Tag Archives: The Washington Post

Changing The Numbers By Redefining The Terms

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On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article explaining how the Biden administration can claim to have cut the number of illegal border crossings simply by changing the definition of the words.

The article reports:

The Biden administration’s bulletin board, also known as the Washington Post, featured an article last week headlined: “Biden takes heat for border measures, but illegal crossings are down.”

Various other news outlets echoed this theme, using terms such as “plunged” and “plummeted,” to describe what is, in fact, a record-high number of illegal crossings in both January and February.

How did the administration pull off this “plunge”?

Basically, by narrowing the focus and by redefining what counts as an illegal border crossing.

This is the new way to do things:

“The Biden administration has started using its port parole program shell game to feign ‘lawfulness’ and distract from the true numbers of illegal aliens entering the U.S. each month,” reports the Daily Signal.

Joe Biden started this parole program for Venezuelans, and in January expanded it to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. People from those nations can get into the country – without a visa – if they show up at a port of entry and agree to some minimal rules under a supposed two-year parole.

“The administration has directed would-be illegal aliens of numerous nationalities to use the CBP One app to make an appointment at a port of entry, where they will be paroled into the country,” the Daily Signal explains.

The Customs and Border Patrol reports that illegal crossings by people from those four countries fell from 84,190 in December to 2,050 during February.”

Well, no kidding. Why cross illegally when you can tap an app and get into the country without having to follow the rules to enter legally?

“The administration calls this process a ‘lawful pathway,’ but mass paroling tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens through the ports make neither the process, nor the aliens using it, lawful,” notes the Daily Signal.

There is no way the number of people crossing our border every day can be assimilated. They won’t be able to grasp the concept of America quickly enough to become good citizens. The Biden administration’s border policies are truly a threat to the survival of America as we know it.

When Cooler Heads Don’t Prevail

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On Wednesday, Red State posted an article about the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The Red State article heavily quotes an article from The Washington Post.

The Washington Post reports:

Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.

Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute, one of several previously unreported clashes in a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department over how aggressively to pursue a criminal investigation of a former president. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.

First of all, I question the list The Washington Post is providing. Has that information ever been made public?

Red State notes:

The FBI was criticized by both sides during those debacles—Hillary almost had a coronary in 2016 over then-FBI Director James Comey’s handling of her illegal server which contained classified information. Yet, her home was never raided, and she never faced charges. It doesn’t take a partisan to point out that there seem to be two systems of justice at play here.

The article at Red State concludes:

As we all know, the FBI’s concerns fell on deaf ears, and the raid went ahead as planned. The fact that there was such internal division within the DOJ shows that the surprise offensive was always politicized and heavy-handed. Merrick Garland has repeatedly shown in his term that he values politics over justice, and he will continue to act that way till he’s called to account.

There are currently two systems of justice in America. I am not sure how much longer that will last before it becomes a major problem.

Is Anyone Really Surprised?

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On Wednesday, PJ Media posted an article about the August 8 raid the Trump estate at Mar-a-Lago. It has become more obvious that the Democrats were hoping to find something that would end the support for President Trump. Well, aside from using the Department of Justice for political purposes, the Democrats have been left with egg of their faces.

The article quotes The Washington Post. The headline in The Washington Post article is:

Investigators see ego, not money, as Trump’s motive on classified papers

Seems a bit snarky to me. If you had been President, wouldn’t you save mementos of significant things that had happened during your presidency or things that you were proud of accomplishing?

The article at The Washington Post states:

Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.

As part of the investigation, federal authorities reviewed the classified documents that were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club, looking to see if the types of information contained in them pointed to any kind of pattern or similarities, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.

PJ Media notes:

Not only did the FBI not find any nuclear bomb codes, but they also found no evidence that Trump was looking to “leverage, sell or use the government secrets.”

So Trump wasn’t selling nuclear secrets on Craigslist after all. Who knew? Everyone. And that likely includes the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Needless to say, WaPo couldn’t just admit the “Trump has nuclear secrets for sale” flapdoodle was the latest Hail Mary pass to send Trump to prison and that it proved to be another flaccid member of the “get Trump” orgy. They threw the idea in near the very end that they still might come up with something juicy:

PJ Media concludes:

In other words, the “Trump is selling nuclear secrets” lie is over. He kept a few tchotchkes from his four years serving as the greatest president in recent history. The nerve!

Please forward this article to your liberal sister harpy-in-law and her blue-haired, trans-pansexual, gelding lady-boyfriend who clung like sad, tragic barnacles to the embarrassing lie that Trump was trying to sell nuclear missiles to the Kaiser — or whatever it is they needed to believe.

Even if this information is shouted from the rooftops, there will be people who will hang on to the lie as if it were true. Trump derangement syndrome is real. The thing people need to understand is that if President Trump is not the candidate in 2024, there will be a new derangement syndrome attached to whomever the Republican candidate is (if he is not part of the uni-party). It really isn’t about Trump. It’s about destroying any threat to the uni-party in Washington.

Where Are The Mainstream Media Reports On This?

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On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the attack on Gen. Don Bolduc who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire.

The article reports:

The establishment media have ignored the physical attack against Republican New Hampshire candidate Gen. Don Bolduc.

The three top establishment newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, all failed to report the physical attack on Gen. Bolduc that occurred moments before Wednesday’s debate with Democrat Maggie Hassan (D-NH).

…On Wednesday, police arrested 37-year-old Joseph Hart of Greenville, Rhode Island, for criminal trespass and disorderly conduct after he took a swing at Gen. Bolduc.

…The attack is still under investigation by police.

Kate Constantini, Bolduc for Senate spokeswoman, told Breitbart News Wednesday night there is no space for political violence. “As the General said on stage tonight, it’s time to lower the temperature of the political discourse in this country,” she stated.

Yet the establishment media have remained silent about the attack and Bolduc’s call for peaceful discourse, instead preferring to report on the attack against Paul Pelosi, which was carried out by an illegal alien.

The article concludes:

The establishment media’s bias was also on display during Wednesday’s debate. The WMUR ABC debate moderators failed to mention the attack before or during the debate.

Conversely, the moderators asked the candidates about the rise in violence against politicians, referencing the January 6 and attack against Paul Pelosi, failing to mention an attack that occurred just minutes before the debate against the Republican candidate.

I guess some violence is more important than others. If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you are probably uninformed.

Delta Owns An Oil Refinery!?!?

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about the current energy problems in America (and worldwide).

The article quotes The Washington Post:

The country is down to 25 days of diesel supply with stockpiles at their lowest level for this time of year in records going back to 1993. In the Northeast, where more people burn fuel for home heating than anywhere else in the country, inventories are a third of their typical levels heading into winter. National Economic Council Director Brian Deese called the levels “unacceptably low.” By late October, diesel prices had risen for more than two weeks to 50% above where they were a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Biden administration has leased fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration in its early stages dating back to the end of World War II, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

The article includes the following chart:

The article at Hot Air reports:

Where does Delta come into all this, after the commodities and doom and gloom lecture? That’s kind of interesting, too. At the top of the post, where I linked to those three PA refineries being closed in 2012? One of them was the Trainer facility, and it was given an EPA reprieve, of all things. CONOCO-Phillips still wanted to unload it, and Delta Airlines bought it as a hedge against oil prices and jet fuel shortages. They lost their butt owning it for years – as a small refinery fighting the EPA mandates tooth and nail didn’t help – and repeatedly tried to unload it, but, HEY! There’s been a sudden turnaround. Things are looking rosy and they are looking prescient. From April:

Delta will see a benefit of 20 cents per gallon of jet fuel from its refinery, which acts as a hedge against the spike in fuel. In particular, the refinery supplies fuel for Delta’s York operations, but Chief Financial Officer Daniel Janki said Monroe Energy’s output acts as a 40-50 percent fuel hedge across Delta’s network. In the first quarter, the refinery knocked about 7 cents off each gallon of jet fuel Delta consumed.

When Delta first bought the Trainer, Pa., refinery from Conoco Philips — now Philips 66 — in 2012, analyst opinions were mixed. Some argued it was a stroke of genius on the airline’s part, while others said it was too far afield from Delta’s core operations to make sense for an airline with no experience in selling or marketing petroleum products. The years since have been up and down for the refinery but now, with oil prices spiraling up in the wake of the Ukraine war, the refinery is proving its worth.

The refinery generated $1.2 billion in revenue in the first quarter, compared with $48 million in the same quarter in 2019, Delta said in its first-quarter results. About 80 percent of its output is diesel and gasoline, prices of which have surged. “Our Monroe refinery provides a unique benefit, acting as a partial hedge to elevated cracks,” Janki said. “This is especially true with New York Harbor Jet cracks, where our production at Monroe provides 100 percent offset.”

It really is time to rediscover American energy independence!

 

Is Anyone Surprised?

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When the CHIPS Act passed, the Biden administration said that it would lead to “more than $1 million construction jobs alone over the next 6 years building semiconductor factories in America.” On Friday, Townhall posted an article detailing the actual facts.

The article reports:

After signing the CHIPS Act into law earlier this month, which aims to increase domestic chip production, President Biden claimed it would lead to “more than $1 million construction jobs alone over the next 6 years building semiconductor factories in America.” It turns out, that figure is completely wrong.

A White House official said it was a “mix up,” but this number was not something Biden said off-script. He said it in official remarks while signing the bill, then tweeted the statement from his official Twitter account.

Does anyone believe President Biden has control over his Twitter account? That is a scary thought!

The article quotes The Washington Post:

When we dug into the report, moreover, we could not find any reference to 1 million construction jobs being created. Instead, the report predicted such an investment — roughly equivalent to the Chips Act — would create “an average of 185,000 temporary jobs annually throughout the U.S. economy from 2021 to 2026.”

Six times 185,000 adds up to more than 1 million. But note that these are not all construction jobs. In fact, few are construction jobs.

“The statement about 1 million construction jobs is not accurate,” said Sarah Ravi, a spokeswoman for the association. She directed us to a chart in the report that indicated that a $50 billion investment would create an additional 6,200 construction jobs. (The Washington Post)

The Washington Post gave the claim “four Pinocchios.” It was not a slip-up–it was made up to make the bill look good.

What We Believed Because Of What We Were Told

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On Wednesday, Front Page Magazine posted an article about Watergate. Watergate was a long time ago, but the article explains how it is relevant today. The article is titled, “Exploding the Watergate Myth.” The article deals with a recent book written by John O’Connor, a veteran criminal prosecutor and friend of FBI number-two Mark Felt (who later admitted to being Deep Throat). The book is titled, The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. I would also recommend another book that undoes much of what we have been told about Watergate–The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President by Geoff Sheppard. Both of these books totally contradict what we were led to believe at the time and both reach very interesting conclusions. For more information on the Geoff Sheppard book look here.

The article cites a lot of interesting ideas from the John O’Connor book:

By book’s end, Woodward and Bernstein – and their editors – no longer look like heroes. Far from it. Also, the title All the President’s Men turns out to be a misnomer. Watergate wasn’t really a Nixon job. It was a CIA caper.

Where to start? Perhaps with Howard Hunt, the White House operative whose name was found in address books belonging to two of the Watergate burglars.  If you saw All the President’s Men, you may remember Woodward’s discovery that Hunt was also at the CIA and that he worked part-time at a PR firm called Mullen. Mullen never comes up again in the movie. In fact, as Woodstein soon found out, it was a CIA front.

But that little detail never made it way into any of their Post articles. Because on July 10, 1972, according to CIA records to which O’Connor gained access, Mullen’s president, Robert F. Bennett made a deal with Woodward – O’Connor calls it “a conspiracy of obstruction” – to feed him Watergate stories in exchange for a promise to omit from Post reporting any mention of Mullen’s role as a CIA front. It was a highly curious arrangement, given that, as O’Connor notes, “Bennett had no stories to feed Woodward, who, with Deep Throat’s help, hardly needed Bennett. So if Woodward kept quiet, and intentionally so, about Mullen, it was for the Post’s purposes, not the CIA’s.”

And what were the Post’s purposes? Well, it soon became clear to Woodstein that the Watergate break-in had been a CIA operation for which Hunt, because he was a White House official, had been able to claim presidential authorization. Yet the Post – which, as O’Connor notes, was founded in 1877 as “the official organ of the Democratic Party” and which in the 1970s, believe it or not, shared a general counsel (Joseph Califano) with the DNC – didn’t want to bring down the CIA. It wanted to bring down Nixon. And after learning that the CIA’s motive for the break-in had to do not with political secrets but with a prostitution referral service that was operating out of DNC headquarters, the Post wanted to protect Democrats.

Why, then, did Nixon pursue the ultimately self-destructive cover-up? Because John Dean – the White House counsel who, unbeknownst to Nixon, had had his own personal reasons for wanting the DNC’s prostitution records – urged Nixon to do so, never informing him that what he was covering up was, in fact, a CIA project. As O’Connor observes, if Nixon hadn’t pursued the cover-up, the truth about the break-in might actually have come out, and Nixon would’ve been seen not as its mastermind but as an innocent fall guy.

You may ask: if the Post hid the truth about Watergate, how did that truth stay hidden for so long? The answer requires you, if you’re old enough, to think back to the pre-Internet era. It was remarkably easy, back then, to hide facts – even facts that had gone public. As it happens, news stories containing key elements of the real Watergate story appeared at the time in various newspapers around the U.S. But they weren’t national newspapers. Their reports weren’t picked up by other media. And so they disappeared quickly down the memory hole.

The article at Front Page Magazine mentions the Geoff Sheppard book:

There’s another relatively new Watergate book that’s well worth reading. In The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, Geoff Shepard, who was a young lawyer in the Nixon White House, doesn’t focus overmuch on the Post or the CIA or the reasons for the DNC break-in, but instead laments Nixon’s betrayal by appointees like John Dean and Elliott Richardson, demonstrates that Nixon was a victim of “extensive judicial and prosecutorial abuse,” and shows how, once Nixon was in their crosshairs, leading figures in the Deep State – from Bradlee to Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, both Kennedy family intimates – cynically worked together to remove from the Oval Office a man who’d just been re-elected by an overwhelming margin of 520 to 17 electoral votes, but whom they, the Beltway insiders who felt their own judgment should trump that of the American people, uniformly despised.

And they won.

The article concludes:

Woodward and Bernstein didn’t just destroy Nixon. They radically altered the course of American history. By bringing down Nixon, they gave us Jimmy Carter. They revealed to their colleagues in the American news media just how much power they all had to shape public opinion – and how much wealth and prestige they could accrue by bending the facts to fit a partisan narrative. Woodstein’s example made possible the news media’s use, decades later, of endlessly repeated lies about Donald Trump to bring down yet another successful presidency.

In short, the real story of Watergate is far different from the story we’ve been told all these years. The only remaining mystery now is this: to what, if any, degree will John O’Connor, in the face of a press corps and a community of academic historians who are devoted to the Watergate myth, succeed in replacing that myth, in the public record, with the Nixon-friendly, Post-damning facts? 

And this is the reason Watergate is relevant today–it provides a pattern for the media and deep state to destroy a successful presidency that is a threat to their power.

I Guess The Truth No Longer Matters In Reporting

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On Monday, Breitbart reported that Pulitzer Prize Board would not be rescinding its Pulitzer Prizes given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for its reporting on the Russia hoax. Evidently the fact that the awards were given for articles that later proved to be false did not enter into the decision.

The article notes:

These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition,” the board continued before announcing the establishment media outlets will keep their prizes.

“The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes,” the board claimed.

In total, 20 articles were challenged with formal complaints. All 20 were ruled factual by the Pulitzer Prize Board. The questioned articles include the following titles:

    • FBI was to pay author of Trump dossier (WaPo)
    • Trump reveals secret intelligence to Russians (WaPo)
    • Trump crafted son’s statement on Russian contact (WaPo)
    • Trump’s Son Heard of Link To Moscow Before Meeting  (NYT)
    • Emails Disclose Trump Son’s Glee At Russian Offer (NYT)
    • Unlikely Source Propelled Russian Meddling Inquiry (NYT)
    • Undisclosed On Forms, Kushner Met 2 Russians (NYT)

Despite claims by Democrats and establishment media reports that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, those claims were found to be baseless. In March of 2019, the Mueller report found no evidence Donald Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

So if I report that there is a tyrannosaurus rex in my backyard and it’s Trump’s fault, and I win a Pulitzer Prize for my report, I don’t have to give back the Prize when it turns out the report is false? Wow. Journalism has taken some interesting turns lately.

 

Creating More Inflation

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On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about one plan proposed by the White House to help Americans cope with the high cost of gasoline. After all, there is an election in November. Aside from the fact that this plan would further fuel inflation by putting more dollars into the economy, it does nothing to help the truckers who transport everything and have no choice but to pass on their increased costs to the consumer resulting in rising prices on nearly everything.

The article includes the following chart:

On Friday, The Washington Post reported the following:

Gas prices have been one of the most visible signs of inflation. The White House has taken a number of actions to try to address the problem, such as committing to a historic release of the nation’s oil reserves and, on Wednesday, sending a letter to the nation’s refineries calling for more production and criticizing their profits. President Biden has also tried to increase production internationally, prodding the world’s oil producers and coordinating the release from national reserves with U.S. allies.

But those measures appear not to have helped substantially. The average gas price nationally rose above $5 a gallon for the first time this weekend, a roughly 11 percent increase from just last month, according to AAA, although some industry analysts say it could fall back to $4.55 in the weeks ahead. Polling suggests widespread frustration with rising prices, increasing the likelihood that voters punish Democrats this fall and give Republicans control of at least one house of Congress next year.

We desperately need an honest election in November.

Revealing The Slippery Slope

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One of the actual good points of having Joe Biden as President is that he accidentally tells the truth when he wanders off of the teleprompter. He recently did that in regard to what he would like to do about gun laws. Townhall posted an article on Monday with a very telling statement by President Biden.

The article reports:

President Biden raised eyebrows on Monday when he spoke about what he considers sensible restrictions on “high-caliber weapons” in the wake of the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week.  

The president recalled visiting a trauma hospital in New York, where he explained doctors showed him X-rays of gunshot wounds that were caused by different firearms. 

“They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life,” Biden told reporters outside of the White House. “A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

He went on to claim “there’s simply no rational basis for [high-caliber weapons] in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.”

Well, actually, that’s not true. If you need to protect yourself from someone who is going to harm you, you want a bullet that will actually stop them. If someone is stupid enough to attack you, they deserve whatever bullet will stop them. Particularly as a woman, I want a high enough caliber to stop a person before they can get to me.

The article notes:

So while most Democrats have targeted what they call “assault weapons” in the wake of the mass shooting, Biden appears to be setting his sights on handguns, too, which isn’t the first time he’s singled out one of the most popular firearms in America.

The article concludes:

He also repeated a false claim about the Second Amendment and cannons.

“The Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”

The Washington Post has previously given him four Pinocchios for this claim, noting that no federal law existed about which types of weapons private citizens could own.

“Some readers might think this is a relatively inconsequential flub. But we disagree,” The Washington Post wrote last year. “Every U.S. president has a responsibility to get American history correct, especially when he’s using a supposed history lesson in service of a political objective. The president’s push for more gun restrictions is an important part of his political platform, so he undercuts his cause when he cites faux facts.

“Moreover, Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim — and it’s been deemed false,” fact checker Glenn Kessler continued. “We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.

Evidently facts don’t matter to Democrats when they are attempting to take gun rights away from Americans. No Republican who votes for any more gun laws should be re-elected in November. Let’s just enforce the laws we have.

Sometimes ‘The Spin’ Is Very Entertaining

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On Wednesday, Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line Blog about a breaking news story being reported by The Washington Post.

Steven Hayward reports:

Today is offering a surfeit of feel-good news, but this one came in too late for the pervious post. The Washington Post is just up with the breaking story that the Biden Administration has decided to “pause” (but almost certainly shut down) the mis-named “Disinformation Governance Board”:

Just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being “paused,” according to multiple employees at DHS, capping a back-and-forth week of decisions that changed during the course of reporting of this story. On Monday, DHS decided to shut down the board, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. By Tuesday morning, Jankowicz had drafted a resignation letter in response to the board’s dissolution.

But Tuesday night, Jankowicz was pulled into an urgent call with DHS officials who gave her the choice to stay on, even as the department’s work was put on hold because of the backlash it faced, according to multiple people with knowledge of the call. Working groups within DHS focused on mis-, dis- and mal-information have been suspended. The board could still be shut down pending a review from the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Jankowicz is evaluating her position within the department.

This is The Washington Post headline at the time of this article:

I hadn’t realized that free speech was such a partisan issue. I do notice that the headline is a little vague about where the disinformation is coming from–do they mean the White House is going to stop releasing disinformation?

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

And “experts”—the mainstream media’s favorite sources for their ventriloquist journalism—show up for duty:

Experts say that right-wing disinformation and smear campaigns regularly follow the same playbook and that it’s crucial that the public and leaders of institutions, especially in the government, the media and educational bodies, understand more fully how these cycles operate.

There is absolutely nothing I can add to that statement.

Unraveling The Lies Of The Past Five Years

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article reminding us that the trial of Michael Sussmann begins Monday. I suspect the exhibits are going to be far more interesting than the trial itself.

The article reports:

When we last checked in with the John Durham case against Michael Sussmann, Durham’s team had asked the judge to decide whether a small group of Fusion GPS emails were covered by attorney-client privilege. According to lawyers for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Fusion GPS was hired solely to provide legal advice about defamation and libel laws which meant everything they did was legal consulting work. Judge Christopher Cooper didn’t seem to buy that claim and yesterday announced that Fusion GPS would have to turn over 22 emails to the prosecutors.

The Washington Post reported on May 12th:

The charge against Sussmann is the first Durham case to go to trial. A Washington-based researcher faces trial later this year for allegedly lying to the FBI about how he collected allegations against Trump. In 2020, a former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to illegally changing a government record.

Robert Mintz, another former federal prosecutor, said the trial next week “will be the first real test” of Durham’s work. By going to trial, he said, Sussmann has “thrown down the gauntlet and challenged the significance of the prosecution and the wisdom of bringing the case.”

…“The strategy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew DeFilippis said in court Monday, “was to create news stories … to get the government to investigate it … and to get the press to report the government was investigating.”

…Prosecutors signaled this week that they plan to call a host of current and former law enforcement officials to describe how the FBI pursued the Alfa Bank accusations, and to paint Sussmann as part of a “joint venture” that included Joffe, Clinton’s campaign, research firm Fusion GPS and cybersecurity experts.

The article at Hot Air quotes a Wall Street Journal article by Kimberly Strassel:

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel argued yesterday that Durham’s team has already gone a long way to revealing the machinations behind the scenes of the Clinton campaign, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS and the rest: (Please follow the above link to the Hot Air article to read the quote)

…Strassel concludes that Sussmann’s trial “on its face is about one lawyer, but in reality is the continuing tale of one of the dirtiest tricks in modern U.S. history.” I guess we’ll see how the trial goes next week. It looks to me like Durham’s team has the goods on Sussmann. Whether that will allow him to make a larger case about the Clinton campaigns dirty tricks remains to be seen.

This might be a really good time to sit back and get some popcorn ready.

The Double Standard Among Us

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The Daily Wire recently posted an article sharing some of their observations regarding the possible takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk.

The article reports:

When Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter and make it a private company, Twitter’s board of directors responded with a poison pill — and the legacy media responded with a poison pen.

Journalists have contended that Musk’s bid to loosen the social media platform’s speech restrictions represent a threat to the First Amendment, threaten to give billionaires too much control over the media, or even presage the fall of our republic into a totalitarian oligarchy. These unduly emotional responses reveal that the legacy media’s fear is not so much Musk as it is free speech — and losing their ability to create the national narrative.

It really is all about control.

The article notes:

CNN’s Brian Stelter seemed to criticize the capitalist system of private media ownership. “There is also a lot of folks out there saying it’s troubling enough that private companies control these key communication platforms around the world, maybe it’s even worse to have the world’s richest person trying to buy one and take it private,” he said on April 14. In the same vein, and on the same day, Business Insider ran a story titled “Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter represents a chilling new threat: billionaire trolls taking over social media.”

But billionaire ownership of the media is hardly new. And judging by their position on the payroll, it seems not to leave journalists ill at ease. To take but a few examples:

Even CNN founder Ted Turner still has a net worth of $2.3 billion, after being “squeezed out” of his own company many years ago.

If billionaire status does not actually offend the journalistic Left, what does? Perhaps Musk’s political donations to some Republicans, including George W. Bush, Kevin McCarthy, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio? Possibly, but many businessmen (including our former president) have donated to politicians of both parties — and self-described centrist Musk is no exception.

It’s okay to be a millionaire who owns a news outlet if you are a liberal. It’s required that if you are a corporation that you pay more in taxes unless you are a liberal (see Disney). The double standard lives among us.

Rewriting History–One Confirmation Hearing At A Time

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On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Republicans have treated Biden SCOTUS nominee ‘worse’ than Democrats treated Kavanaugh. Wow. I guess I must have missed the women in their handmaiden costumes and the people screaming in the hearing room. On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article about the claim.

The Western Journal notes:

In an editorial published Wednesday, The Washington Post editorial board claimed that Republicans have treated current Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson “worse” in her confirmation hearing than Democrats treated Brett Kavanaugh.

The editorial said Republicans “have smeared Judge Jackson based on obvious distortions of her record and the law” in what it described as “clownish performances.”

Meanwhile, in the previous hearings, “it was Mr. Kavanaugh who behaved intemperately, personally attacking Democratic senators and revealing partisan instincts that raised questions about his commitment to impartiality,” the board said.

The article then goes on to compare the two hearings:

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh was an established judge who had undergone six FBI background checks in the previous 25 years without any serious allegations against him, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Nonetheless, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California received an unsubstantiated allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh from a woman named Christine Blasey Ford.

She hid the letter for over six weeks until just before Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and then she briefed only her Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the letter.

By the time the hearings started, many Senate Democrats had already decided Kavanaugh was guilty. They spent most of their questioning time trying to force him to admit guilt despite his insistence that he was innocent.

Some Democrats went as far as to bring out calendars from 30-some years prior, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota even questioned Kavanaugh about his college drinking habits.

…In its opinion article, the Post’s editorial board said Ford “credibly accused Mr. Kavanaugh of sexual assault.” In reality, her allegations were proven to have no credibility at all.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Senate Judiciary Committee said after its investigation in 2019 that it “found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against.”

The article cites the way Judge Jackson is being treated:

Compare that to the supposedly horrible treatment Jackson has been subjected to this week.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri were among those who questioned the nominee about her record of sentencing child pornography offenders to less time than the guidelines recommended.

“Every single case, 100 percent of them, when prosecutors came before you with child pornography cases, you sentenced the defenders to substantially below not just the guidelines, which are way higher, but what the prosecutor asked for on average of these cases, 47.2 percent less,” Cruz said.

Somehow I think how a judge has ruled on cases in the past is much more relevant than a judge’s college drinking habits. This is a smokescreen designed to distract the Washington Post’s readers from the problems with the nominee. The nominee will probably be confirmed, but that doesn’t mean that she should be.

Hopefully, This Will Be A Futile Effort

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article illustrating how the mainstream media would try to discredit what the truck drivers in Canada are doing.

The article reports:

You no doubt are aware of the protest being staged by thousands of Canadian truck drivers who have now converged on Ottawa. The truckers began by protesting against a vaccination mandate for truckers crossing the U.S. border, but it has grown into a movement opposing extreme and irrational anti-covid measures, and promoting freedom generally.

Naturally, the liberal press is horrified. You likely have seen this bizarre editorial cartoon that appeared in–where else–the Washington Post:

When I first saw the cartoon, I literally did not understand it. Someone had to explain that the Post’s cartoonist is calling the truckers who are demonstrating on behalf of freedom fascists. Freedom is slavery, after all.

The article goes on to note that the liberal media is hoping that the protest will turn violent (giving them further reason to condemn it).

The article quotes The New York Times:

Thousands of protesters on foot, many carrying handmade signs on hockey sticks, wandered through the parked vehicles and the slow-moving traffic or gathered on the lawn in front of Parliament. Some of them carried Canadian flags upside down; at least one flag had swastikas drawn on it.

The article notes:

Liberals always try to imply that if someone draws a swastika it means that person is pro-Nazi. Actually, it means (in this context, at least) that the person is accusing the Canadian government of using Nazi-like tactics. I don’t agree, but let’s not smear the protesters by inverting the intent behind their signs.

The article concludes:

Here is more on the truckers’ protest from the BBC.

Defence Minister Anita Anand said the incidents were “beyond reprehensible”.

No incident described was even remotely violent. This one is darkly humorous:

Ottawa police said in a Twitter post that “several” investigations were now under way into the “desecration” of a number monuments in the capital city….

So now the Left is against desecrating monuments! I thought it had become more or less compulsory.

Putting aside whatever you may think about vaccination mandates, the hostility of the press’s response to any movement that expresses a desire for freedom is striking.

The ruling class does not like it when people begin to wake up.

The Comparisons Don’t Hold Up

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On Monday, Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line Blog that illustrates the current media campaign centered around January 6th. We need to keep in focus the fact that January 6th, although it was a serious event that involved illegal actions, followed a summer of violence which involved major property destruction and injuries to law enforcement that the mainstream media chose to overlook. How can we forget the news anchor describing the BLM protests as ‘mostly peaceful’ with the sky behind him lit up with fires set by the protestors? One cannot decry the ‘violence’ of January 6th while ignoring the deaths and property damage of the summer that preceded it.

The article reports:

The Washington Post reports that many people who worked at the U.S. Capitol have left their jobs because they were traumatized by the events of January 6. Among those who have quit are an unspecified number of congressional staffers. The few staffers cited by the Post all worked for Democratic members.

How many staffers were injured on January 6? I believe the answer is zero. Yet, the Post describes the staffers who haven’t quit as “soldiering on.” Should we give them medals?

If folks who work for liberal members of Congress really are as fragile and fainthearted as the Post makes them out to be, I consider that good news.

Some Capitol police officers were attacked and injured. It’s understandable that some within that group were traumatized to the point that they have resigned.

However, five dozen Secret Service officers and agents were injured by a mob near the White House during BLM protests in late May 2020. How many of them resigned?

We don’t know because media organs like the Post have never, to my knowledge, said. These news outlets don’t care. Their entire focus was on the supposed outrage of clearing the way for President Trump to make his way from the White House to a nearby church. Apparently, Trump should have holed up in the White House until the protesters finally tired of hanging out on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And what about police officers throughout America who have been attacked by BLM protesters? What about the ones who have had to cope with the invasion, and even the burning of, police stations? How many of them have resigned as a result?

To my knowledge, the Post has never addressed that question. It’s a pertinent one, though, because police officers perform far more important services than random congressional staffers.

The article concludes:

As we approach January 6 of this year, we can expect more articles like the one I discuss here. The events of last January 6 were serious and bad. The perpetrators should be, and are being, punished. If necessary, Capitol security should be enhanced to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

But the efforts of Democrats and their lefty media allies to convert January 6 into something like a national day of mourning, while studiously ignoring comparable or worse violence by BLM and Antifa that rocked city after city in 2020, is laughable.

Hopefully Americans are getting wise to the mainstream media’s antics.

Is The Uniform Code of Military Justice Still In Effect?

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The media is abuzz with stories about Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley and his conversations with the Chinese Communists.There are a few things that need to be emphasized about this story. In America our military is led by a civilian–the President. Our military is answerable to the President as the President is the Commander-in-Chief. In our military there is a chain of command that all members of the military are supposed to honor. In his conversations with the Chinese Communists, General Milley went outside his chain of command. That is the problem.

I have five questions about the uproar over General Milley:

1. Is it true?

2. If it is true, why did Bob Woodward not disclose it before now?

3. Is this a set up to make General Milley the fall guy for the Afghanistan debacle?

4. Does the military still honor the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

5. Is this dust-up being put out to distract us from something else?

Yesterday Townhall posted an article about what General Milley has done.

The article reports:

New reporting from The Washington Post, detailing the contents of a new book, shows General Mark Milley reassured China’s People’s Liberal Army General Li Zuocheng that he would give the communist country a heads up if President Donald Trump launched an attack in the final months of his presidency. He did so in a series of reported phone calls and reassured Li he would stand between Trump and an attack on Chinese assets. 

What would have been the reaction if someone in the Roosevelt administration had told the Germans he would warn them before the allies invaded France? On the surface, this looks an awful lot like treason.

The article quotes The Washington Post:

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa.

One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021. 

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

Believing that China could lash out if it felt at risk from an unpredictable and vengeful American president, Milley took action. The same day, he called the admiral overseeing the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the military unit responsible for Asia and the Pacific region, and recommended postponing the military exercises, according to the book. The admiral complied.

Milley also summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an “oath.”

The last paragraph is troubling. That’s not officially a coup, but it sure sounds like one. General Milley was putting himself in a position where the senior officers needed his approval to follow the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. That is not the way it is supposed to work. This is nuts.

Moving In A Direction That Might Be Very Unwise

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We have all watched as the mainstream media has attempted to make unvaccinated American the pariahs of our society. It doesn’t matter if you have had Covid and have antibodies, you MUST get vaccinated or you will be treated very differently from the people who have been vaccinated. So what is at the root of this and where is it going?

In an article posted yesterday, The Conservative Treehouse points out a few facts that are very interesting. The article relates the history of the Fabian Socialists, a group of people who are strong proponents for evaluating people and determining if they should be permitted to live in ‘their’ society.

The article reports:

The outlook of the Fabian group supports genocide and eugenics as an interventionist model for population control along the pathway of Darwinian theories of evolution.  Essentially, the ideology promotes a group of elites who form tribunals, commissions or boards of society, who will arbitrate which people should exist in society and which people should receive benefits; in this example COVID healthcare treatments.

Democrats or leftists throughout the world support the modern Fabian Socialist movement.  They are, by nature, totalitarians who despise the natural inequities created by free and unregulated human activity.  They have ongoing meetings and symposiums that are widely attended by current day politicians on the left and socialist side of the continuum.  The Fabian movement is very much alive and supported by the modern Democrat party.

Today, the Washington Post outlines how the Fabian mindset can be of great value as the world is facing the challenges of COVID-19.  The WaPo advocacy is saying that doctors and medical professionals around the world should be able to prioritize vaccinated people for medical treatments.  It is the exact same ideology that defines who the ‘productive members’ of society are.

The article includes a section from the Washington Post article which includes the following:

But the coronavirus pandemic, the development of a highly effective vaccine, and the emergence of a core of vaccine resisters along with an infectious new variant have combined to change the ethical calculus. Those who insist on refusing the vaccine for no reason are not in the same moral position of the smoker with lung cancer or the drunk driver. In situations where resources are scarce and hard choices must be made, they are not entitled to the same no-questions-asked, no-holds-barred medical care as others who behaved more responsibly. (read more)

So if you do not take the vaccine for whatever reason, you are not entitled to medical care that you would otherwise receive. Think about that for a moment. That is medical blackmail. That is a total affront to your freedom of choice. It is also some authority deciding that some people are more worthy of medical treatment (and life) than others. That is not a road that we should walk down.

 

There Is Some Irony Here

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about one aspect of America’s surrender to the Taliban.

The article reports:

The Taliban are “feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday” after discovering that helicopters, left by the United States military after they officially pulled out of Kabul, Afghanistan, do not work and, in some cases, were deliberately rendered inoperable before the military departed, Fox News said.

An Al Jazeera reporter spoke with Taliban fighters after they entered the formerly American side of Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), and posted a video of the event to various social media networks, said that the Taliban fighters expected the U.S. to leave their equipment in full working order, though it is not clear whether the U.S. made any such promises.

It’s okay–the Chinese will reverse engineer them and solve the problem.

The article continued:

“An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hanger on the military side of the airport said in a video that the terrorist group ‘expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use,’” Fox reported.

“When I said to them, ‘why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you’? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us,” the Al Jazeera reporter said in her video.

Photos of the equipment posted to social media, which appear to be of the helicopters and other aircraft left behind after the American withdrawal, show smashed indicators and gauges and destroyed control panels. The photos also seem to show that the U.S. military removed guns and other weapons from helicopters before leaving.

…The Washington Post noted Tuesday that, although initial reports said that the Taliban seized $85 billion in equipment left by American forces, that number accounts for all of the money expended to assist the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) since 2001.

Using a percentage provided by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Post reported that the “equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).”

It is not clear how much of that equipment ended up in the hands of the Taliban. “With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani,” the Post added, noting that the Taliban does not have many qualified pilots and that they targeted Afghan military pilots for execution before taking Kabul.

Upon leaving, CENTCOM said, “the military ‘demilitarized’ 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft,” likely including those helicopters the Taliban is now reportedly angry about.

I hope CENTCOM is telling the truth. Demilitarizing some of the equipment left behind would have been one of the few sensible things done during the evacuation.

What IS Possible

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Yesterday The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about the rescue of a Washington Post reporter in Afghanistan.

The article reports:

A Washington Post reporter has shared how British troops helped her and friends flee Afghanistan – as pressure mounts over US forces’ continued refusal to leave Kabul airport.    

Susannah George told of how she and the paper’s Afghan staff were able to latch on to a separate evacuation led by UK troops, after spotting them and asking for help to flee. 

That saw them hurriedly travel along a road to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport in armored cars driven by private security guards.

Those roads were being guarded from Taliban interference by UK service personnel, before making it to the security gate of the airport itself, which was manned by American troops. 

George did not offer further comment on the troops who helped save her, but the UK’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) have been drafted in to rescue Britons trapped in the war-torn country.

Her difficult journey contradicts President Biden’s assertion that anyone with an American passports would be allowed through checkpoints. 

Her story also illustrates the fact that with the proper equipment people can be safely and successfully evacuated from Afghanistan.

The article concludes:

Kabul airport has been the scene of chaos as Westerners and visa holders desperately trying to get to their flights say they are unable to check in because of the crowd of up to 50,000 desperate locals who are gathering at the gates.

At the main entrance, Taliban fighters periodically fire into the air to clear the crowd in an attempt to disperse the crowd – but video of the fighters unleashing a volley of automatic fire shows the terrifying gauntlet evacuees have to negotiate.

Taliban fighters were seen shooting over the heads of crowds, striking people with rifles, while those on the ground reported beatings and whippings being dished out seemingly at random.

Crowds have also gathered at the entrance to the military wing of the airport, which is guarded by US and British troops who have been firing into the air to disperse the crowds.

Westerners face a race against time to get out of Kabul, with control of the airport resting on the up to 60,000 troops.

Joe Biden has said they will stay until all US citizens are evacuated, but there are suspicions among British troops that they could leave abruptly – leaving the 600 British unable to keep operating to evacuate UK nationals and interpreters.

UK troops have said that firing warning shots is a last resort, the Taliban are causing pandemonium and were filmed today shooting from the hip just yards away from women and children, and whacking people with the butts of their rifles.

Such is the desperation among crowds at the airport that women have resorted to passing babies over barbed wire to soldiers in a vain attempt to get them out of the country.

We have the troops and the resources to successfully evacuate all Americans and those who helped us from Afghanistan. We need to do that.

Ethics?

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ABC News is reporting today that all sales of Hunter Biden’s artwork will be handled through an art gallery that will set prices independently and keep the identities of buyers confidential, including from the president and administration officials. Yeah, right.

The article reports:

White House officials were involved in creating the arrangement, according to the source, as a way to avoid any suggestion of preferential treatment or conflict of interest.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the story, Berges has said Hunter Biden’s artwork could be priced anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000.

But ethics experts are raising concerns about the agreement.

“This arrangement is problematic. The best disinfectant, in this case, would have been to have a publicly open process. The public could see who the purchasers are, and then it would be incumbent upon the Bidens to bear the burden of saying why it isn’t a conflict,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the influence of money in politics.

“The White House went the absolute opposite way they should have gone. The only people, in the end, who won’t know who the buyers are is the public. By going the shadow direction, this raises more questions than answers,” she said.

Based on the past history of Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family, could we have expected anything less? This is almost as good as the finances of the Clinton Foundation. I am sure that it was simply an incredible coincidence that when Hillary Clinton no longer had power and influence in Washington, the donations to the Clinton Foundation dried up. Likewise, I suspect that the demand for Hunter Biden’s artwork will shrink drastically when Joe Biden is no longer President.

Snoopy And D-Day

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A number of years ago, my husband and I had the pleasure of touring the Charles M. Schultz museum in Santa Rosa, California. We had lunch at the Warm Puppy Cafe and watched the ice skaters through the glass. One of my cousin’s children shared childhood memories of “Charlie” who hung around the ice skating rink to see how the children were doing. “Charlie” of course was Charles M. Schultz who built the rink and supported the children’s skating programs. While we were there, we heard the story of why the Peanuts cartoon recognizes the soldiers who landed on the beaches on D-Day.

Charles M. Schultz was drafted during World War II. He trained with one of the units that eventually stormed the beaches of Normandy. Because of an illness in his family, he was sent home before he completed his training, and when he returned, trained with a different unit. The first unit he trained with had heavy casualties when the hit the beach at Normandy. That is the reason Peanuts salutes D-Day every year.

In 2019, The Washington Post reported:

Snoopy, who first appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip in 1950, has been everywhere at this point: summer camp, college, the desert to visit his hapless brother Spike. He has been to the airfields of World War I in his unceasing fight with the Red Baron, and even to the moon with the crew of Apollo 10.

He also went to Normandy, France, in a national call for remembrance and unity. And there, he became part of D-Day’s pop-culture legacy, one that has shaped Americans’ understanding of the invasion, and indeed, World War II, for decades.

…On June 6, 1993, Schulz drew a comic strip that had little visual relationship to anything that had previously appeared in “Peanuts.” In three grim panels, the cartoonist depicted the eerie silence at the outset of the D-Day invasion. One panel looked atop the beachhead at the Nazi bunkers, where hidden soldiers were ready to fire down on the Allied troops below. The next panel surveyed a Higgins boat carrying a crew of faceless soldiers to a murky landing site. And the final panel revealed Snoopy dressed as a G.I. crawling up onto the beach at low tide. The lone words on the page read: “June 6, 1944, To Remember.”

…In the following years, Schulz’s tributes became more formalized, simply showing Snoopy wading ashore at the rugged beach over the invocation “To Remember.” Despite the simplicity, it was a meaningful statement to some readers. Robert A. Nottke, a World War II veteran, wrote to the Chicago Tribune to complain that he could not find a single reference to D-Day on June 6, 1996, “with one exception.” It was “Snoopy, our beloved beagle, bravely dog-paddling toward Normandy Beach.” Nottke, and undoubtedly other readers, “felt affronted by [the] oversight.” For those who had served and their loved ones, who felt like the sacrifices of that day and month had been forgotten over time, Schulz’s strip was salve on the wound.

This is one of Charles M. Schultz’s cartoons saluting those who landed on the beaches of France on June 6, 1944:

We remember.

False Claims To Calm The Masses

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about some recent claims made by John Kerry, President Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate. For the moment I am going to overlook the irony of a special presidential envoy for climate with a private jet and a yacht and focus on recent statements John Kerry made.

The article notes that The Washington Post gave John Kerry two Pinocchios for his recent claims about the new jobs that will be created in the solar industry.

The Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler noted some of John Kerry’s recent remarks:

“You look at the consequences of black lung for a miner, for instance, and measure that against the fastest-growing job in the United States before covid was solar power technician. The same people can do those jobs, but the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice. And similarly, you have the second-fastest-growing job pre-covid was wind turbine technician.”

— John F. Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, in remarks at the White House, Jan. 27, 2021

“Before covid, the fastest-growing job in the United States of America was solar panel technician, and the second-fastest-growing job was wind turbine technician.”

— Kerry, remarks on MSNBC, Jan. 28

However, Mr. Kessler points out that the numbers just don’t add up:

Wind turbine jobs are projected to go up by 4,300, from 7,000 to 11,300 in 10 years. The solar installer jobs are projected to go up 6,100, from 12,000 to 18,100. That’s a total increase of just 10,400 jobs — leaving 40,000 coal workers still toiling in the mines.

…BLS has a convenient list of the 30 occupations with the most projected job growth. No. 1 is home health and personal-care aides — with a projected gain of nearly 1.2 million jobs. Nurse practitioners show up in 13th place. But wind and solar jobs don’t make the cut at all.

In fact, when we tried to find solar and wind on another BLS list — jobs ranked by projected annual openings through 2029 — we had to scroll past about 600 occupations before we landed on solar installers, with an average of 2,300 openings a year. Wind turbine jobs, with a projected average of 1,300 openings a year, was even further down the list.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Obama, Kerry, and Biden had eight years to prove the assertion that massive government subsidies in renewable energy would pay off with “millions” of green-tech jobs.  Remind us again how many wind and solar installer jobs America currently has 12 years after the massive Porkulus bill?

The most significant lie here isn’t Kerry’s statistical claims. It’s that this administration cares one whit about energy-sector jobs while they take every step they can to destroy them without viable employment or energy options.

That’s where we are, folks!

Too Little Too Late

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The National Pulse reported the following yesterday:

The Washington Post has finally made the admission that President Trump did not incite the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, now reporting that the attack was “planned days in advance.”

So why are they still planning to impeach President Trump? In a logical world this makes no sense. In fact, in a logical world the House of Representatives would apologize and drop the case. But we don’t live in a logical world.

The Washington Post reported:

“Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

“While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riots, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to each other before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.”

The National Pulse notes:

The news item even contains a quote from one of the alleged instigators of the move on Congress, which states:

“Keep eyes on people with Red MAGA hats worn backward. Saw a report that they were going to infiltrate crowd tomorrow,” Crowl was warned Jan. 5 in another Facebook message, as he prepared for what he called an “Oathkeepers op,” court documents said.

The eyewitness reports I have read about the events of that day talk about a few people in the crowd waiting for the President who simply did not look like the people who normally attend Trump rallies. It is quite possible that those who broke into the Capitol had planned that the riot would be used as an excuse for a second impeachment. In order to understand the need for a second impeachment, you need to understand the threat that Donald Trump poses to the status quo of the uniparty in Washington. Almost all of our Congressmen significantly increase their personal wealth while serving in Washington. Donald Trump represents a serious threat to that paradigm. Unfortunately the corruption in Washington will reach new heights during the incoming Biden administration.

The Washington Post Fact Checker Gets It Right

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On September 4th, The Washington Post posted an article checking the veracity of one of the statements the Biden campaign is making about President Trump. The statement has been made often enough that I see it frequently posted by my friends on Facebook.

The article reports:

“The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration just released an analysis of Trump’s planned cuts to Social Security. Under Trump’s plan, Social Security would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023. If Trump gets his way, Social Security benefits will run out in just three years from now. Don’t let it happen. Joe Biden will protect Social Security.”

— Voice-over in a new ad by Joe Biden, “Depleted,” released Sept. 3

Without fail during a tough election season, Democrats bring up Social Security. The ads are often ubiquitous in states with high percentages of senior citizens who rely on Social Security as their main source of income.

Trump gets mentioned in this ad three times. But there is no such Trump plan.

The article explains the false basis for the claim:

The president gave the Democrats an opening with a series of confusing remarks after he signed an executive order that would suspend the payment of payroll taxes until the end of the year.

The executive order would halt collection of the 6.2 percent payroll tax imposed on wages for Social Security, starting Sept. 1. In theory, taxpayers would still be liable for the taxes at a later date, but the executive order says “the Secretary of the Treasury shall explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the taxes deferred pursuant to the implementation of this memorandum.”

While the Trump White House has suggested this is similar to a payroll tax holiday in the Obama administration during the Great Recession, that law had a provision saying Social Security would be made whole with transfers from general funds (regular tax revenue). This executive order does not say that, but one would presume that any forgiveness would be accompanied by such transfers.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It details exactly what is being said and what has been said. Just for the record, Congress has been raiding Social Security since the 1960’s.