Tag Archives: The Washington Post

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.

 

 

 

 

Reckless Claims

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Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about a ridiculous and slanderous claim made by Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Joe Biden stated, “If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people—I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data.” This is the same Joe Biden that opposed the travel ban from China which we know did actually save lives.

The article reports:

One study suggested that a large number of people may not have died if certain measures had been implemented weeks earlier, but the study in no way stated that earlier action would have saved “all the people.” It’s worth noting that Biden held eight rallies in March while Trump only held one.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that the coronavirus spread in large part thanks to the Chinese Communist Party lying to the world about the outbreak, trying to cover it up, delaying the release of critical information, and silencing whistleblowers.

Even The Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler voiced his opinion on Joe Biden’s claim. (I am not supplying a link because I don’t have a subscription and can’t get to the article.) He pointed out:

Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, learned on Dec. 31 of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology reported in Wuhan, China,” according to Katherine McKeogh, press secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services.

On Jan. 3, Redfield emailed George Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and spoke with him the same day, she said, citing his calendar entry.

The next day, Redfield emailed Gao, writing: “I would like to offer CDC technical experts in laboratory and epidemiology of respiratory infectious diseases to assist you and China CDC in identification of this unknown and possibly novel pathogen.” Two days later, he sent another email, attaching a formal letter offering CDC support, McKeogh said.

On Jan. 6, the Trump administration “offered to send a CDC team to China that could assist with these public health efforts,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar told reporters on Jan. 28. “I reiterated that offer when I spoke to China’s minister of health on Monday, and it was reiterated again via the World Health Organization today. We are urging China: More cooperation and transparency are the most important steps you can take toward a more effective response.” …

On Jan. 31, Trump announced travel restrictions on non-U. S. citizens traveling from China, effective Feb. 2, with 11 exceptions. U.S. citizens could still travel from China but were subject to screening and a possible 14-day quarantine. Some flights were immediately suspended, but others continued for weeks at the discretion of the airlines.

As I am sure you remember, Congress was too busy impeaching President Trump to be bothered with the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi and Mayor de Blasio were telling people to go out and enjoy the nightlife in their respective cities. Joe Biden needs to stop blaming President Trump for China’s treachery.

Wait! What?

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Assuming that Bob Woodward has written something that is true, there are some real questions about the actions of some of the people with important government positions.

Yesterday The Washington Post reported:

Mattis (General James Mattis) quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats (Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats), “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”

That conversation was totally inappropriate and could easily be looked at as sedition.

The Conservative Treehouse points out a few things that add weight to the idea that there were people within the Trump administration working against the administration:

NOVEMBER 2019 – […] For emphasis let me repeat a current fact that is being entirely overlooked.  Despite his admitted usurpation of President Trump policy, Vindman was sent back to his post in the NSC with the full support of the United States Department of Defense.

The onus of action to remove Vindman from the NSC does not just lay simply at the feet of the White House and National Security advisor Robert O’Brien; and upon whose action the removal of Vindman could be positioned as political; the necessary, albeit difficult or perhaps challenging, obligation to remove Lt. Col Vindman also resides purposefully with the Dept. of Defense.

The Pentagon could easily withdraw Vindman from his position at the National Security Council; yet, it does not…. and it has not.   WHY?

There is a code within the military whereby you never put your leadership into a position of compromise; ie. “never compromise your leadership”.  In this example, President Trump cannot remove Vindman from the White House NSC advisory group due to political ramifications and appearances…

The Joint Chiefs certainly recognize this issue; it is the very type of compromise they are trained to remove.  Yet they do nothing to remove the compromise.  They do nothing to assist.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was the majority (#1) source for the material CIA operative Eric Ciaramella used in a collaborative effort to remove President Trump from office.  Let me make this implication crystal clear:

The United States Military is collaborating with the CIA to remove a U.S. President from office.

Do you see the issue now?

The Pentagon has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to countermand this implication/reality.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to diminish the appearance of, nor deconstruct the agenda toward, the removal of President Trump.

Mr. President, do I have your attention?

The actions of the people mentioned above should result in legal consequences. Where are Attorney General Barr and John Durham?

Who Is Paying The Bills?

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The American Thinker posted an article yesterday about a ‘food truck’ supplying rioters’ needs in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The article is based on an article in The Washington Post on Thursday.

The Washington Post reports:

A Seattle-based nonprofit group that serves food to protesters said Thursday that several of its members were still in police custody in Kenosha, Wis., after law enforcement officers sprang from unmarked cars and arrested them ahead of Wednesday night’s demonstrations in the city.

The arrests were recorded by a bystander and shared widely on social media, renewing concerns that unidentified officers could be shielded in crackdowns on demonstrators. The organization, known as Riot Kitchen, was a fixture at protests in Seattle this summer.

Cellphone footage of the incident showed officers rushing out of black SUVs and surrounding a silver Toyota minivan belonging to the nonprofit near a Speedway gas station. One officer aimed a gun at the van while another bashed through the passenger-side window. Officers could be seen pulling two people out of the vehicle and handcuffing them.

Sounds pretty radical until you hear the rest of the story.

The American Thinker reports:

Turns out the “Riot Kitchen” — yes, it’s really called that — may have had some unusual cuisine on its menu:  

Police said they recovered helmets, gas masks, protective vests, illegal fireworks and suspected controlled substances from the vehicles. Nine people were arrested on disorderly conduct charges. Police did not immediately release their names.

…Now, it’s unclear from the report whether the bus used to slop the rioters was transporting incendiary devices or these items were found in the Riot Kitchen’s second vehicle, or there were yet other vehicles, which the Post didn’t go into, given that it was just covering the supposedly dreadful police treatment of this “non-profit” with its underserved clientele.  Most likely, based on the report, the “vehicles” described were the Riot Kitchen’s two vehicles, having raised lots of money (but not quite their goals) on GoFundMe, which is turning out to be quite a useful means of getting cash from anonymous and small fry donors, under the banner of “mental health support” with this pitch to the gullible and maybe not so gullible:

Hey everyone!! We’re RIOT KITCHEN, and we are a no charge kitchen serving protestors, activists, movements and those in need in Seattle WA.

We were founded by Maehem, a queer black woman who started out by wanting to help feed the protestors at The George Floyd protests in Seattle, WA

During CHOP we built a full functioning kitchen in Cal Anderson, with a experienced kitchen staff and a array of vegan, gluten free, vegetarian and other dishes

These include:

Vegan and meat kebabs, a plethora of hot and cold sandwiches, vegan sloppy joes, vegan chili Mac, vegetarian chili Mac, vegan and meat breakfast sandwiches, vegan/vegetarian/meat burritos and much more!

We want to continue RIOT KITCHEN on and into the future to keep serving our community!

To do that, we need a food truck and licensing. We need about $40,000 to make this happen!

This fundraiser is run by direct supporters of Maehem and her work, namely Maehem’s right hand “Grandpa” as well as Jennifer Scheurle.

Please support us in enabling this wonderful project and its caring people to enrich Seattle’s community now and in the future.

The article at The American Thinker concludes:

The project is a signal of the vast logistical network of these rioters, something that shows they’re organized, and as their aim is to support criminals, part of a conspiracy.  An army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon once said, and Antifa itself is the army; RiotKitchen206 is the food.  Update: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has more here.

This “non-profit” got its start, not surprisingly, in Seattle’s CHOP zone.  They have a history of going to Portland for assorted projects, and now they claim they were on their way to feed the rioters in Washington, D.C. when the Kenosha riots happened, and by coincidence, they just happened to be right there.

It’s gaslighting.

Their YouTube is an entire collection of gaslightings, trying to tell Americans that they just want to feed people, they’re all about peace, just a Summer of Love, really, persecuted by the Seattle cops, too (putrid language warning), and pay no attention to their name, those knives and fist in their logo, or what the Kenosha cops found in their trucks.

It’s time to investigate totally the funding of the riot bus and bring the people funding the chaos up on RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges. What is happening in our cities is not spontaneous. It is planned for a purpose.

When The Media Breaks The Law

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the latest chapter in the saga of Nick Sandmann and the settlements reached with CNN and The Washington Post.

The article notes:

The first rule of Settlement Club is that you don’t talk about Settlement Club. And the second rule of Settlement Club — ah, heck, the first fifty rules of Settlement Club is that you don’t talk about settlements in lawsuits with mutual gag rules in place. Apparently that didn’t sink in at CNN or the Washington Post after both media outlets decided to quietly end the litigation brought by Nicholas Sandmann. Their employees went on social media attempting to spin the settlement and suggest that Sandmann only got a minimal payment to shut him up.

Big mistake, Sandmann attorney Lin Wood made clear almost immediately. “I know how to deal with liars,” Wood tweeted, and warned that new lawsuits would be filed unless “heads rolled” at both outlets:

…This started with speculation that Sandmann had indeed gotten paid nothing more than “nuisance value.” Law & Crime wrote a pretty comprehensive overview of the social-media discussion of that premise after some attorneys unconnected to the case tried to read the tea leaves from various announcements in both cases. It’s worth reading, at least for the legal theories behind the speculation. That included a rather anodyne statement from Wood expressing his opinion that the speculation was “uninformed, errant nonsense,” but added that “questions about confidentiality and the timing of the settlement will have to be directed to others.” Wood didn’t threaten anyone over the speculation — because they were not party to the confidentiality agreement, and neither was Law & Crime.

That isn’t the case with Stelter, Rangappa, and Zak. They work for the respondents in these lawsuits and act as their agents. As soon as they published and expanded on the speculation, they characterized the settlement in terms their employer specifically agreed not to do. Not only does that open up new avenues for Sandmann against the Post and CNN, it might allow Wood to add the three as respondents in a new libel/defamation action.

This may seem like a minor thing, but it is important that both parties act in accordance with the agreement they signed. I can understand why CNN and The Washington Post would want people to think that the settlement was small–they want to discourage future lawsuits. I can understand why Lin Wood would want to give the impression of a large settlement–it might discourage future character assassination of innocent people by the media.

Stay tuned. There may be more coming.

Things That Cause Division In Our Country

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The New York Post posted an article yesterday about the role the media played during the Russia scandal.

The article reports:

Despite what The New York Times and Washington Post were loudly reporting in early 2017, the FBI had failed to find any evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion” — and indeed had found that the central source of those claims was a joke.

This is a key takeaway from the Justice Department’s latest release of documents from the FBI’s investigation.

One shocker is the summary of the long FBI interview that January with the “Primary Subsource” for the infamous Steele dossier — indeed, about the only source.

The FBI had learned that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid for British ex-spy Christopher Steele to produce dirt on Donald Trump, and the resulting dossier was pretty much the entire basis for any investigation (barring gossip about a drunken conversation with an on-paper-only Trump adviser).

And now Steele’s “factual” source admitted, essentially, to simply repackaging rumors — some of them from Internet “research.”

Yet the nation’s two most prestigious papers were reporting that the FBI was finding a treasure trove of scandal.

Such as a Feb. 14, 2017, Times piece declaring, “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

Ha! A memo from Trump-hating (now ex-) FBI man Peter Strzok shows that story was garbage: “We have not seen evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with” intelligence officials. The story also said top FBI officials trusted Steele, when they’d learned he was full of it.

Think about the impact this dishonest reporting has had on the American political discourse. Half the country believes that President Trump has some sort of arrangement with the Russians. That half of the country considers themselves well-informed because they read The New York Times or The Washington Post. The other half of the country has been reading the media that has been reporting on the classified documents that have been de-classified and understands that the accusations of Russian collusion are not true. We have entered a topsy-turvy world when the people we should trust to keep us informed are lying to us and the honest investigative reporting is left to the alternative media. I am reminded of the scene in “Men in Black” where the agents pick up the tabloids to find out what is actually going on. Unfortunately, dishonest reporting is a threat to our republic. The job of the media in a republic is to inform the voters so that they can make informed choices when they vote. Our mainstream media has forgotten (or abdicated) their responsibility.

Leadership Matters

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The Washington Post accused President Trump of lying when he stated that “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats.”  The Conservative Treehouse posted a graph yesterday the shows that the President’s statement was pretty accurate.

Here is the graph:

The article notes:

A republican mayor was elected to Jacksonville in the last election; therefore the Washington Post has declared that President Trump’s claim: “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats”, is false. There is a top-crime city now run by a republican.

This level of FAIL is so ridiculous, it presents itself almost as if the Washington Post intentionally trying to beclown themselves.

In 1994 Rudy Giuliani became Mayor of New York City. Mayor Giuliani instituted what was referred to as ‘The Broken Windows Theory.”

Worldatlas.com describes The Broken Windows Theory as follows:

The origin of Broken Windows Theory can be traced back to a psychologist from Stanford, Connecticut, named Philip Zimbardo. He had set up a social experiment to test the theory in 1969. Zimbardo parked an old car in the Bronx, and another one of similar condition parked in Palo Alto, Califiornia. The car in the Bronx was vandalized almost immediately with all items of importance stolen. The other car in Palo Alto was left undisturbed for more than a week before Zimbardo himself went and smashed its windows. Within hours, other people came and vandalized the car as well. The hypothesis is that a community such as the Bronx, where city services may not have the resources to encourage the upkeep of its facilities, would be more apathetic than an upscale area like Palo Alto. This theory was later stated in an article in 1982 by James Wilson and George Kelling who stated that criminal activities in a community begin as small misdemeanors and gradually grow to become capital offenses. The authors also stated that the best way of dealing with crime was dealing with it in its infancy through making neighborhoods free of social ills such as prostitution, drug abuse, and other disorderly tendencies.

In the 1980s and 70s, New York City had seen an upsurge in criminal activity and the city’s municipal council was desperately seeking solutions to the menace that was tarnishing its reputation. The city’s Transit Authority then hired the author of the “Broken Windows” article, Mr. George Kelling as a consultant who then suggested the implementation of the theory. The Transit Authority’s leader, David Gunn implemented the approach by first clearing all graffiti from the city’s subway system which was conducted during his final term from 1984 to 1990. Kelling’s successor, William J. Bratton continued with the implementation of the theory through non-tolerance of fare-dodging as well as reducing leniency during arrests for petty offences. In 1993, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired Bratton as the police commissioner, and this gave Bratton a wider scope to implement the broken windows theory and was noted for arrests over public urination, public drinking, and other misdemeanors. Several studies in the past have linked the significant decline in criminal activities in the past decade to Bratton’s implementation of the “broken windows” theory. The impressive results of New York City’s implementation of the theory have made several other US cities implement the theory including Boston, Albuquerque, and Lowell.

Law and order makes a difference. When people understand that there are consequences for breaking the law, they tend to respect the law. When Mayors do not enforce the law, things will eventually become unruly. For whatever reason, Republicans seem to be more inclined to support the police and enforce the law than Democrats. The statistics posted by The Washington Post bear that out.

On His Way Out The Door…

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Ambassador Rick Grenell did a wonderful job as Acting Director of National Intelligence. He showed himself to be a true patriot in revealing to the American public the misuse of the intelligence apparatus by the previous administration. Sara Carter posted an article yesterday about something he has done that will help further the cause of transparency.

The article reports:

Outgoing Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell slammed Sen. Mark Warner Tuesday saying his request last week to declassify and publicly release the underlying intelligence reports in which Obama officials “unmasked” the identity of former national security advisor Michael Flynn would jeopardize sources and methods.

Grenell also criticized Warner’s alleged political move as ‘cherry picking’ documents for political purposes at the expense of national security. Warner is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and spoke out against Grenell’s declassification of the senior Obama officials that requested Flynn’s private conversations and unmasking of his name.

“I find it puzzling that your letter initially complains about the declassification of the identities of unmaskers, a declassification that posed no conceivable risks to sources or methods, only to then request the declassification of actual intelligence reports,” said Grenell. “Cherry picking certain documents for release, while attacking the release of others that don’t fit your political narrative, is part of the problem the American people have with Washington DC politicians. I would appreciate it if you would explain your philosophy on transparency as it appears to be based solely on political advantage.”

Grenell had declassified the names of 16 former senior Obama officials involved in requesting Flynn’s private communications 48 times, according to the declassified documents provided by the DNI. Grenell only declassified the requests made between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017, according to the documents. The most controversial request was the phone calls between Flynn and former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who spoke on Dec. 29, 2016. The contents of that classified phone conversation, which was wiretapped by the FBI, would later be leaked to The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius in January.

Despite Warner’s concerns mentioned in his letter last week, the declassification of the Obama officials’ names did not violate any sources or methods, stated intelligence officials.

Please follow the link to the article for further details.

I would like to point out the contrast between what Mark Warner and Adam Schiff have been doing regarding classified information and what Ambassador Grenell has done. Mark Warner and Adam Schiff have been selectively leaking tidbits to their allies in the press for the purpose of making President Trump look bad. Ambassador Grenell is declassifying information to inform the American public about what has actually been going on. Representative Schiff and Senator Warner need to be held accountable for their leaking. If they are not held accountable, we will see more of the same.

As More Information Comes To Light, There Are More Questions

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Everything surrounding the case against General Flynn has been looked at, analyzed, and dissected, but it seems that the more we learn, the more questions arise. The Federalist posted an article today about the weaponization of the intelligence community by the Obama administration. I suspect that what we are learning is only a taste of what is to come. The article at The Federalist is complex, and I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article. I will attempt to summarize the high points.

The article reports:

The drip-drip-drip of newly declassified documents related to the Trump-Russia investigation, together with recent reports that a classified leak against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn might not have come from an unmasking request, leaves little doubt that the Obama administration weaponized federal surveillance laws to target Trump associates and undermine the incoming administration.

The story thus far is complex, but it reveals a disturbing abuse of power by the Obama administration that suggests congressional reform of federal surveillance laws is needed to ensure this never happens again.

Just as a side note, I can assure you that if those who misused the intelligence community are not punished, we will see this again.

The article continues:

According to Rice’s bizarre email, which she wrote to herself as President Trump was being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, Comey told Obama and Biden he had “some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak,” and that “the level of communication is unusual.” How did Comey know this? Because the FBI had been spying on Flynn as part of a counterintelligence investigation it launched in August 2016.

Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador became national news after someone in the Obama administration illegally leaked to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who revealed in a Jan. 12, 2017, column that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, 2017.

That touched off an effort by Republicans to find out who leaked to the Post. Last week, responding to a request from Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell released a list of former senior Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of Flynn between Nov. 30, 2016, and Jan. 12, 2017.

This is the important (often overlooked) fact:

But the dates of the unmasking requests don’t match up with Flynn’s Dec. 29 conversations with the Russian ambassador, which suggests Flynn was identified in an intelligence report that didn’t require the concealment of his identity. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that, according to an anonymous former senior U.S. official, “When the FBI circulated [the report], they included Flynn’s name from the beginning,” and that, “There were therefore no requests for the unmasking of that information.”

This report matches with a theory floated over the weekend by National Review Online’s Andrew McCarthy, that Flynn’s call with Kislyak might have been “intercepted under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.”

Please follow the link to read the rest of the story–it is amazing.

Think About What Is Being Said Here

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Hot Air posted an article today that included a recent quote from a Washington Post article:

Hot Air reports:

Over at the Washington Post, Keith Humphreys ended the week on a pessimistic note, opining that no matter how much testing and contact tracing is required to get us fully past this pandemic, America will never do as well as several other countries that seem to be taming the virus more quickly. The reason? Because Americans love their “freedom” too much. (Please note for the record that it was Humphreys who put the word freedom in scare quotes, not me.)

We love our “freedom” too much?! You mean that same freedom that men died for in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1912, World War I and World War II? You mean that same freedom that men and women today serve in our military to defend? You mean that same freedom that men and women spend months away from their families to protect? You mean that same freedom that allows you to post really dumb things in your newspaper?

The article continues:

He begins by quoting medical professionals who insist that the only path toward the new normal relies on our ability to “test, isolate, contact trace and quarantine.” He then lists a few examples of countries where those practices appear to be helping them tame the virus, including Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. But, the author argues, we may never succeed in the same fashion because such programs would require not only a willingness to surrender considerable privacy rights and freedoms, but also a general attitude of trust towards the government which doesn’t exist in the United States today.

The article concludes:

I suppose we should examine this analysis with two questions in mind. First, is Humphreys correct? And second, even if we assume that he is, should we really be envious of people living under harsher authoritarian rule and emulate their behavior if it gets us past the pandemic faster?

As to the first question, I have no argument to offer. The author is absolutely correct. Americans are probably just about the orneriest group of curmudgeons on the planet when it comes to bending to the will of the government. That’s because we are arguably the freest people on Earth. We were born of generations of people who had experienced life under the rule of a monarch without any serious assurances of God-given rights. And they wound up telling that monarch to go stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. We’re not all that different today.

…In the end, we’re probably doing the best we can do in our fight against the novel coronavirus. Every nation has to come up with their own solution and ours will wind up being uniquely American, framed around both our scientific capabilities and our values. If that means that we can’t get our virus numbers down to nearly zero as fast as some other nations, so be it. Heck, we still don’t know with 100% certainty if this virus can ever be eliminated or if we’ll ever have a vaccine. But if not, we’ll at least go down swinging.

I wish we still taught civics in school. If we did, Keith Humphreys might realize that America was founded by people who had just fought a war against a tyrannical government. They set laws in place to protect what they referred to as ‘God-given rights.” The laws were to limit the government–not to limit people’s freedom. Anyone who wants to live under a more tyrannical system is free to move to another country–there are many out there that fit that description. Meanwhile, Americans like their freedom and are generally willing to protect it.

The Details Of The Soft Coup Against President Trump Are Slowing Emerging

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article connecting a lot of the dots in the soft coup attempt against President Trump. It is a long article with a lot of screen shots to support the claims it is making. I suggest that you follow the link to the article as it would be impossible to summarize it here. However, there are a few noteworthy points I would like to share.

The article reports:

Former HPSCI Chairman, and current HPSCI ranking member, Devin Nunes appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss several matters of importance.  One of the critical topics touched is the ongoing investigations of Obama era intelligence and political surveillance via the DOJ-NSD FBI, CIA, DNI and State Dept.

Representative Nunes hits the key point when he highlights current redactions and current decisions to classify ongoing investigative documents.  It is critically important to accept this reality. There are current intelligence officers and career officials in place hiding material by labeling evidence as classified.  A recent example was the December 9, 2019, inspector general report about the manipulation of FISA.

There is a video embedded in the article that gives an example of the actions being taken to prevent the truth from coming out.

The article concludes:

Politico, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and The Washington Post are all implicated in the James Wolfe leak to Ali Watkins. They had the FISA information since March 2017, yet those media outlets were disingenuously falsifying their reporting on the actual content of the FISA application despite their actual knowledge.

Remember all of the media denials about what Devin Nunes wrote in the “Nunes memo”? Remember the media proclaiming the Steele Dossier was not part of the FISA application?

How was the media fifteen months later (July 2018) going to report on the Wolfe leak to Watkins without admitting they had been manufacturing stories about its content for the past year-and-a-half?

It was in the media’s interest NOT to cover, or dig into, the Wolfe story.

Additionally, from both the DOJ and Media perspective, coverage of the Wolfe leak would prove the senate intel committee (SSCI) was, at a minimum, a participating entity in the coup effort. That same SSCI is responsible for oversight over the CIA, FBI, DOJ-NSD, ODNI, DNI, and all intelligence agencies.

Worse yet, all officers within those agencies require confirmation from the SSCI (including Chair and Vice-Chair); and any discussion of the Wolfe leak would highlight the motive for ongoing corruption within the SSCI in blocking those nominations (see John Ratcliffe).

Stunning ramifications.

There was a clear fork in the road and the DOJ took the path toward a cover-up; which, considering what the DOJ was simultaneously doing with Mueller and the EDVA regarding Assange, is not entirely surprising.

Was that decision wrong? Oh hell yes, it was corrupt as heck. .

Were the decisions done with forethought to coverup gross abuses of government? Yes.

Where the DOJ is today is directly connected to the decisions the DOJ made in 2017 and 2018 to protect themselves and internally corrupt actors from discovery.

It is often said: “the coverup is always worse than the crime.” This is never more true than with these examples, because where we are today… now miles down the path of consequence from those corrupt decisions… is seemingly disconnected from the ability of any institutional recovery. That’s now the issue for Bill Barr.

If Bill Barr wanted to deal with the issue he would not be telling President Trump to stop talking about the corruption; instead he would be holding a large press conference to explain to the American people about that fork in the road.

That type of honest sunlight delivery means taking people back into the background of the larger story and explaining what decisions were made; with brutal honesty and without trepidation for the consequences, regardless of their severity and regardless of the friends of Bill Barr compromised by the truth.

Here’s a big reason why Bill Barr should take that approach: We Know.

We know; the DOJ trying to hide it doesn’t change our level of information.

Regardless of whether Bill Barr actually admits what surrounds him, there are people who know…

We know….

You know….

AG Bill Barr shouting at President Trump ‘don’t tweet‘ like the Wizard of Oz doesn’t change the fact the curtain has been removed.

Turn around Bill, it’s time to come clean.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. There are many in the government who are still working hard to cover up the truth.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

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The media has become something of a joke during the past three years as they have been overtaken by Trump Derangement Syndrome. We have reached the point that whatever President Trump does is wrong and even when it turns out to be right, it is still wrong. On Friday, Paul Mirengoff at Power Line Blog posted an article that illustrates that point.

The article reports:

Yesterday, President Trump released federal guidelines regarding the reopening of the economy. Trump did not suggest a date by which the economy of the U.S. or of any state should be reopened. The guidelines call on state and local officials to make these decisions.

Trump was wise to say these decisions should be made locally. First, he lacks the power to make them. ( The Washington Post says that Trump’s “plan effectively reverses [his] claim that he had ‘total authority’ to declare the nation reopened.” But Trump hasn’t agreed that he lacks this power. He’s merely declining to attempt to exercise it.)

Second, in theory state and local officials are better able than the feds to decide when and how to reopen things in their jurisdiction. I say “in theory,” because some state and local officials, despite their closeness to the situation, have made highly questionable decisions.

However, Trump deals with governors on something like a daily basis. He has said that the vast majority of governors, whether Democrat or Republican, are doing a good job. If Trump is sincere, and he probably is, then it makes sense for him to defer to governors.

Finally, Trump’s deference makes political sense. If things go horribly wrong in a state, whether in terms of public health or the economy, its governor will have to take the blame. Trump can always say the governor made the wrong call.

After insisting that governors should be making these calls, and accusing Trump of playing “king” for denying their power to make them, the president’s critics are now accusing him of passing the buck. The Post asserts that “Trump’s the-buck-stops-with-the-states posture is largely designed to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks or for other problems. . .”

So when President Trump is taking charge, he is acting like a king. When President Trump appropriately delegates authority, he is passing the buck. So is there anything he could do that the press would approve of? Probably not, so he is better off simply following his instincts as a businessman and doing what he thinks is right.

The article concludes:

New York governor Andrew Cuomo has matched Trump’s media critics in this regard. He says Trump is “passing the buck without passing the bucks.” “Don’t ask the states to do this without the funding,” Cuomo moaned.

Cuomo, though, led the charge to brand Trump a king for claiming the power to make reopening decisions for states. Is Cuomo now saying that, absent the funding he desires, he doesn’t want to make such decisions?

Trump’s power (or lack thereof) to make reopening decisions isn’t contingent on federal funding decisions. If Cuomo doesn’t get the funding he wants, it’s still his call on when to reopen. If things go badly, he can blame the feds for not giving New York money. Voters can decide whether he made the right call under the circumstances.

As for Trump, I think he made the right call by deferring to state and local officials. As for his guidelines, they seem sensible, but I haven’t analyzed them carefully.

We are about to find out who the competent governors are in America!

A Small Update On Some Of The Fake News You Are Hearing

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PJ Media posted a list today of the top ten lies the news media has told about President Trump’s response to the coronavirus. Please follow the link to the article to read the details–I am simply posting the list:

10. Trump downplayed the mortality rate of the coronavirus

 

 9. Trump lied when he said Google was developing a national coronavirus website

 8.  Trump ‘dissolved’ the WH pandemic response office

 7. Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic

 6. Trump cut funding to the CDC & NIH

 5. Trump ‘muzzled’ Dr. Fauci

 4. Trump didn’t act quickly and isn’t doing enough

 3. Trump told governors they were “on their own”

 2. Trump turned down testing kits from WHO

 1. Trump called the coronavirus “a hoax”

The sources for this misinformation vary. The sources include MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, Joe Biden, and Michael Bloomberg. If you are still depending on these sources for accurate reporting, you are being mislead. The article at PJ Media lists the source for each lie, so you can see where the lies came from.

Meanwhile stay safe, and be careful who you listen to.

The Washington Post And The Truth

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Yesterday Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line Blog about a recent article in The Washington Post. The article totally misrepresented what President Trump said at the recent press conference held at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The article reports:

In this article (the article in The Washinton Post),David Nakamura of the Washington Post ridicules Trump’s presser. That’s okay with me. Aspects of Trump’s performance invited ridicule.

Unfortunately, Nakamura also provides a false account of the substance of Trump’s remarks. The headline of his story asserts that “Trump second-guess[ed] the [medical] professions.” In the body of the story Nakamura goes further, claiming that the president “repeatedly second-guessed. . .the actual medical professionals standing next to him.” (Emphasis added)

Trump did no such thing. In fact, he did the opposite. He deferred to the medical professionals.

Nakamura cites no example of second-guessing. I watched the full presser and heard none.

The article concludes:

Nakamura also fails to note that Trump lavishly praised the U.S. medical experts dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. He called them the best experts in the world, and said that public health officials in other countries are relying heavily on them.

Trump made this statement repeatedly, so Nakamura couldn’t have missed it. He chose, however, to exclude it from his story. Why? Almost certainly because it didn’t fit Nakamura’s claim that Trump is “second-guessing the professionals.”

Nakamura is serving up fake news, and not for the first time.

The American news media gave up the illusion of fairness a long time ago. I believe that false reporting such as in The Washington Post is one of the main reasons the country is so divided. Americans who read The New York Times and The Washington Post have not seen a fair representation of President Trump. They are not acquainted with either the economic numbers or the efforts to deal with the coronavirus that began in January. They are reacting to second-hand gossip that they are reading in the newspaper. People who don’t read those newspapers have a much better grasp of the Trump administration and its accomplishments that those who do. The conflict between fact and bias is one source of the current division in our country. We got along much better when we had a more neutral news media.

Sometimes It Takes A While For The Truth To Come Out

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Newsbusters posted an article today confirming something President Trump has been asserting for quite some time.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump’s strategic silence on Puerto Rico’s earthquakes, while greenlighting billions of dollars in aid and a new major disaster declaration for the stricken U.S. territory, is forcing the liberal media into a most uncomfortable place…acknowledging that he was right all along.

Earlier this week, The Washington Post attempted to redeploy ye olde Hurricane Maria playbook, in order to commoditize human suffering for Democrat political gain. This ham-fisted close to their editorial gave the game away:

Still, it is worth remembering that many Puerto Ricans were forced to leave the island after Maria and are now living — and will be able to vote — in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. Presumably many of them will remember how the island has been treated.

It is important to recall that the national media was asleep at the switch during the initial aftermath of Hurricane Maria –devoting coverage instead to the president’s tweets regarding the NFL. In fact, the liberal media didn’t begin to cover Maria’s terrible aftermath until there was a clear anti-Trump angle as embodied by the radical, separatist mayor of San Juan, who rode her post-Maria notoriety all the way to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign — where she now serves as national co-chair.

The article concludes:

Additionally, the island was roiled by news that much-needed relief supplies sat in a warehouse as earthquake victims suffered- which only serves to bolster the president’s charge (one with which many Puerto Ricans agree, by the way) that the island’s government is corrupt and incompetent. Per CBS News:

Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced fired the island’s emergency management director on Saturday, after a video showing aid sitting unused in a warehouse went viral on social media. Some of the aid has allegedly been sitting in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017.

“There are thousands of people who have made sacrifices to help those in the south, and it is unforgivable that resources were kept in the warehouse,” Vázquez said in a statement. 

With no obvious anti-Trump angle to chase, the liberal media (with the continued exception of CBS’s David Begnaud) is forced to cover the issue itself, to wit: the earthquakes that have rattled Puerto Rico, and the local government’s continued inability to adequately respond to an emergency due to institutionalized corruption and incompetence. Trump was right after all.

The start of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is four and a half months away.

This is typical of countries where corruption reigns–many of the famine problems around the world have more to do with the distribution of food rather than a shortage of food. Dictators around the world have often used food as a weapon to keep their populations under control. In this case, the corruption in Puerto Rico was such that the aid never reached the people who needed it–it remained in warehouses. Meanwhile, the Mayor of San Juan has moved forward to work on the Bernie Sanders campaign.

This May Be The Only Way To Deal With Fake News

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Yesterday Power Line Blog posted an article about Nick Sandmann and his lawsuit against CNN.

The article reports:

Nick Sandmann is an innocent kid who was waiting for a bus with a group of his fellow high school students in Washington, D.C., when he was accosted by an Indian activist who, accompanied by a gang of his followers, aggressively and obnoxiously beat a drum in his face. Sandmann committed the apparently unpardonable sin of standing still in the face of this activist onslaught, which caused him to be viciously smeared by media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post. Happily, Sandmann’s family retained a good lawyer and has sued several of the media outlets that lied about him.

Now the first domino has fallen: CNN has settled Sandmann’s case against it:

CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.

The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.

Sandmann’s lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, the Washington Post and NBC Universal. Trial dates are still not set for Sandmann’s lawsuit against NBC Universal and the Washington Post.

The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed, which is evidently not unusual in this type of court case.

The article concludes:

In this instance, I am pretty sure that it was CNN, one of the main malefactors, that didn’t want the world to know how much it paid Sandmann as a result of its pathetically biased reporting. Now Sandmann’s lawyers can use CNN’s contribution, likely in the mid six figures, to fund their ongoing battle against the Washington Post, NBC and any others who slandered the boy. That is how the system works, and in this case, it appears to be working for the good.

This may actually be the only way to deal with fake news.

The Quest For Relevance

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Yesterday National Review reported  that former secretary of state John Kerry has endorsed Joe Biden for President. John Kerry cited Biden’s performance serving as vice president in the Obama administration as proof that he has what it takes to defeat President Trump. Wow. I don’t know where to start.

The article reports:

“The world is broken,” Kerry told The Washington Post. “Our politics are broken. The country faces extraordinary challenges. And I believe very deeply that Joe Biden’s character, his ability to persevere, his decency and the experiences that he brings to the table are critical to the moment. The world has to be put back together, the world that Donald Trump has smashed apart.”

Kerry’s announcement comes a week after news broke that former president Barack Obama reportedly said Biden “really doesn’t have it” in establishing a bond with the electorate.

Kerry seemingly disagreed with his former boss in describing Biden, calling him “the person for the moment.”

This is an amazing statement. John Kerry was elected to the United States Senate in 1984. He was sworn in as Secretary of State in February 2013. Joe Biden was a Senator from 1973 to 2009. President Donald Trump entered politics in 2015. If ‘the world is broken,’ I would tend to put the responsibility for that on those who have been in power for the longest time–not on the new kid on the block.