired with former president Barack Obama to maim and murder hundreds of majestic bald eagles has finally been brought to justice.

ESI Energy, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, was sentenced in federal court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to three criminal counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The company will serve five years probation and was ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and restitution for its role in the deaths of at least 150 eagles that were slashed to pieces by its wind turbines.

The article notes:

NextEra, which operates more than 100 wind farms in the United States and Canada, received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits as part of Obama’s efforts to promote renewable energy. The Obama administration typically granted permits to operators of wind and solar farms that exempted them from federal laws prohibiting the killing of bald eagles and other protected species. NextEra didn’t even bother to apply for these permits, which prosecutors said gave the company an advantage over its competitors that did seek Obama’s permission to commit bird genocide.

Wind farms during the Obama administration were responsible for the murder of more than 573,000 birds each year, including 83,000 hawks, falcons, and eagles, according to the Associated Press. Weaponized solar farms, which also benefited from taxpayer subsidies, were another key component of Obama’s genocide campaign. Sunlight reflected from the massive arrays of solar panels creates a “kill zone” where temperatures can reach up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Bloomberg, some birds are “incinerated in flight,” while others fall to their deaths after having their feathers singed. Birds that survive the fall are often “too injured to fly and are killed on the ground by predators.”

When discussing green energy, shouldn’t the impact on bird life in America be considered?

It’s Only Okay To Question Some Elections

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On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that election lawyer Dara Lindenbaum, who is President Biden’s pick to serve on the Federal Election Commission, is representing Stacey Abrams’s nonprofit and Raphael Warnock’s church in a lawsuit that challenged the validity of Georgia’s 2018 election due in part to the state’s use of “unreliable” electronic voting machines. So the electronic voting machines were unreliable in 2018, but reliable in 2020?

The article reports:

In November 2018, election lawyer Dara Lindenbaum signed on to a federal legal complaint on behalf of Abrams’s Fair Fight Action. The complaint challenged the constitutionality of Georgia’s 2018 election, which saw Abrams lose to Republican governor Brian Kemp in a race she never conceded. Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church joined the suit in early 2019, just months before the Democrat entered Georgia’s 2020 Senate race.

There were some changes made to the complaint in December 2020:

According to the complaint, the state of Georgia “grossly mismanaged” the election by depriving “Georgia citizens, and particularly citizens of color, of their fundamental right to vote.” As a result, the complaint said, Georgia’s election “violated the First, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” The complaint also lamented the use of “insecure and unreliable” electronic voting machines that “lack a paper trail” and thus “cannot be audited”—those machines even “switched” votes from Abrams to Kemp, according to the complaint.

While the lawsuit remains active, Fair Fight and other plaintiffs amended the complaint in December 2020 to remove many of its assertions detailing problematic voting machines. The move came after former president Donald Trump said voting machine irregularities led to his defeat against Biden.

The article concludes:

Prior to her role representing Fair Fight Action, Lindenbaum served as general counsel to Abrams’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Abrams lost that race to Kemp by roughly 2 points, but she never conceded her defeat, instead saying the election was “stolen” due to “voter suppression.” In the aftermath of her loss, Abrams launched Fair Fight Action, a nonprofit that says it is “leading the charge to protect voting rights.” Fair Fight’s website touts the group’s “historic civil rights lawsuit in federal court … challenging the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election that discouraged and disenfranchised voters.” Lindenbaum still serves as legal counsel to Fair Fight Action and the group’s political arm, Fair Fight PAC, her Office of Government Ethics disclosure shows.

Neither Fair Fight Action nor Ebenezer Baptist Church returned requests for comment.

This lady does not belong on the Federal Elections Commission.

Parents Need To Pay Attention

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On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a video shown as part of a social studies class in a New Jersey public middle school.

The article reports:

As part of a social studies class, a New Jersey public middle school forced students to watch a video about a transgender man’s hormone treatment—all without notifying parents.

The video, “Ten Years on Testosterone,” details the transition of LGBT activist Aydian Dowling through hormone injections. Teachers and administrators at Pearl R. Miller Middle School in Kinnelon, N.J., did not notify parents about the lesson, which included slideshows with definitions of different gender ideologies, beforehand.

…Dowling later spoke at a school-wide assembly as part of the school’s “Stories Of Adversity & Resilience Program,” about which administrators notified parents ahead of time, giving them the option to opt out their children. Concerned parents flocked to a school board meeting last Thursday, where board members admitted parents should have similarly been informed about the hormone therapy video.

“I felt as if I was blindsided,” Loren Malfitano, whose two sons were shown the video, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They’re learning about this ideology of gender before they even have classes on the actual biologies of males and females.”

The article notes:

New Jersey is set to enact updated health standards in September pushed by Democratic governor Phil Murphy that teach second-graders about genitalia, reproduction, and “gender expression.” Fifth-graders will be required to define masturbation and differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity, and eighth-graders will have to define gender identity, gender expression, vaginal sex, oral sex, and anal sex. The governor-appointed New Jersey Board of Education adopted the standards in 2020.

Why are schools spending so much time of this sort of thing while the SAT scores of their students are dropping drastically. Is there anyone in the education hierarchy who is actually concerned with educating our children in the skills that will help them succeed in the future?

Our Insane Foreign Policy

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On Sunday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Iran has claimed responsibility for the ballistic missiles that struck the U.S. consulate and other targets in Erbil, Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital, early Sunday morning. We are currently negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Obviously they have very little respect for us or our foreign interests.

The article reports:

The missile attack comes as talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal face the prospect of collapse after a last-minute Russian demand forced world powers to pause negotiations for an undetermined time despite having a largely completed text.

The missiles, which targeted the U.S. consulate‘s new building and a neighbouring residential area, caused only material damage and one civilian was injured, the Kurdish interior ministry said. An Iraqi security official told Reuters that the missiles were manufactured in Iran.

Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards released a statement taking responsibility for the missile attack against Israeli “strategic centres” in Erbil, Iran‘s state media reported.

“Any repetition of attacks by Israel will be met with a harsh, decisive and destructive response,” the Revolutionary Guard said in the statement.

There are a lot of things going on here. First of all, Iran would like to be in control of Iraq. Kurdistan is an impediment to that control. Secondly, Iran needs to drag out the nuclear talks long enough to get an atomic bomb. They are almost there, and they probably have some sort of acceptable delivery system. When they have both, their bullying tactics may turn into action–not a good thing for anyone in the world.

The article concludes:

“Iran had carried out attacks against American targets and did not shy away from publicizing this,” said Hamidreza Azizi, Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“I see this more as a warning sign to Israel and a show of force in the negotiations.”

A Kurdish spokesperson for the regional authorities said there were no flight interruptions at Erbil airport.

Residents of Erbil posted videos online showing several large explosions, and some said the blasts shook their homes. Reuters could not independently verify those videos.

Iraq has been rocked by chronic instability since the defeat of the Sunni Islamist group Islamic State in 2017 by a loose coalition of Iraqi, U.S.-led and Iran-backed forces.

Since then, Iran-aligned militias have regularly attacked U.S. military and diplomatic sites in Iraq, U.S. and many Iraqi officials say. Iran denies involvement in those attacks.

When America has a weak President, the world is less safe.

What An Amazing Coincidence

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

Federal authorities are investigating three Democratic megadonors who made an enormous bet on shares of Activision Blizzard just days before Microsoft agreed in January to acquire the video game company for $69 billion.

The U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are both looking into the suspiciously timed trading activity of Barry Diller, owner of the Daily Beast, his stepson Alex von Fürstenberg, and his friend David Geffen, a longtime Democratic donor who gave $500,000 to the scandal-plagued Lincoln Project in 2020.

…The Journal (The Wall Street Journal) notes that Activision stock options similar to those purchased by Diller, Geffen, and von Fürstenberg were “sparsely traded” in the days before the Microsoft acquisition was announced, but “exploded” in response to the news. The wealthy Democrats’ stock options instantly surged in value by more than 60 percent—an amazing coincidence, indeed.

The men have yet to exercise their options, which don’t expire until 2023. They could realize a profit of about $60 million if they sold today, based on Activision’s current share price of $80. They stand to make more than $100 million if the Microsoft acquisition, expected to close this summer, goes forward at the agreed-upon price of $95 per share.

What better way to ensure generous donations than to help those donors make money in the stock market? Is this an incredible coincidence as those involved claim?

When It’s Not Your Money, You Don’t Always Spend It Wisely

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One of the problems with the establishment in Washington, D.C., is that they do not treat the taxpayers’ money as if it were their own. Actually, the problem is not limited to Washington–how many politicians offices have spend thousands of dollars simply on drapery? Just as an example, in November 2013, The Boston Globe reported that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who spent $27,000 on new drapes and furniture for his office early in his first term, has authorized a $9 million project to dramatically upgrade the office before he leaves in 2014. The Biden White House has made a recent purchase that illustrates the problem of not shopping carefully.

On March 11, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The Office of Management and Budget spent $2,735 in October for the order and delivery of the 12′ by 9′ rug, the government documents show. The custom Bora Bora rug in the chosen color of “Starfish” was sold to the agency for $1,972, with additional costs attributed to freight, delivery, and padding.

A Washington Free Beacon investigation found that the White House budget office likely got ripped off, and could have purchased an identical rug for far less than what it paid. The Bora Bora rug is manufactured by Fabrica and cut into custom sizes by retailers. New York-based carpet retailer Kanter’s Carpet & Design Center told the Free Beacon it charges just $1,600 to custom-build a 12′ by 9′ Bora Bora rug, a price the company said includes binding, pads, and local delivery.

That may seem like a small thing, but it illustrates how careless the government and its minions are with taxpayers’ money. That’s $1100 that could have been used toward the deficit. It would only be a drop in the bucket, but how many other ‘drops in the bucket’ are out there?

At a time when Americans are being severely hurt by inflation, it would be nice if the White House would curtail its spending a little.