Tag Archives: The Washington Free Beacon

I Really Can’t Mourn This Man’s Death

Posted on by

On September 28th, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Israel Defense Forces killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on the Iran-backed terrorist group’s Beirut headquarters.

The article reports:

“Last night, in a precise strike on Hezbollah’s terrorist headquarters in the neighborhood in Beirut, the IDF eliminated the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah,” IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters in a briefing. “I can now confirm this to you.”

“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world,” the IDF said on X.

The Israeli airstrike on Friday also eliminated Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s Southern Front commander, and other leaders of the group, according to the IDF.

“The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command, what’s left of it, were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel,” Shoshani said.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of Nasrallah on Saturday.

Shoshani said the Hezbollah headquarters were located underground, beneath a residential building in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, in keeping with the group’s strategy “to hide behind civilians.” He said the IDF always takes precautions to avoid civilian deaths, but he was not prepared to speak to the specifics of Friday’s airstrike, including the types of munitions that were used or the extent of the collateral damage.

If the terrorists are going to hide among civilians, civilians are going to be killed. I am just grateful that the IDF makes very surgical strikes when taking out terrorists.

The article also notes:

The Biden administration, which failed to impose a ceasefire on Israel and Hezbollah on Thursday, distanced itself from the strike against Nasrallah.

“The United States was not involved in this operation, and we had no advanced warning,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said on Friday.

A terrorist is killed and the Biden administration doesn’t even celebrate! They had no advanced warning because they cannot be trusted. There are too many people in the Biden administration who support Iran instead of Israel.

Why Are We Funding Terrorism?

Posted on by

On July 1st, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a ruling by a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The article reports:

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on Friday that the lawsuit brought by victims of Palestinian terrorism can proceed, marking the second time the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss the case has been rejected. The court, in its latest decision, said there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the leading aid organization in Gaza—even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.

The lawsuit, originally filed in December 2022 by American victims of Palestinian terror attacks and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), alleges the Biden administration violated federal law when it restarted aid to the Palestinians, including for programs in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. This money, they argue, subsidized terrorism and contributed to the Palestinian government’s “pay to slay” program, which provides imprisoned terrorists and their families with monthly stipends.

The latest decision paves the way for the case to “move forward, tearing away the veil from the Biden Administration’s illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians,” America First Legal, a watchdog group handling the lawsuit on behalf of terror victims, said in a summary of the case provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

In September 2023, Medill News Service reported:

Members of Congress and top experts disagreed yesterday about whether the Biden administration has been complying with the Trump-era law to withhold economic assistance from the Palestinian Authority.

The 2018 Taylor Force Act ended economic aid for the Palestinian Authority over the Palestinian Authority’s controversial policy of compensating the families of terrorists who died or have been imprisoned. Critics of the policy dub it “Pay to Slay,” and say it incentivizes terrorism against Israeli citizens and visiting Americans.

Congress passed the Taylor Force Act to prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from incentivizing or funding Palestinian terrorism by cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority until the organization ceases to operate a fund providing salaries for families of deceased and imprisoned terrorists. During the hearing representatives of both parties expressed support for the Taylor Force Act, and questioned the witnesses on whether the Biden administration is complying with provisions of the Trump-era law.

“It is clear the Biden administration is not in compliance. The Palestinian Authority still has this fund in operation,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-NY. “The Biden administration resumed levels of payments and encouraged the Saudi government to do so.”

However, when asked by Rep. Dean Phillips, D-MN, the three witnesses disagreed on whether the Biden administration is complying with the law.

Elliott Abrams, President George W. Bush’s deputy national security advisor, said the Biden administration is “not fully” in compliance, but he said “our money is not going to the PA,” referring to the Palestinian Authority. Abrams believes the Biden Administration is not following the law’s requirements to highlight the issue of the Palestinian Authority funding terrorism at the United Nations and in relations with other countries.

America is funding both sides of the Israel/Hamas war. It is time we stopped. Please read both articles–they explain the details.

Asking For Trouble

Posted on by

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about some of the immigrants that are coming into America illegally with the help of our government.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is flying previously deported Cameroonians whose asylum claims were determined to be invalid back into the United States, according to interviews with Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff and internal agency memos reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The program, which has not been announced to the public, appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report about dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021 and then allegedly mistreated by their government. An estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians were deported during that period of time.

But now some are arriving back in the United States under a program with little precedent, both current and former ICE officials say. All of the individuals deported under the previous administration were found not to have valid asylum claims in the United States.

“The program, which has not been announced to the public”??!! Is this a dictatorship? Who is writing the laws?

The article continues:

The decision to fly back the previously deported Cameroonians is the latest instance of the Biden administration reversing its predecessor’s immigration initiatives. On his first day in office, President Joe Biden rolled back a number of former president Donald Trump’s border policies and paused southern border wall construction. Biden later ended a policy that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico before their court hearing, which critics blame for the sharp uptick in illegal border crossings.

“Gutting deportations isn’t enough for the Biden administration, so now they’re apparently bringing back previously deported illegal aliens,” said former ICE official and director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies Jon Feere. “These are people who have already had their cases closed, one way or another, and they’ve been returned home.”

Immigration will be an issue in the November election. Stay tuned for more insane moves by the Biden administration to try to convince voters that the open border and the millions of illegal aliens in America are not their fault.

You Might Want To Ask Your Doctor Where He Went To School

Posted on by

On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the results of racial preferences in higher education.

The article reports:

Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

The article notes:

As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.

Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline, per internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

“UCLA still produces some very good graduates,” one professor said. “But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified.”

The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA’s decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.

First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in “Structural Racism and Health Equity,” a required class that covers topics like “fatphobia,” has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. They spend an additional seven hours a week in “Foundations of Practice,” which includes units on “interpersonal communication skills” and, according to one medical student, basically “tells us how to be a good person.” The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.

“This has been a colossal failure,” one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. “The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations.”

Nearly a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams, data from the school show, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone a different test, the Step 2 licensing exam, that is typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs.

Forgetting your actual mission can lead to getting lost on the road to success. The first problem we need to look at is to figure out why minority children are not getting the basic educational foundation from kindergarten to high school that they need to be successful in medical school–is it cultural or a failure of our schools? The second thing we need to look at is the fact that the medical school has lost its focus. A medical school needs to train doctors to practice medicine. Social justice and racial equality are fine, but if the doctor doesn’t know how to solve a problem, it really doesn’t matter what race the patient is.

We all need to strive for equality, but let’s not lose standards and practical knowledge in the process.

 

The Price Of Following The Crowd

Posted on by

It’s a pretty safe bet that less than one percent of the students protesting in support of Palestine have any idea of the history of the Middle East. Most of them are simply doing the ‘cool’ thing with their classmates (not realizing that the people who are encouraging them are paid agitators).  So essentially, these students are followers–not leaders–who did not fully investigate the facts before they followed. This is not a trait employers generally look for when hiring people. Protesting is legal, destroying property and denying access to students are not. The students’ treatment of their fellow students who were Jewish was also despicable.

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following headline:

13 Federal Judges Say They Will No Longer Hire Law Clerks From Columbia University, Citing ‘Virulent Spread of Antisemitism’ and ‘Explosion of Student Disruptions’

The article reports:

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the “explosion of student disruptions” and the “virulent spread of antisemitism” at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire “anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”

“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges wrote. “It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”

Actions have consequences. Tuition and housing at Columbia University costs approximately $85,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to pay for an education that, because of the actions of some students, disqualifies you from an entire group of jobs.

When Making Peace Isn’t Possible

Posted on by

On March 18th, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the futility of trying to make peace with radical Islamists.

The article reports:

A California synagogue axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members after leasing its facility to a Muslim group that brought in an anti-Israel speaker who compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation of around 900 families located in an upscale Los Angeles suburb, says it was trying to ease tensions between the Jewish and Muslim communities when it decided to lease its space this month to the Islamic Society of West Valley, a neighboring Muslim faith group that needed space to hold services during the holy month of Ramadan.

Hamakom entered into an agreement with the Islamic Society that allowed it to take over the synagogue’s main campus, pushing Jewish members onto a smaller satellite branch. In anticipation of the lease’s commencement, the synagogue’s leadership covered up pictures of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to photographs reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, sparking anger among Jewish congregants.

Soon after the Islamic Society began using Hamakom’s facility, it hosted anti-Israel activist Hussam Ayloush, who said last year that Israel did not have a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attack and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. The invite led many Jewish members to threaten to resign from the shul, according to internal emails viewed by the Free Beacon, and prompted Hamakom to sever its rental contract with the Islamic Society within days of inking it.

I am sure that there are moderate Muslims in America who behave themselves better than the group that rented the synagogue. However, there is a major thread of anti-Semitism that runs through the Muslim faith. Until the Muslims themselves cut that thread, I would strongly suggest that no religious group lease space to Muslims.

Funding Countries That House Terrorists

Posted on by

On March 5th, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one consequence of the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas production in America.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas production is already turning into a major financial windfall for Qatar, even as the Gulf regime undercuts the United States and its allies by funding terrorists and sheltering fugitive Hamas leaders.

Qatar, which is the third largest LNG exporter after the United States and Australia, announced last week that it is expanding its natural gas production by 85 percent. The news came weeks after the Biden administration announced that it would freeze new domestic LNG export permits, a policy that many political observers viewed as a concession to climate activists ahead of the presidential election.

Brenda Shaffer, a senior adviser for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Qatar’s liquefied natural gas expansion was likely spurred by Biden’s policy announcement, adding that Doha will “benefit financially” from the pause.

“Nature doesn’t allow a vacuum. The United States is the biggest producer of natural gas in the world. To say that it’s going to put a pause or freeze for a few years, obviously [other countries] are going to pick up that market,” she said.

Energy experts told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s LNG announcement is already pushing buyers away from the U.S. market and toward adversarial competitors.

Limiting natural gas production in America does not limit the use of natural gas worldwide–other countries pick up the slack. Natural gas is a very clean fuel and does very little damage to the environment. The Biden administration’s energy policies have consistently negatively impacted Americans and benefitted America’s enemies. We need to go back to helping Americans and the American economy by becoming energy independent again.

Another Reason Not To Trust Much Of Middle East Reporting

Posted on by

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about an Al Jazeera journalist secretly worked for Hamas.

The article reports:

Adraee (IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee) said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

Adraee said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

The article concludes:

The IDF, calling out the Qatari state-owned news network, reposted Adraee’s post and wrote, “Hey @AlJazeera, we thought your journalists were supposed to give unbiased reports on situations, not actively participate in creating them on the front lines as Hamas terrorists.”

In January, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari revealed evidence showing that two Gazan journalists killed by the IDF belonged to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization.

I had not realized that AlJazeera was Qatari owned. This is one more reason to question the role of Qatar as mediators in negotiations about the Israeli hostages. It is amazing what the IDF is discovering as they dismantle Hamas in Gaza.

The United Nations Has A Dietary Plan For America

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one United Nations Agency’s plan to fight climate change.

The article reports:

The United Nations agency that is pushing wealthy nations to curb their meat consumption in the name of climate change is led by a top Chinese Communist Party official who is known for using the agency to serve Beijing.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization—which counts CCP official Qu Dongyu as its director—is set to release a plan next month that calls on “the world’s most-developed nations” to fight climate change by curbing “their excessive appetite for meat,” Bloomberg reported Saturday. It’s unlikely, however, that the directive will apply to China. The United Nations still considers China a developing country, and Qu himself has long faced criticism for using his U.N. post to advance Beijing’s interests.

The article explains one possible motive for the push toward eating less meat:

A reduction in global meat production, meanwhile, could help alleviate Chinese concerns over food security and land scarcity. China is the world’s largest meat importer thanks in part to “scarcity of land for feed and forage” and “rising production costs” that have limited its production, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report published in July. China experienced large-scale food shortages in 2022, prompting protests in more than a dozen cities.

In August 2023, The Guardian reported the following:

China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week, a rate energy watchdogs say is unsustainable if the country hopes to achieve its energy targets.

The government has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and in 2021 the president, Xi Jinping, promised to stop building coal powered plants abroad.

But after regional power crunches in 2022, China started a domestic spree of approving new projects and restarting suspended ones. In 2022 the government approved a record-breaking 106 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity. One gigawatt is the equivalent of a large coal power plant.

So why is a country that is building coal plants to generate electricity at the rate of two a week complaining that Americans eat too much meat?

It really is time for America to leave the United Nations, take over the building in New York and turn it into condominiums.

Not Really Looking For A Solution

Posted on by

Generally speaking, the words coming out of the Biden administration support Israel. Generally speaking. However, the actions of the State Department under President Biden tell a very different story.

On November 14th, The Daily Caller reported:

The State Department, as part of its efforts to support refugee arrivals, is working with a coalition of nonprofits that includes several anti-Israel groups.

The State Department partnered with Welcome.US, a coalition of nonprofit groups, corporations and former politicians, in September 2021 to help new Afghan refugee arrivals find sponsors, jobs and housing. The coalition includes Islamic Relief USA, Amnesty International and the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Oklahoma branch, all of which have made anti-Israel statements.

“The State Department applauds the launch of Welcome.US and looks forward to our ongoing collaboration and discussions with leaders across sectors to mobilize support to meet the needs of these arriving Afghans as they write a new chapter of the American experience,” the State Department said in a statement when the program launched.

Islamic Relief USA is affiliated with Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). The Trump administration’s State Department cut ties with the group due to the “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership,” Ellie Cohanim, then the deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department, told the Washington Free Beacon at the time.

The article notes:

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations and Islamic Relief Worldwide are not innocuous ‘faith-based’ groups,” Asra Nomani, cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a group fighting radical Islamism, told the DCNF. “They are dangerous organizations that believe in political Islam, or Islamism, and stoke anti-American, anti-Jew intolerance and hate.”

I have written about CAIR recently (article here). They are listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. If you are not familiar with that trial, now is a really good time to learn about it. However, beware–many search engines will lead you to fake news about the trial. The best thing to do is to look up the exhibits provided by the government in the trial and read them. They are very relevant to what we are dealing with today.

The Cost Of Media Manipulation

Posted on by

One term that has come into fashion in recent years is ‘body shaming.’ The basic idea is that you should not comment on a person’s weight if they are either underweight or overweight. I would argue that not commenting is part of good manners, but it would also be a good idea to recognize the role that weight plays in health. Not everyone is going to fit into the ‘normal’ weight range–small bones, big bones, etc., make a difference. I remember as a teenager never reaching the number the charts said I should reach–having a small frame changes things. However, there comes a point where avoiding ‘body shaming’ is dangerous.

On September 18th, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

…The number of heart disease deaths in the United States linked to obesity was three times greater in 2020 than in 1999—even though overall heart disease deaths declined nearly 20 percent during that period—according to a new scientific study.

• Obesity affects about 115 million Americans, including 42 percent of adults and 20 percent of children, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Why it matters: The alarming scientific findings coincide with the rise of the left-wing “body positivity” movement, which seeks to achieve social justice by celebrating fatness and attacking critics for pointing out the enormous health risks associated with obesity.

• In recent years, liberal cultural elites have embraced obese female celebrities and lauded them as icons of feminist empowerment. Lifestyle magazines such as Cosmopolitan have featured obese women on the cover alongside science-denying taglines such as, “This is healthy!”

What they’re saying: “Those who glorify obesity, or denounce efforts to reduce it, are dangerous … [and] have blood on their hands,” wrote journalist Glenn Greenwald.

I am not recommending that everyone who is overweight go on a crash diet. What I would suggest is that you work with a nutritionist to find the source of your weight problem and work on it slowly and consistently. Best wishes!

Always Follow The Money

Posted on by

If green energy is so good for the planet, how come it is killing whales and enslaving children in Africa? Seems like a fair question.

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a new proposed green energy project.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden wants to shrink a Pacific Ocean marine sanctuary meant to protect endangered whales in order to accommodate offshore wind energy factories—one of them owned by a major Democratic donor.

What a coincidence.

The article continues:

The Biden administration late last month proposed cutting about 1,400 square miles of ocean and coastline from an Indian tribe’s proposed national marine sanctuary to make room for wind turbine infrastructure. One of these factories would belong to Invenergy, whose founder and CEO Michael Polsky has given more than $400,000 to Democrats since 2016. His company shelled out $2.4 million to lobby the White House, federal agencies, and Congress this year.

The proposal reflects a conflict between efforts to fight climate change and those to preserve natural habitats. The Biden administration’s proposal would benefit green energy companies and generate renewable energy, but environmental groups have sounded the alarm on such projects noting that they kill birds and whales—the very wildlife that the marine sanctuary seeks to preserve. The proposal also reflects the green energy industry’s status as a major player in the Democratic Party. Biden has invested billions of taxpayer dollars into renewable energy projects backed by liberal billionaires, enriching them in the process.

Polsky’s major contributions from the past several years include a total of $72,000 to the House Democrats’ campaign committee in 2020 and 2022, and $35,500 to the Democratic National Committee in 2016—the same year he poured $75,000 into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Polsky has also donated to Republicans and Invenergy’s political campaign committee, but of the roughly $500,000 he has contributed to political causes since 2016, more than $400,000 has gone to Democrats according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

Sorry, green energy is a scam. Until the government gets out of the way and allows the free market to sort out the science, green energy will be a very expensive and political boondoggle. The current technology in green energy is reminiscent of the search for a perpetual motion machine. We haven’t found one yet.

The Best News Money Can Buy

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The Associated Press, the country’s top wire service, is now bankrolled in part by millions of dollars from left-wing foundations, including one founded by “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The news organization last year announced a series of “partnerships” to subsidize reporters covering climate change, race, and democracy. A review of the donor roster shows that the vast majority fund left-wing political causes, while none are supporters of conservative initiatives.

The Ida B. Wells Society, founded by “1619 Project” lightning rod Hannah-Jones, has teamed up with filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Foundation, for example, to foster “more inclusive storytelling” at the Associated Press.

In some ways, it was a natural partnership: The AP’s global investigations editor, Ron Nixon, serves on the Ida B. Wells Society’s board of directors. In others, it may prove more problematic, given that Hannah-Jones’s own reporting has been disputed by historians, who have argued—among other things—that her account of the motivations of the American revolutionaries is factually inaccurate.

The funding, much of it from these sorts of overly political actors, will make it more challenging for the Associated Press to swat away accusations of political bias. In one high-profile example, critics blasted the organization for revising its style guide to instruct reporters to avoid the use of terms like “the French,” which the AP indicated was “dehumanizing.”

The article lists some of the organizations that are now part of this ‘partnership.’

Here are a few:

The Ida B. Wells Society, founded by “1619 Project”

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Outrider Foundation

The Public Welfare Foundation

Please follow the link to the article to get a better idea of the political leanings of these foundations.

The article notes:

AllSides, a group that tracks media bias across the industry, last year changed its rating for the AP from “center” to “leans left,” citing what it said was an increase in “word choice bias” and “bias by omission of views” in its coverage. AllSides says it closely monitors the Associated Press’s content because the AP’s content is “broad and far-reaching.”

What Has Happened To Many Unaccompanied Minors Crossing The Border

Posted on by

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?

Where Is The Money Actually Going?

Posted on by

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Biden Administration’s Office of Resettlement lost track of almost 100,000 migrant children. At the same time, it has also quadrupled the amount of money awarded to contractors responsible for placing migrant children with responsible adults.

The article reports:

The Office of Refugee Resettlement doled out upwards of $6 billion in 2021 and 2022 to contractors and nonprofit groups—up from $1.7 billion in 2020—according to records obtained by the Functional Government Institute and provided to the Washington Free Beacon. The taxpayer funds were supposed to be used to help place 264,000 unaccompanied children with adult relatives or sponsors with whom they could await court dates, though the agency lost track of almost 100,000 of those kids.

The massive increase in grants is attributed primarily to more than $5 billion in no-bid contracts doled out to three companies, a practice Democrats such as Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D.) and Vice President Kamala Harris decried during the Trump administration. Among the companies that benefited from the Biden administration’s largesse: the San Antonio-based nonprofit Family Endeavors, which inked a $579 million no-bid contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement in March 2021.

It was only a problem when Republicans were doing it!

The article concludes:

“Putting aside the eye-popping increases in funds to house and transport migrant children—and the potential for rampant waste, fraud, and abuse—these records provide early receipts for the cartel-friendly immigration policy that actually endangers children,” said Functional Government Initiative communications director Peter McGinnis. “The federal government’s failure to exercise existing authority has created nothing short of a humanitarian crisis.”

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.

Unfortunately, our government does not do many things well. If the border were closed, we might be able to take care of the few unaccompanied children that sneak through, but there is no way to handle to flood of children that is currently coming through. The real tragedy is that a large percentage of these children will wind up being sex trafficked and other horrible outcomes. This is a disgrace for a supposedly civilized country.

The Things The Whistleblowers Told Us

Posted on by

On Saturday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the things we have learned from two IRS whistleblowers.

Here is the list. Please follow the link to the article for the details:

1. Hunter linked dad to Chinese deal in threat to business partner

2. Joe Biden attended other business meetings with Hunter and his Chinese partners

3. The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop almost a year before we knew it existed

4. Hunter deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes

5. The FBI division that investigates foreign spies was involved in Biden probe

6. The investigation into Biden had porn-related origins

7. Prosecutors wanted to charge Hunter with felonies, but he ended up with misdemeanors

8. Biden’s Department of Justice blocked investigation at multiple turns

9. The IRS whistleblower’s boss corroborated bombshell claims

10. Hunter won’t ever pay tax on $400,000 income from Ukraine

11. Agents wanted to search Biden family homes, but were shot down due to ‘optics’

12. IRS wanted search warrant for Hunter’s storage locker, but prosecutor tipped off his lawyers

13. A mole tipped off Hunter that FBI wanted to interview him

14. Hunter’s lawyer said prosecutors would be committing ‘career suicide’ if he was charged

15. Joe Biden visited FBI Delaware office during investigation

16. Hunter deducted hotel rooms for father and drug dealer from his taxes

Do you still believe in an unbiased Department of Justice?

 

 

Priorities??

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about some of the current budget priorities in Portland, Oregon.

The article reports:

As crime and homelessness strains Portland, Oregon, the city’s liberal mayor has proposed spending more than $10 million on marijuana-related initiatives in the upcoming year, nearly double the amount requested to hire new police officers.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler (D.) made a point to stress his intention to increase investments in public safety, announcing in early May that he aimed to spend $5.3 million to hire 43 new police officers to better address rising vehicle and retail thefts. What the mayor didn’t publicly stress, however, is that the city will be spending almost twice as much on various marijuana initiatives in the city.

Wheeler’s budget includes a proposal to put $3 million behind an “ongoing” Cannabis Fund and another $7 million behind a “one-time Cannabis Fund.” Of the more than $10 million dedicated to marijuana programs, $2.3 million is earmarked for funding so-called Social Equity and Education Development grants, which disburse funds to rectify “past racially-biased cannabis policies and disparate cannabis-related arrests” and support “Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and women led/owned small business initiatives.”

The article concludes:

The city also allocated $115,200 to hold an “equity summit” for the LGBTQIA+ community, provide community engagement, and train city staff. “Site assessment for My People’s Market,” another initiative, is set to get $137,000 “to fund a site relocation analysis” for “a marketplace aimed at advancing opportunities for BIPOC entrepreneurs.”

Additionally, the city is prepared to shell out $147,339 for a diversity program aimed at “BIPOC, immigrant, and refugee communities” as well as up to $109,512 for a government bureaucrat tasked with “broadening inclusion and diversity” in city government.

What the voters decide to do in their city is their business. However, when it spills over into the state and into the entire country, it is no longer a local issue. The Founding Fathers set up a nation of individual states that were to act as laboratories. Theoretically, when a state enacted a policy that improved the quality of life for its residents, other states would copy that policy. When a policy provide detrimental to a state, that state would abandon the policy and other states would not copy it. The problem today is that when a state has massive problems with overspending and bad governance, the expectation is that the federal government (we, the taxpayers) will bail them out. For a not-so-current example, research the funding of the ‘big dig’ in Boston, Massachusetts. Bad policy impacts all of us eventually.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Posted on by

I dread the 2024 presidential election. It will be nasty and full of lies told by both the candidates and the press. There is no way the campaigns will be covered fairly, and I don’t believe enough Americans are looking through the lies of the mainstream media to be informed voters. A recent article illustrating the level of misreporting accepted as news appeared in The Washington Free Beacon.

The article contrasts the reporting of President Trump slowing walking down a ramp with President Biden falling during a public appearance.

The article reminds us of the reports on President Trump’s slow walk down a ramp:

CNN: “Why the Donald Trump-West Point Ramp Story Actually Matters”

1) Trump is 74 …

2) Trump’s medical past is a total mystery …

3) Trump makes his opponents’ health a major issue …

So yes, of course, the president’s tentative and slow walk down a ramp is a story. Donald Trump made it one.

Washington Post: “Trump Tries To Explain His Slow and Unsteady Walk Down a Ramp at West Point”

In addition, Trump wrote that he “ran down” the final stretch of the ramp. Video footage of the episode shows the president picking up his pace slightly for the final two steps, but that would hardly be considered a run or a jog by any standard definition…

MSNBC: Unsteady Appearance Prompts New Scrutiny of Trump’s Health

Contrast that with the reporting of President Biden’s fall:

Reuters: “Biden Trips and Falls During Graduation Ceremony, Recovers Quickly”

President Joe Biden tripped and fell after handing out the last diploma at a graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado on Thursday, but got up quickly and walked back to his seat.

The 80-year-old U.S. president fell forward, caught himself with his hands, then got up on one knee while helped by three people. He walked back to his seat unassisted.

After Biden was helped up, he pointed behind him, seeming to indicate that he had tripped over a sandbag used to hold the teleprompter in place. He mingled with other officials afterward, smiling and giving a “thumbs up” sign.

CNN: “White House Says Biden Is Fine After Tripping on Sandbag and Falling on Stage at Air Force Academy Commencement”

Just for the record, I don’t recall seeing a sandbag anywhere in the videos of the incident.

Please follow the link to the article to read the full reporting.

About Those Electric School Buses…

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education’s experience with electric school buses. First of all, I would like to note that most of the people who are knowledgeable about electric cars (or buses) say that they do not operate at their full capacity in cold temperatures. The decision by the Board of Education to buy electric school buses in Michigan’s climate is questionable at best.

The article reports:

Michigan’s fourth-largest school district is having “significant” performance issues with its expensive electric buses, issues that come after the Biden administration spent $1 billion to “transform America’s school bus fleet” with electric models.

During an April 19 presentation to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, the district’s environmental sustainability director, Emile Lauzzana, highlighted a number of issues with the district’s electric bus fleet. Those buses, Lauzzana said, have “a lot of downtime and performance issues” and aren’t “fully on the road,” despite the fact that they are “approximately five times more expensive than regular buses.” The infrastructure upgrades required to use the buses, meanwhile, were “originally estimated to be only about $50,000” but “ended up being more like $200,000,” according to Lauzzana. “I have a number of colleagues in different states who are facing similar challenges,” the district official lamented. “For the school bus market, it’s been challenging for us.”

…Just months before Lauzzana’s admission, President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency announced it awarded nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds to “transform America’s school bus fleet” with “over 2,400 clean school buses that will accelerate the transition to zero emission vehicles.” But problems with electric buses occurred long before the agency’s announcement.

Electric bus company Proterra, which the Biden administration has lauded as “pretty amazing,” saw Philadelphia remove 25 of its buses from the roads in 2020 due to structural problems. Those buses cost the city $24 million. Another Southern California city waited months in 2021 to repair nearly a dozen buses from its electric fleet, more than a third of which were out of service at the time. Ann Arbor Public Schools’ electric buses also use Proterra batteries and drivetrain technology.

Do all school districts have environmental sustainability directors? That might be part of the problem.

We are at a point in time when our government does not have the best interests of Americans at heart. The decision to go to electric vehicles does not benefit Americans–it benefits the Chinese companies that supply the computer parts and rare earth materials for the batteries. If Americans were smart, they would simply boycott electric vehicles and tell the government to go pound sand.

If you are interested in further information on the problem, please follow the link above.

Slowly But Surely?

Posted on by

According to a Reuters article posted on May 15th, last year the Biden administration sold 180 million barrels of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order to stabilize the oil market and fight the high prices Americans were paying at the pump. The fact that this was done during an election year is purely coincidental.

On May 20th, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

President Joe Biden in December began working to replenish the 180 million barrels he sold last year from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Nearly six months later, he still has zero barrels to show for it.

Biden’s Energy Department on Monday announced its intention to purchase up to three million reserve barrels as a “continuation” of the president’s “replenishment strategy.” So far, however, that “strategy” has seen the Democrat fail to purchase a single barrel of reserve oil. The administration first tried to purchase three million reserve barrels in December, when Biden kicked off his “plan to replenish the SPR.” One month later, Biden’s Energy Department revealed it had rejected all offers it received to purchase the oil because those offers “were either too expensive or didn’t meet the required specifications.”

…Facing the “impossible” task of refilling the reserve to its past levels—the stock held 638 million barrels of oil when Biden took office and now holds just 362 million—Biden’s Energy Department is now channeling its replenishment efforts toward a more modest goal. The department in May touted its “significant progress toward replenishment,” citing its role in canceling congressionally mandated sales that would have seen the department sell 140 million reserve barrels between 2024 and 2027. As a result, the department says, the reserve will be effectively replenished by 2027—not because the barrels Biden sold will have been bought back, but rather because the reserve will save barrels thanks to the canceled sales.

“This cancellation … will allow the SPR to have the same number of barrels in reserve by the end of FY 2027 that it would have had emergency barrels not been sold in 2022,” the department said.

Oil prices sit at $72 a barrel, and the Biden administration hopes to purchase reserve oil at anywhere between $67 to $72 a barrel. Republicans tried to fill the reserve to its capacity in the spring of 2020—when a barrel of oil cost as low as $15—but Senate Democrats blocked the plan, attacking it as a “bailout for big oil.”

Biden went on to sell a historic number of reserve barrels in 2022, when the average price for a gallon of gas exceeded $5 in the United States for the first time ever. Millions of those barrels were sent overseas—Biden even sold nearly one million U.S. reserve barrels to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant, the Free Beacon reported last year, a sale that came as America’s top adversary scrambled to build up its own stockpile of oil.

I can’t help but wonder who advised the Biden administration to sell oil to China when we were tapping our own oil reserves. The use of the SPR for political purposes is a first, and it has left America in a weakened position. It really is time to go back to drilling for American oil and selling that oil to Americans.

Why Tik-Tok Will Not Be Banned

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the banning of Tik-Tok. It is generally acknowledged that Tik-Tok is a Chinese Communist Party vehicle for gathering information on Americans, it is doubtful that it will be banned in America. Recently, the RESTRICT Act was introduced in Congress.

The article notes:

But the RESTRICT Act never names TikTok, which has signaled its support for the law, and instead empowers the Commerce Department to prohibit any technology that “poses undue or unacceptable risk to national security.” The bill prompted criticism from Republicans for failing to ban TikTok immediately. RESTRICT Act critics such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who has his own bill to outlaw TikTok, argue that the act could delay action against the tech company for years and relies on Biden administration officials who have voiced apprehensions about a ban, such as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, to pull the trigger.

“There is no time for half-measures,” Rubio told the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), who supports a ban on TikTok, said last month that language in the RESTRICT Act is too broad. “You’re creating, effectively, a PATRIOT Act for the digital age,” Vance said.

The RESTRICT Act’s supporters have also botched its rollout, with cosponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) showing in a late March interview with Fox News that he was unfamiliar with the bill’s provisions. According to a senior Senate Republican staffer, the botched rollout means that “anti-TikTok legislation is currently dead.” Another senior Senate aide, who worked on the RESTRICT Act, pushed back against that characterization, saying that no other bill “has this broad base of bipartisan support.”

The article notes one major reason Tik-Tok may not be banned:

Meanwhile, the White House is leaning into using TikTok and similar apps as it gears up for 2024, raising questions about whether it sincerely views the company as a national security threat. Biden’s campaign plans to “lean on hundreds of social media ‘influencers’ who will tout Biden’s record,” according to a recent report. As Chew (TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew) was testifying to Congress in March, the White House used an app owned by TikTok’s parent company to make an Instagram video.

The Biden administration is not going to ban one of the Democrat’s major weapons in the 2024 presidential campaign.

 

Is Anyone Surprised?

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.