Tag Archives: The Western Journal

Looking Past The Spin

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It’s always interesting to listen to enough mainstream media to find out what the catch phrase of the day is. When Dick Cheney was appointed as George W. Bush’s Vice-President, the phrase was ‘gravitas.’ I can’t prove that the mainstream media has an online meeting early every morning to plan the news for the day, but I can say that it sure looks that way. Even Wikipedia has an entry for Operation Mockingbird.

Two of the current phrases of the day are ‘Putin’s tax on food and gas’ and ‘Putin’s inflation.’ I am not sure the American public actually believes either one.

On Friday, The Western Journal noted the following:

President Joe Biden is continuing to blame inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin more than three months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

During an event on Friday, Biden addressed the latest inflation report as he said, “I understand Americans are anxious. And they’re anxious for good reason.”

“I was raised in a household when the price of gasoline rose precipitously it was the discussion at the table. It made a difference,” he continued.

Finally, Biden said, “We’ve never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas.”

Actually, inflation arrived before Putin invaded Ukraine, but that is what you call an inconvenient truth.

The article notes:

From the outset of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Biden officials have blamed the “Putin price hike” for the spikes Americans were seeing in gas and food prices — even though inflation had hit a 40-year-high in the months leading up to the invasion.

Biden’s comments come after the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that inflation accelerated in May.

The consumer price index rose 8.6% in May compared to the same month last year, marking the fastest pace of price increases since Dec. 1981.

It’s much easier to blame Putin than to take responsibility for the runaway government spending that has occurred since President Biden took office. Look for more catch phrases of the day as inflation continues.

Holding Social Media Accountable

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On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about Kyle Rittenhouse. The article might cause some news outlets and social media platforms to lose more than a little sleep.

The article reports:

During an appearance Monday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Kyle Rittenhouse and his attorney, Todd McMurty, had a message to send to the many establishment media hucksters who smeared his name.

“We are going to make the media pay for what they did to me,” the 19-year-old Rittenhouse told Carlson.

It won’t just be members of the media who will pay, however. According to both Rittenhouse and McMurty, the legal team will be zeroing in on some Big Tech platforms, starting with Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

…Prior to and during the trial — before a verdict had even been reached — numerous media personalities forwarded unfounded claims about Rittenhouse, including that he was a murderer and a white supremacist.

“They made it hard for me to live a normal life. I can’t go out into public. I can’t go to the store. It’s hard for me to go anywhere without security. Doing basic things like taking my dog to the dog park is difficult,” Rittenhouse told Carlson.

“They made it really difficult to be normal, and they affected future job opportunities to me. I don’t think I will ever be able to work or get a job because I’m afraid an employer may not hire me.”

McMurty then chimed in, making it clear that several defamation lawsuits were on the way, specifically targeting those in the media and on social media who called Rittenhouse a “murderer” and a “white supremacist.”

While I don’t necessarily agree with the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse was out on the street the night of the riots, I do believe he has the right to defend himself. I have no doubt that had he not shot his attackers, he would not be alive to tell his story. Unfortunately, his actions that night and the reporting of the incident will follow him for the rest of his life.

Please follow the link to the article to get a picture of the articles that have resulted in this lawsuit. I wish Kyle luck in his lawsuit and hope he will use the money he wins to continue his education as he had originally planned.

Still Searching For The Leaker

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal reported that the investigation into the leaking of the abortion opinion draft from the Supreme Court is heating up.

The article reports:

Inside the Supreme Court, an investigation into the leak has now reached the point where law clerks are being asked to provide cellphone records and sign affidavits, CNN reported Tuesday, citing three sources it did not name.

Why are people inside the Court still leaking to CNN?

The article notes:

Chief Justice John Roberts met with law clerks after the leak. Each justice gets four clerks, and the prized spots that can be steppingstones to a high-profile career.

CNN estimated that in addition to the 36 clerks, others would have had access to the draft, totaling about 75 people in all.

The report said it was not clear whether other court employees were being asked to share cellphone records.

The court’s internal investigation is being led by the court’s marshal, Gail Curley.

Curley, a lawyer and former Army colonel, oversees the police stationed at the court’s building.

The article concludes:

Justice Clarence Thomas said the damage done to the court by the leak was severe.

“I do think that what happened at the court is tremendously bad,” Thomas said at a recent conference.

“I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them. And then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized, what we will have as a country? And I don’t think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them,” he said.

If the pool of suspects is only 75 people, the investigation should be completed fairly quickly. I wonder why it has not been.

This Might Be Good News For Republicans

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On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about voter turnout in the recent primary elections.

The article reports:

McDaniel (Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel) told Fox News on Wednesday that she believes it bodes well for the general election in November, but she cautioned GOP supporters not to become complacent.

She pointed first to Tuesday’s elections in Pennsylvania.

“The thing that we’re taking away from last night is, first of all, Republicans outpaced Democrat turnout by 100,000 votes. That’s the first time we’ve ever beaten the Democrats in 10 years in this type of primary situation,” McDaniel said.

Republican voters cast over 1.3 million ballots to Democrats’ slightly less than 1.2 million.

That would be very good news for the Republicans in the mid-term elections assuming that the mid-terms would be an honest election.

The article concludes:

“We know that inflation is hurting average Americans. We know that gas prices are hurting people. We know that there is a baby formula shortage that this administration is not addressing,” McDaniel added.

“It seems that every time a crisis comes up, they’re ill-prepared, and that’s why we’re seeing voters look at Republicans and say, ‘Maybe we need to switch leadership in Washington and put Republicans in charge of the Senate and the House in the midterm elections,’” she said.

The GOP leader is cautious about predicting a red wave in the fall, pointing out that Republicans only need a net gain of five seats in the House to take back that chamber and just one to retake the Senate.

“I don’t want anyone to get complacent,” McDaniel said. “We all need to work hard for every single victory.”

We need a conservative takeover of Congress (whichever party those conservatives belong to) to put an end to the destructive policies of the Biden administration. It’s time to become energy independent again. It’s time to control spending, and it’s time to remove (again) the regulations that make it nearly impossible for businesses to operate easily in America.

A Different Take On Electric Cars

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about some recent changes in electric cars to increase their range.

The article reports:

(Here at The Western Journal, we’re making sure consumers know that electric cars don’t just run on rainbows and dreams; there are serious environmental tradeoffs politicians and environmentalists haven’t fully publicized, or even considered, as they push these vehicles relentlessly on American car-buyers. We’ll keep bringing America the truth the establishment media won’t. You can help us by subscribing.)

According to a piece published Monday by the EV-centric outlet Green Car Reports, a British-based independent emissions testing firm found that particulate matter emissions from tires are 1,850 times greater under normal driving conditions than from a tailpipe of a gas-powered car.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, particulate emissions are “microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems.” It notes the particles “are also the main cause of reduced visibility (haze) in parts of the United States, including many of our treasured national parks and wilderness areas.”

The EPA defines particle pollution as “inhalable particles,” which are under 10 microns in diameter, and “fine inhalable particles,” 2.5 microns and smaller.

The firm that conducted the study, Emissions Analytics, had previously found in 2020 that particulate emissions from tires could be 1,000 times greater than those from tailpipes. That test was designed to capture worst-case emissions under legal driving, according to the report. But when researchers replicated the test “across a wider range of driving conditions,” they found the number was even higher.

As the cars are becoming more efficient and larger batteries added however, the tire emissions increase.

The article notes:

Furthermore, they found that adding half a metric ton (1,100 pounds) “of battery weight can result in tire emissions that are almost 400 more times greater than real-world tailpipe emissions, everything else being equal.”

The article concludes:

And then there’s the environmental damage caused by mining the minerals needed to build EV components. Or the fact that China controls most of the supply-chain access to said minerals. Or that EVs are considerably more expensive than gas-powered vehicles.

Pick your poison. Heaven knows there are plenty of them. We’ve found a new one in electric vehicles. It’s time the progressive left at least admits the truth: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

We are in search of the perpetual motion machine. At some point we may actually come close, but the laws of physics are definitely working against us.

Will Dilbert Get Entangled In The Cancel Culture?

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My husband is a techie who loves Dilbert. Occasionally I enjoy the strip, but it seems to be mostly about engineering types. However, Dilbert does have a way of capturing the insanity that sometimes shows up in the average workplace. Dilbert has now taken on the diversity culture–only with a twist.

The Western Journal posted the following on Wednesday:

“Dilbert” became popular because the cartoon’s creator, Scott Adams, mocked absurdity.

At first, this was universally popular; the strip lampooned the absurdities 1990s corporate orthodoxy was on. The comic, for the unaware, revolves around the eponymous engineer Dilbert, his co-workers and superiors at a nameless mega-corporation, and his anthropomorphic pets.

Because the strip attacked shallow cultural trends, Kafkaesque corporate bureaucracy and the kind of facile jargon that underpinned the “Who Moved My Cheese?”-style business leadership, “Dilbert” had an image of being part of the liberal counterculture.

In the intervening years, three things have made “Dilbert” and Adams problematic for the left. First, the liberal “counterculture” became the dominant corporate culture. Second, it became even more absurd than it was. Third, “Dilbert” and Adams both continued to attack absurdity.

Adams’ slow-motion courtship of cancellation by the left began during the run-up to the 2016 election when he a) predicted Donald Trump would win the presidency and b) didn’t seem averse to the idea. He started a podcast that skewed along conservative lines. That said, he’s still unpredictable (according to Politico, he’s praised the persuasion skills of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) but, he never repudiated Trump or the Republicans.

Below is one of Dilbert’s recent cartoons:

If nothing else, this exemplifies the absurdity of the both the diversity culture and the idea that what you identify as changes anything.

 

Is Europe Already At War?

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On Saturday, The Western Journal reported the following:

A rise in tension between the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance and the Russian Federation has apparently been escalating for days in the skies above the Baltic and Black seas.

“NATO fighter jets stationed around the Baltic and Black Seas have scrambled multiple times over the past four days to track and intercept Russian aircraft near Alliance airspace”, a Friday NATO release reads.

Warning flags were first sent up on April 26 as multiple unidentified objects appeared on NATO radar arrays.

Fighters scrambled to intercept the unknowns and found Russian military aircraft tracking toward allied airspace.

A quick-reaction force is now on standby, ready to take to the sky at a moment’s notice. Aircraft securing the Baltic Sea region include fighters from Poland, Denmark, France and Spain.

The article notes:

Although NATO says the interceptions were operated in a “routine” and “safe” manner, the risks are clear.

“Russian military aircraft often do not transmit a transponder code indicating their position and altitude, do not file a flight plan, or do not communicate with air traffic controllers, posing a potential risk to civilian airliners,” NATO explained.

Of course, the danger to civilian airliners is minimal compared to what awaits if an interception between these two forces turns into a full-on engagement.

A fighter from any NATO member nation being attacked could trigger Article 5 of the alliance charter.

At this point, it is time to look at who benefits from a war between America and Russia. If it is a nuclear war, we all lose. If it is a non-nuclear war that weakens both countries, those who favor one world government win. America is a problem for the World Economic Forum. Americans like our freedoms and our prosperity (even in a recession, our quality of life is better than most other nations). There are as many questions about Vladimir Putin’s health as there are about President Biden’s health. The events in Ukraine need lots of prayers for wisdom for the leaders of Ukraine, NATO, America and Russia.

Exposing The Truth In The Gender Identity Movement

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On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article about ‘Libs of TikTok,’ a Twitter account that exposes the far-left gender identity activists for what they really are: groomers.

The article reports:

Ron Coleman, who was part of the Trump legal team and is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, has had enough. His firm represents “Libs of Tik Tok,” a Twitter account that exposes the far-left gender identity activists for what they really are: groomers.

The creator of LoTT remained anonymous until Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post’s hypocritical internet culture reporter, wrote an expose in which she doxed the woman behind LoTT, publicly sharing personal information including her home and workplace addresses. Leftists try to suppress the First Amendment because they know full well that when their useful idiots go public, they look very, very bad to us common folk.

LoTT posts video clips of gender identity activists plying their trade on Twitter. The clips have been posted elsewhere on social media by the activists themselves. LoTT gathers clips into a freakshow forum.

LoTT is not a hit operation. It merely highlights what the crazies are saying about themselves. The site does little in the way of editing or commenting on the clips.

The article notes:

Tucker Carlson is no stranger to backlash for his conservatives views, either. He jumped in to defend LoTT by devoting an opening monologue to the subject and airing clips from LGBTQ activists discussing how they educate young schoolchildren about gender fluidity, transgenderism and the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the “teachers” on the clips claims that when babies are born the doctors look at them and “guess” the baby’s gender.

Another “teacher” claims that three- and four-year-old kids are aware of gender identity and that anybody who disagrees with teaching kindergarteners about it is guilty of “internalized homophobia and transphobia.”

The far left is smart enough to understand that when mainstream Americans watch these clips about innocent children being indoctrinated with nonsense, they get angry.

Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Fighting Back Against Bad Laws

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On April 8, I posted an article about Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s plan to charter buses to transport illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. Evidently the prospect of having a bunch of illegal immigrants dropped off in their front yard is having some impact on Washington.

Yesterday The Western Journal reported:

In the Texas tradition of showdowns, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week told the federal government that he was ready, willing and able to bus every illegal immigrant dropped in a Texas town straight to Washington, D.C.

Somebody blinked, and it was not Abbott, according to new reports.

Late last week, the Texas Division of Emergency Management sent buses to the communities that have been targeted by the Biden administration as dropping-off points for illegal immigrants once border facilities are overwhelmed.

Officials found something had changed since Abbott sounded off.

“In the last 24 hours, TDEM has dispatched buses to areas where communities have expressed concerns about the federal government dropping off migrants and has the capability to send as many as is necessary to fulfill the requests from mayors and county judges,” said Seth Christensen, chief of media and communications for TDEM, according to the Daily Mail.

“From the [Rio Grande Valley] to Terrell County, a large majority of the communities that originally reached out for support through this operation have now said that the federal government has stopped dropping migrants in their towns since the governor’s announcement on Wednesday,” he said.

I hate to be cynical (but sometimes I am good at it), but it seems to me that Washington really doesn’t care what is happening on our southern border as long as it doesn’t affect them.

The article concludes:

On Monday, Abbott met with the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition in El Paso and indicated he has no plans to back down.

“Texans demand and deserve an aggressive, comprehensive strategy to secure our border — not President Biden’s lackluster leadership,” Abbott said in a statement.

“As the federal government continues to roll back commonsense policies that once kept our communities safe, our local law enforcement has stepped up to protect Texans from dangerous criminals, deadly drugs and illegal contraband flooding into the Lone Star State.”

We need more governors like Governor Abbot on our southern border. If the political class in Washington thought that the border crisis would directly impact their lives, I suspect they might be willing to deal it. Until the border crisis directly impacts Washington, our ruling class will blindly follow President Biden over a cliff.

Making A Difficult Job More Difficult

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On Sunday, The Western Journal posted an article about a new requirement put on our Border Patrol (as if they didn’t already have enough to deal with).

The article reports:

While keeping track of illegal immigrants flooding across America’s Southern Border, Border Patrol agents also have to keep track of their pronouns.

A Department of Homeland Security release last week extolling the changes made as part of the Transgender Day of Visibility said that changes are coming to Customs and Border Protection staff as part of what was termed “[f]acilitating effective communication at U.S. ports of entry and beyond.”

“CBP has provided a job aid and memorandum to all staff that will serve as a guide for facilitating effective communication with the diverse public CBP serves, including LGBTQI+ individuals. The guidance includes using gender-neutral language and an individual’s self-identified pronouns and name,” the DHS release said.

I hate to be difficult, but if you have crossed into America illegally, I don’t care what your pronouns are–I simply want you to go home.

The article continues:

According to Fox News, about 2,000 illegal immigrants per day enter the U.S. because Border Patrol agents simply can’t get to them while dealing with others who have crossed illegally.

The flood is expected to get worse next month when the Biden administration officially lifts what’s known as Title 42, a health policy invoked during the pandemic that led to many illegal immigrants being turned back.

…“If there’s a strategy in place, we haven’t seen it. It hasn’t been disseminated to us, and there’s no way you can prepare in a month and a half for what is expected to be a mass illegal migration crisis,” he (National Border Patrol Council President Brandon) explained. “The only thing this administration is going to be able to do is just release people on a mass scale, that’s it. That’s all they can do.”

Agents “feel like we’re waving the white flag of surrender right now,” he said. “They feel like we are completely giving control of the border to the cartels.”

No sovereign nation can continue to exist without a secure border. So what is the end game of the Biden administration?

Will There Ever Be Accountability?

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On Thursday, The Western Journal posted an article about Hunter Biden’s laptop. I realize that many of us are tired of hearing about Hunter Biden’s laptop, but what about the national security issues involved and the obvious issue of child pornography that is allegedly on the laptop?

The article notes:

Following an exhaustive investigation led by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a report titled “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns” was released in September 2020. A second report with additional findings followed two months later.

Because in today’s new world, information is only accepted to be true if Democrats, the legacy media and Big Tech say it is, the report was declared to be Russian disinformation and was immediately discredited.

One of the most glaring dismissals of the report came from the liberal Lawfare blog, whose assessment read: “Seven months into a crippling pandemic and with wildfires ablaze across the West Coast, the majority of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Commitee (HSGAC) has its attention focused squarely on the most pressing issues: five-year-old financial transactions by Joe Biden’s son and stray WhatsApp messages from Democratic lobbyists.”

Ridiculous?

Unlike the Biden administration’s focus on a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime in the midst of domestic and foreign turmoil when the last lynching in the U.S. occurred over 40 years ago, fair coverage of the Grassley-Johnson report and the New York Post’s censored reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop would have provided voters with relevant information that might have prevented President Joe Biden’s “victory” and the damage it has visited upon the country. But I digress.

The article notes:

Grassley displayed a portion of an August 2017 receipt for a $100,000 payment from CEFC to Wells Fargo Clearing Services. He emphasized the notation near the bottom of the page that read “further credit to OWASCO PC” and informed his fellow senators that Owasco was one of Hunter Biden’s companies.

This particular transaction was being made public for the first time. (Grassley said he and Johnson would release the full document.)

“There’s no middle man in this transaction,” the senator said. “This is $100,000 from what is effectively an arm of the communist Chinese government direct to Hunter Biden.”

Please follow the link to the article for further details. Evidently a large part of the American government is bought and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party.

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.

Still Searching For The Truth

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal reported that the Arizona Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to the Maricopa County recorder and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors requesting the voter signature files along with other information.

The article reports:

The Election Systems Integrity Institute (ESII) released a report this month concluding that the Maricopa County, Arizona, mail-in ballot signature verification process used during the 2020 general election was deeply flawed.

The study, overseen by systems engineer Shiva Ayyadurai, found that the county allowed approximately 200,000 ballot envelopes with mismatched signatures to be forwarded for counting without further review.

Ayyadurai, who has multiple degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified last fall before the Arizona Senate regarding the findings of the Maricopa County 2020 general election audit.

That study resulted in the request. The article notes:

“In the study, it is alleged that over 250 of those sampled ballot affidavits on the envelopes to did not appear to match the voter’s signatures,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright, with the office’s Elections Integrity Unit, wrote in the letter.

The article also reports:

ESII researchers reported that 11.3 percent of the approximately 1.9 million mail-in ballots should have gone through the curing process, rather than the 1.31 percent that did.

That translates to more than 215,000 needing to be cured versus the “upwards of 25,000” identified by Maricopa County.

“I found it fascinating that they didn’t give us an exact number. They just said up to 25,000,” Ayyadurai told The Western Journal, noting the county called it a “rigorous signature verification process.”

The bottom line here is simple–we will never truly know who won the election. However, we need to do everything we can to protect election integrity in future elections.

 

Does Breaking The Law Actually Have Consequences?

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On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article confirming something almost all of us already knew.

The article reports:

Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said the FBI absolutely broke the law with its surveillance of Donald Trump both when he was a candidate and after he became president.

In an interview with Just the News’ John Solomon published on Wednesday, Grenell agreed that leadership at the bureau and the Department of Justice must have known ahead of time that evidence that Trump somehow “colluded” with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election was false.

“Political appointees and the leaders of the FBI and DOJ purposefully manipulated the truth,” he told Solomon.

Grenell also said he has spoken with FBI operatives who knew the investigation into Trump was faulty.

“The people in the middle management, I’ve talked to them. I’ve talked to FBI agents. They knew that this was a phony exercise,” he said.

The people who chose to break the law to further a political agenda need to be in jail. They lied to the courts to get permission to spy on the Trump campaign and later on the President. If this is the kind of activity the FBI and the DOJ choose to engage in, they we either need to eliminate these departments totally or fire everyone in them and start from scratch.

Please read the entire article for details on who has been indicted so far and what the consequences have been for those people.

The Real Numbers On Electric Cars

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On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about the actual cost of purchasing, driving, and maintaining an electric car.

The article notes:

As the average cost per gallon of gas has soared past $4.20, and with no end in sight, many of our leaders — including Joe Biden — are pushing EVs as a cost-effective replacement for gas-powered cars.

As Fox Business recently noted, a one-to-one comparison of the cost of charging an EV versus filling a regular auto with gas showed that EV charging appeared cheaper. But many other factors need to be included in the math to make a true analysis — factors that many EV advocates are desperate to ignore.

“According to the EPA, the national average for a kilowatt-hour of electricity is 13 cents, including at homes where most electric car owners charge their vehicles with 240-volt Level 2 chargers that typically take eight hours or more to fill them up,” Fox reported on Wednesday. “Many of these are also available in public settings like office and shopping center parking lots, where they are known as destination chargers.”

The article also points out:

But charging your EV comes with its own set of pricey problems. As noted above, costs are rising per kilowatt-hour when using public stations, and using a home charger offers the biggest savings. However, owners also have to shell out between $700 and $2,000 to install a Level 2 home charging unit, Carvana reported. This might tend to make the first year’s savings for not buying gasoline a wash.

Worse, if you want to install a Level 3 charger in your home, you’ll be hit with costs of up to $50,000 or more — including upgrading the electrical system in your house to power the thing.

The article also notes:

Also, a major source of expense for EVs is battery pack replacement. Depending on the car, battery packs can last between 5 and 20 years, but the replacement costs might make keeping the car prohibitive. Some experts say that the average battery life is eight years or 100,000 miles, and depending on the model, battery packs cost between $5,000 and $20,000 to replace — not including labor.

This high cost is also a warning to anyone buying a used EV. After all, if you buy a 10-year-old EV that still has its original battery, you might be forced to fork out another $10,000 to replace a dead battery pack shortly after putting as much as $25,000 to purchase the used vehicle. This is a cost that few average Americans can afford.

Another issue is a geopolitical concern.

Many of the rare earth minerals — such as lithium — and the manufactured batteries and parts are made in China, and the costs for these materials are also skyrocketing.

Indeed, in December it was found that the cost of lithium had surged more than 250 percent over the year. Not only are these materials rising in expense, but we are enriching China in the process.

Meanwhile, where is the electricity to power these electric vehicles coming from? If 20 percent of Americans owned electric cars, could the power grid handle the load?

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It provides much food for thought.

Working Hard To Make A Bad Situation Worse

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On Thursday, The Western Journal posted an article about the Biden administration’s energy policy.

The article reports:

While oil prices rise due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is delaying new federal oil and gas leases.

This comes in the midst of rising frustration from Americans over increasing gas prices. In the U.S., gas prices are averaging more than $3.50 per gallon, NPR reported. These are the highest averages seen since 2014.

The halt in federal oil and gas leases is Biden’s response to a court ruling that blocked the administration’s attempt to emphasize potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for polluting industries, the Associated Press reported.

I don’t claim to have inside information, but I can tell you what is going to happen next (actually, it’s already happening). President Biden will blame the rapidly rising gasoline prices on the war in Ukraine. While that is partially true, it does not take into account the fact that if America were still energy independent, the price of oil would not be as volatile as it is. Also, the amount of money coming into the U.S. Treasury due to the increased price of oil and increased American drilling would be helpful to the American economy. The President’s policy of limiting American oil production during a time of international uncertainty hurts all Americans.

The article concludes:

It’s predictable that Biden would want to halt domestic drilling on federal lands, since he promised to fight climate change and leasing federal lands for fossil fuel development would conflict with that policy.

“These fossil fuel projects are incompatible with Biden’s goal of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and they need to be canceled, as Biden promised to do,” Taylor McKinnon from the Center for Biological Diversity said, the AP reported.

However, Biden is also fully aware of how the Russia-Ukraine crisis is hurting oil prices.

In the midst of a fluctuating oil market that is directly hurting American pockets, Biden is halting federal drilling leases, which hurts American energy independence and keeps our gas prices tied to international tensions.

A Constitutional Republic Will Only Stand As Long As Its Citizens And Voters Are Able To Stay Informed

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about the lack of transparency and misinformation coming out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the past two years or so.

The article notes:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is being called out for not sharing the vast quantities of data it had been gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some medical experts are speculating that the reason why is the fear the data will be “misinterpreted” and used as justification not to follow the agency’s guidelines regarding vaccination and other matters.

“Tell the truth, present the data,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert and adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, The New York Times reported.

…Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, told the news outlet the reason much of the data has been withheld is “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.”

Bureaucracy is another reason.

The CDC is weighed down by multiple layers of bureaucracy, including a requirement to first run information to be released through the Department Health and Human Services and the White House.

“The CDC is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, the Times reported.

“The steps that it takes to get something like this [covid data] released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the CDC.”

The article concludes:

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal last month, Makary (Dr. Marty Makary, a professor and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) contended that another topic the CDC has been reluctant to address is natural immunity.

“For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused,” he wrote.

“Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination,” he continued.

Makary further noted the National Institutes of Health resisted acknowledging natural immunity.

“Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99 percent of them up to nearly two years after infection,” he wrote.

Makary argued the failure of the CDC to release the data sooner meant many who had previously recovered from COVID and had better immunity than those were just vaccinated needlessly lost their jobs.

He concluded that they should be hired back.

There was a political agenda here and a monetary agenda here. The CDC is too closely tied financially to the drug companies. There was more money in vaccines than there ever was in ivermectin!

Ending Mask Mandates

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about a recent recommendation from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The article reports:

With mask mandates for students and teachers increasingly under fire, one of the major children’s hospitals in the country is recommending that facial coverings no longer be required.

Dr. David Rubin, director of the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said masks should not be considered necessary, WCAU-TV reported Monday.

“We are in a very different moment in this pandemic,” Rubin told the station.

Rubin suggested that it is finally time to start getting back to normal in the school setting, particularly since cases of COVID-19 omicron variant among children are more on the level of other seasonal viruses.

…In January, Rubin also advocated for fully re-opening schools and getting kids back into normal school settings, NPR reported.

He pointed to the fact that children are not as susceptible to the virus and that for the sake of mental health and normality, they should be in regular school settings.

“The spectrum of illness is very consistent with what we take care of each year, and we’re actually seeing fewer kids in the ICU proportionally this phase,” Rubin told NPR.

He also argued that the harm being done from keeping kids at home or in abnormal settings is now outweighing the good of keeping them from getting COVID.

As expected, he has gotten pushback from the teacher’s unions.

The article notes:

The school district also just introduced a stricter mask policy than it had. According to KYW-TV, the district announced last week that cloth masks, which had previously been acceptable, would no longer be enough. Students and staff would now be required to wear N95, KN95 or KF94 surgical masks.

Since children are not at high risk for complications from Covid, why are they the ones being required to wear masks? Is the masking of children nothing more than a security blanket for teachers who fear the disease?

The article concludes:

Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole defended the policy by citing the fact that many adults across the city have not yet been vaccinated and said children are doing fine with masks.

“With children of all ages…they’re quite resilient. They do very well with masking. Of course, we would all love to get rid of those masks,” Bettigole said.

“I understand the CHOP PolicyLab perspective, but when we look across the city, we still see, we have 250,000 adults who are still unvaccinated,” she added.

We know that children are not the ones in danger from the disease and are not the spreaders of the disease, so why are we masking them?

When Life Gives You Lemons…

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The idea that GoFundMe would take the money donated to the Canadian truckers and distribute it elsewhere is disturbing. However, good things are happening because of GoFundMe’s bad decision.

On Sunday, The Western Journal reported:

Last week, the website GoFundMe decided it would no longer support the Canadian Freedom Convoy, which meant $9 million in donations would never reach the Canadian truckers whose convoy transfixed freedom-lovers everywhere.

By Sunday morning, it no longer seemed to matter.

A page on the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo dedicated to the Freedom Convoy had surpassed $2.5 million in donations Sunday morning. The page said all money raised would go to the Incorporated Freedom 2022 Human Rights And Freedom Association.

The page contained a clarion call for freedom.

…The site said that donations will be used for fuel, lodgings and food to support truckers as they put pressure on Canadian leaders in Ottawa to hear the voices of the people.

“It’s a small price to pay for our freedoms.  We thank you all for your Donations and know that you are helping reshape this once beautiful country back to the way it was,” the site said.

On Friday, GoFundMe decided the protest was beyond the pale and said it would no longer send donations to the purpose for which they were intended. In it’s initial statement, the company suggested any unrefunded donor money could be spread around to GoFundMe’s chosen recipients.

In the end, after a vast outcry, GoFundMe went into reverse and decided to simply refund everyone’s donations.

There will be hardships as a result of the Canadian truckers’ strike and of the similar strikes around the world, but hopefully there will also be a breakout of freedom. Truckers move our food and other goods. We desperately need them. We don’t need them to be subject to regulations that make their job even harder than it is.

Robin Sage

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On Saturday, The Western Journal posted an article about a military training exercise planned for later this month in North and South Carolina. There are some aspects of this exercise that are troubling to me and possibly troubling to other Americans.

The article reports:

Residents of 28 counties in North and South Carolina will be hearing a lot of gunfire later this month as the army plans a major training exercise.

The Robin Sage training exercise is a final test for those wanting to join America’s Special Forces, according to a report by the Charlotte Observer published online by MSN.

From Jan. 22 through Feb. 4, the soldiers wanting to join the Special Forces will be fighting against so-called freedom fighters.

The exercise covers privately owned land in the North Carolina counties of Alamance, Anson, Bladen, Brunswick, Cabarrus, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Davidson, Guilford, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, New Hanover, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Stanly, Union, and Wake. Chesterfield, Dillon, and Marlboro counties in South Carolina are also part of the battle for control of a fictional place called Pineland.

…“These military members act as realistic opposing forces and guerrilla freedom fighters, also known as Pineland resistance movement,” the center (the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, based at Fort Bragg) said.

“To add realism … civilian volunteers throughout the state act as role players. Participation by these volunteers is crucial to the success of this training, and past trainees attest to the realism they add to the exercise,” the center said.

Our military is training on American soil to interact with American freedom fighters. There are a lot of things wrong with this picture.

A Definite Step In The Wrong Direction

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New York City has a new mayor. It was hoped that Mayor Eric Adams would change the direction of the city–the city is not the safe, wonderful tourist attraction it has been in the past. Unfortunately, one of Mayor Adams’ first steps is in the wrong direction. The Western Journal posted an article on Sunday about a recent decision by Mayor Adams.

The article reports:

American citizenship is no longer required to vote in New York City’s local elections.

Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday he supports a plan to allow non-citizens to vote in Big Apple municipal contests, saying it was the “best choice,” according to the New York Post.

The bill was passed by the City Council last month and took effect Sunday because neither Adams nor former Mayor Bill DeBlasio vetoed it, according to The New York Times.

About 800,000 people who are not U.S. citizens can now vote for New York City mayor, council races, and local ballot propositions. Although the law is aimed at legal citizens, it also allows gives the vote to participants in the Deferred Action for Childhoods Arrivals program — who were brought to the U.S. illegally as young children.

At the moment, the law does not apply to state and local elections.

The article notes:

New York City’s board of elections must develop rules to implement the plan by July, with it taking effect in the 2023 round of local elections, the Guardian reported.

There is a lawsuit that has been filed. I believe this law is unconstitutional. Hopefully, the judges who hear the case will follow the constitution in making their decision.

Politicizing What Shouldn’t Be Political

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What happened on January 6th last year was wrong. It wasn’t an insurrection by any stretch of the imagination and it wasn’t a threat to our democracy (we are not a democracy–we are a representative republic), but it was wrong. We don’t know if there were government instigators in the crowd (it seems very possible that there were), and we don’t really know a lot of the details of what happened. Much of the video from that day is still being kept from the public. We do know that the House Democrats are planning to turn the day into something reminiscent of the Paul Wellstone funeral. They do this at their own risk. The public is growing weary of the double standard on protests, and it appears that the Republicans plan on fighting back.

On Tuesday, The Western Journal reported the following:

As Democrats and their mainstream media allies lather up to commemorate Thursday’s anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion like it was the firing on Fort Sumter, House Republicans this week are accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of deliberately stonewalling the release of information about her own role in the events of the day.

And with the Democrats’ hold on power in the House looking shaky ahead of this year’s midterm elections, Pelosi’s partisans should be getting nervous.

While the committee’s clear purpose is to smear former President Donald Trump and his supporters, the country might be getting a different view of how Pelosi and her party are actually operating.

In a letter released Monday, Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis, the ranking minority member of the House Administration Committee, called out Pelosi for refusing repeatedly over the past year to cooperate with their requests for information from House officers who answer directly to the speaker’s office.

…“There is irony in the fact that at the same time House Democrats are holding witnesses in criminal contempt of Congress for raising genuine questions of legal privilege, you continue to obstruct Republican access to House records relating to the security preparedness of the Capitol complex,” Davis wrote.

“Irony” doesn’t seem to be quite the right word here, though Davis might have been trying to maintain a veneer of civility in the correspondence. “Arrogance” describes it much better. “Dishonesty,” “cynicism,” and “naked abuse of power” fit the bill as well.

It would have been nice if there had been a bi-partisan investigation into Capitol security. However, at this point that is probably impossible.

 

Good News From Haiti

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On Friday, The Western Journal reported that the missionaries kidnapped in Haiti on October 16 have escaped and been reunited with their families.

The article reports:

The entire ordeal began when a group with Christian Aid Ministries was returning from a visit to an orphanage. They were intercepted by a well-known gang, 400 Mawozo, and were kidnapped. The gang demanded $1 million apiece for their release.

According to a statement released by CAM, the missionaries were bold witnesses for their faith even as they were captured and kept in captivity. They sang hymns, recited scripture and encouraged one another as well as tried to convince their captors to repent and believe.

In November, the gang released two of the missionaries. In December, they released three more.

But on Dec. 15, after feeling “nudged” to make a break, the remaining 12 missionaries — including children and an infant — solidified a plan.

They walked for miles over the rough terrain, in gang territory, filled with brambles, with nothing to guide them but the light of the moon and their faith. It was enough.

…“After much discussion and prayer, they became solidly united that God seemed to be leading them this way. When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, filed silently to the path that they had chosen to follow, and quickly left the place that they were held despite the fact that numerous guards were close by.

This is wonderful news.

An Ordinary Citizen Would Be Arrested For This

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Falsifying evidence is a criminal offense. We are about to find out whether the laws actually do apply to the people in Congress.

On Wednesday, The Western Journal reported the following:

It’s amazing to me that California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is not in jail. This lawmaker has played it fast and loose, first during the Trump/Russia collusion investigation, which put him on the map, and next in the House impeachment inquiry of former President Donald Trump. There is no line this unethical, truth-challenged, repellent snake won’t cross in the name of politics.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis reported on Wednesday that Schiff was up to his old tricks at Monday night’s hearing of the Jan. 6 Committee. According to Davis, Schiff “claimed to have proof” that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican, texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “to instruct former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

Davis claims that Schiff misrepresented “the substance of the text message and its source.” Schiff “even doctored original text messages, which were obtained and reviewed by The Federalist in their entirety.”

The article explains the changes Representative Schiff made to the text messages:

Davis (The Federalist’s Sean Davis) explains that in addition to lying about “substance” and the “source” of the text, Schiff “even doctored the message and graphic that he displayed on screen during his statement. The full text message, which was forwarded to Meadows from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the evening of Monday, Jan. 5, was significantly longer than what Schiff read and put on screen, but Schiff erased significant portions of the text and added punctuation where there was none to give the impression that Jordan himself was tersely directing Meadows to give orders to Pence on how to handle the electoral vote certification.”

Davis continues: “The original text was written by Washington attorney and former Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and included an attachment of a four-page draft Word document drafted by Schmitz that detailed Schmitz’s legal reasoning for suggesting that Pence had the constitutional authority to object to the certification of electoral votes submitted by a handful of states. The piece that Schmitz had sent to Jordan was published at the website everylegal.vote the next day and even included the same ‘DISCUSSION DRAFT’ heading and timestamp on the document that Schmitz sent to Jordan.”

He explains that Schmitz sent this text to Jordan “on the evening of Jan. 5, including the Word document as an attachment. Schmitz then texted to Jordan a three-paragraph summary of his Word document, which Schiff sliced and diced and then attributed to Jordan.”

Would anyone like to wager on how much of the above chicanery will be reported by the mainstream media?

Poetic Justice

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On Monday, The Western Journal posted an article about the Jussie Smollett case. It seems that one of the really critical mistakes Mr. Smollett made in staging his fake hate crime was one that as an actor he should have easily avoided.

The article reports:

It’s surprising, even for a man who’s spent so much of his career in front of a camera, that Jussie Smollett was upset the most infamous moment in his life wasn’t caught on camera.

Was it his undoing? Would it have led to his downfall sooner? It’s unclear, but prosecutors say one thing foiled Smollett’s original plan to create the perfect “hate crime” — the direction of a camera on the street.

(The Western Journal was one of the first outlets to point out the holes of the Smollett case in 2019 — and we kept fighting the system after he received little more than a slap on the wrist from prosecutors who wanted the case to go away.

In testimony last week, Chicago police Detective Kimberly Murray told the court the former “Empire” actor seemed to be “upset” when he was told the attack hadn’t been recorded on camera, according to WMAQ-TV.

Smollett, who had been questioned by Murray on the morning he reported the January 2019 incident, said two men had beat him up in a racist, homophobic attack while he was returning from a sandwich run. He’s now standing trial for six counts of felony disorderly conduct after reporting what’s alleged to be a hate crime hoax — one he orchestrated thinking there would be a camera there to record it.

Murray, according to WMAQ, “said Smollett was ‘upset’ when she told him a surveillance camera in the area didn’t capture the alleged attack because it was pointed away from the scene. Murray said she explained to the actor that the cover on the pod camera makes it impossible to know which way it is pointing.”

The real clue that the attack was staged was Mr. Smollett’s claim that his attackers yelled, “This is MAGA country!” No one in Chicago who values his life is going to yell that–even if he believes it!