The temporary hijrah subsection has moved to a page of its own, located here.

War and More War.  Yesterday Zhou announced that the American Empire is still considering sending ATACMS systems to Ukraine.  That would be the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which is a tactical ballistic missile with a range of up to 190 miles and is capable of precision strikes based on its GPS based guidance system. [...] That is the US "poking the bear" as an active participant of war on Russia, while there is no responsible public discussion of our war in the US.  My take on this announcement by Zhou is that it's probably in line with the other recent escalations: This is part of an effort to bluff Russia into agreeing to a "frozen conflict" — which amounts to a NATO Ukraine.  Perhaps the idea is that the pinprick attacks inside Russia that we've been seeing will put sufficient public opinion pressure on Putin to agree to lose a war that Russia is winning.  Not gonna happen.

America Is Destined for Dictatorship.  A small internet kerfuffle kicked up several days back when conservative talker Jesse Kelly tweeted out something of an eye-opener, saying we're destined for dictatorship and that it's what we deserve. [...] Kelly is saying that, at the end of the day, America — as defined by its political institutions — is only as good as the Americans.  In President Ronald Reagan's words, liberty's "never more than one generation from extinction."  The people who founded this republic understood human nature — having lived under the misrule of a mentally defective king and the arrogant, corrupt, unaccountable state surrounding him — perhaps better than any revolutionaries in human history.  They got it.  And Jesse Kelly would say that they'd take one look at us now and marvel at how we've managed to stay free as long as we have with the manifest social dysfunction we tolerate and propagate.

Behold the DEI scam in microcosm.  It's a story that could have been written by Scott Adams.  A White person gets on her moral high horse only to be, as she sees it, stabbed in the back for trying to be an "ally."  It never pays to be an ally of people firmly situated on the Left, whether the grievance is race, gender, class, or any other category.  You will get burned.  The DEI business that the two women started made bank during the COVID DEI boom — and that is where the problems started.  Originally their business model was a 50-50 split, with [Melissa] DePino doing the books and keeping things running, and [Michelle] Saahene being the Black face of the organization.  They each did their racial kabuki theatre, but Saahene is probably right that without a Black face to front for the organization, it might not have taken off.  Saahene didn't like the split — she wanted more, because "equity." It's always "equity," isn't it?  From there things went south fast.

Obesity Industrial Complex pushes junk food on children so they grow up to become pharmaceutical junkies.  People might be living longer today on average than they did centuries ago, but does a longer life mean a healthier life?  The answer to that question is a resounding no, and the reason has to do with the machinations of the Obesity Industrial Complex.  In a recent episode of "Breaking Points," journalist James Li presented evidence to show that the food industry is conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry, the media, medicine and the government to keep everyone fat, sick and ultimately addicted to pharmaceutical drugs.  America's obesity epidemic seems to get worse every year to the point that even very young children are blowing up like balloons before they even reach puberty.  This sets them on track for a lifetime of illness and drug use, not to mention the newfound transgender craze that lures them into mutilation and debauchery as well.  According to the "authorities," the nation's fatness problem has nothing to do with unhealthy dietary and lifestyle norms.  Instead, it is all genetic, we are told — but this is false.

A Lot Has to Change Quickly for Republicans to Have a Chance in 2024.  To be clear, I am writing this as a pollster, not as a politician or partisan.  Here's the bottom line.  As it gets closer to the summer of 2023, I would rate the Democrats as more likely to again take/keep the White House.  They might even hold on to the Senate and re-take the House.  This is a tough message to deliver to the Republican faithful at a time when inflation is way up, millions have crossed the border illegally, China and Russia both pose true threats to international stability, and crime has spiraled in many areas of the nation.

What to Do and Why It Matters.  If you have not already done so (or it has been a while since you have), please read and enjoy Claire Wolfe's 101 Things to Do 'til the Revolution, a book she "dedicated to you, the enemy of the state," a full twenty-five years before the federal government declared war on half the country, started taking J6 scalps, and openly embraced political persecution.  In her subversive classic, published during Bill Clinton's presidency, Wolfe begins, "America is at that awkward stage.  It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."  From the introductory dedication alone, she nails our current predicament swimmingly with a few salient points: [...]

Leftist Cancellation is the New Rite of Passage.  If you're on the Right and the Left cancels you, three things can happen.  The first is you lose your job, your platform, or your relevancy.  The most striking examples are people who literally aren't around to defend themselves.  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and of course, Robert E. Lee.  Or more recently, John Wayne and Dr. Seuss.  Anyone could be a target.  This is because their existence or their memory could commit the crime of reminding Americans of their traditional values or history.  The second thing that can happen is that when some try to appease the mob by apologizing or promising to "change my ways," the Left still will double down to totally destroy them.  By apologizing they aided in their own cancellation.  People most vulnerable to this are those dependent on one platform or job to maintain their relevancy. [...] The third thing that can happen is relatively new.  This is where people on the Right are targeted by the Left and for all intents are cancelled, but they re-emerge stronger than ever.  One key to this is that they never apologized.

Don't pay Congress if there's a shutdown.  The proposal in the title is the underlying premise of a new bill that was introduced in Congress last week.  The bill is called the "No Pay for Congress During Default or Shutdown Act" and it has both a Democrat and Republican sponsor.  The title really sums up the legislation.  If Congress fails to pass a budget and keep the lights on, congressional paychecks would be suspended.  It was introduced by Democrat Abigail Spanberger of Virginia in partnership with Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.  The basic selling point that Spanberger is pitching is, if you are a working American, "if you don't do your job, you don't get paid."  So Congress shouldn't either.

Fade to Black in Ukraine.  Try to imagine Mr. Zelensky's predicament.  Mighty America and redoubtable Europe conned the former comedian to thinking that if he went along with a genius scheme to ruin Russia and knock Vlad Putin off the global gameboard, his sad-sack country would be transformed into something like Ukro-Disneyworld, while he, Mr. Z, would be lionized and made rich beyond his wildest imaginings.  His backup was the greatest hegemonic power the world has ever seen.  The game was called Let's You and Him Fight.

The New Cold War.  Russia's targeting of Ukrainian civilians and China's genocidal imprisonment and brutalization of a million Uyghurs shows that nothing has changed here in Cold War II.  For those on the front lines, this so-called "Cold" War is hot, horrific, and massively murderous.  As for Iran, while its genocidal ambitions remain presently unrealized, its state media make relentlessly clear Iran's intent to annihilate every last one of Israel's seven million Jews.  Iran's having surrounded Israel with heavily armed terror syndicates, along with its unceasing rush to build deployable nuclear weapons, makes clear the extreme gravity of this threat.  The readiness of all three countries to unleash and carry out genocides is not just a moral issue of massive proportions.  It is also a geopolitical signal of great significance — namely, that these countries will stop at virtually nothing in their pursuit of global dominion.

The Truth Tellers.  When Fox News unceremoniously and inexplicably ousted its most popular host Tucker Carlson last month, people naturally speculated as to why.  Was it because of his reporting about the events of January 6, 2021?  Or the corrupt relationship between Big Pharma and the media?  Or was it a condition of the Dominion settlement with Fox as revealed this week by the O'Keefe Media Group?  Whatever the reason, one thing was clear:  Tucker spoke truth and had to be stopped.  The clock started ticking the moment he questioned — perhaps one too many times — the institutional narratives meant to herd us into groupthink.  That, coupled with the fact he had a national audience in the millions and was hitting key target demographics — bringing eyeballs and ratings to Fox that its competitors could only dream of having — meant Tucker was the dominant voice in cable news.  In this bizarre, anti-reality age in which we find ourselves, it's frankly amazing that he lasted as long as he did.

Congressional Democrats beg Biden to nullify their existence.  This week, Heaven's Gate came to mind as I watched members of Congress line up to take a step that runs against every assumption of self-preservation in Madisonian democracy:  They sought to make themselves nonentities.  They called upon President Joe Biden to reject their very institutional existence, discard the separation of powers and unilaterally borrow and spend federal money.  At one event, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a letter to Biden on behalf of himself and nine Democratic senators "to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution."  He was joined in this by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), among others.  Obviously, these are not Nike-wearing cultists, but that only makes their actions all the more inexplicable.  These are rational leaders whose desire to nullify their own existence would have seemed entirely implausible to the Framers.

Making state constitutions harder to amend: Good idea, bad timing.  The Constitution is notoriously hard to amend. [...] An article in Monday's Wall Street Journal chronicled how some state officials are trying to make their amendment processes harder.  It is a good idea.  But before articulating why, I also must admit it is a terribly timed one.  As the article relates, the officials wishing to change the state amendment process are almost entirely from one party (Republican) and wish to do so mostly because of one issue (abortion). In state after state, including Republican-leaning ones, voters over the past year have bypassed state legislatures to enshrine abortion rights.  Thus, the attempt to change the amendment process now clearly smacks of a partisan gaming of the system, an attempt to change general rules to protect particular policy outcomes.  It also smacks of hypocrisy.  Conservatives used the same processes in the 2000s through measures banning gay marriage.  Only now, when the rules aren't yielding desired results, do they question those rules' legitimacy.

Does ADHD even exist?  This week the BBC's Panorama programme quite rightly exposed some very worrying private clinics.  In online consultations, staff had diagnosed a BBC reporter with ADHD — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — despite an in-person, and far longer, assessment by an NHS psychiatrist concluding that he didn't have the condition.  The clinics, while charging rather plump fees, seemed to have an extremely relaxed attitude towards diagnosing this increasingly common complaint.  It is a huge issue.  ADHD was once mainly confined to children but is now spreading rapidly into the adult populations of the Western world.  The clinics, one of them working on behalf of the overloaded NHS, were also willing to prescribe powerful stimulant drugs on the basis of this.

Big Pharma's Destruction of American Journalism.  Tucker Carlson was abruptly dismissed from Fox News sometime between Saturday, 4-22-23, and Monday, 4-24-23 (likely closer to Monday).  Many believe the ten-minute segment he made (on 4-19-23) caused Fox News to cancel the most popular news host on national television despite it significantly damaged the network's financial revenue.  Given the importance of what he said here, I hope his firing results in many more people seeing that segment, and I hope if this article speaks to your heart, you will help make that happen.  [Video clip]

Let the Blue Cities Die.  The Democrat cities are urine-soaked hellholes that reek of pot where criminals stalk unmolested while the full fury of what is supposed to be the law hangs over the head of any citizen who dares do something about it, and that's good.  The idiots who live there voted for turning their urban landscapes into petri dishes of social pathologies, and they should enjoy the full benefits of their decisions.  We normal people should avoid these socialist wastelands and elect legislators to Congress who will starve them of the federal funds that enable their decline.  In red states, our legislators should wage warfare on the blue tumors in their midst lest they metastasize outside the city limits.

The Fed Is Broke And It's Cooking The Books.  Behind closed doors, the report is already making the rounds in expert circles: if you follow the rules of sound commercial accounting, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) has lost its equity and is, as common language would have it, bankrupt.  What happened? [...] The Fed currently holds around $8.5 trillion in debt securities on its balance sheet.  A price drop of just, let's say, 5 percent on this debt portfolio would result in an accounting loss (an "unrealized loss") of $425 billion, reducing the Fed's equity capital by the same amount.  (It should be noted here that if the Fed held the securities to maturity and the borrowers repaid them in full, the accounting loss would disappear by maturity.)  Any conventional company would be in dire straits under these circumstances. (By the way, failing to report a loss would be a punishable offense in many countries.)  However, the Fed, like any other central bank, is not a conventional company.  Rather, it has the state monopoly of money production, which makes it truly special.

Tolerance Is Overrated: It's Time To Start Gatekeeping American Society Again.  Leftists argue for tolerance of aberrant behaviors while admonishing normal human tribal and biological reactions.  They have a vision for the world, and certain beliefs are not accepted within that Utopian fantasy.  The basis of the leftist religion is not a deity, it is self perception.  They worship themselves and think the collective is valuable so long as it reaffirms their identity.  Anything that might restrict their pursuit of self aggrandizement is considered oppressive.  This is why they often argue in favor of moral relativism.  They have a delusion in their mind of what they are; they see themselves as a fantastic gift to the world.  But, if people are allowed to judge them on their moral failings then they will always be reminded that they are not all that impressive.  So, they seek to control the views and speech of others.

The War on America's Babies.  Our problems in health care can no longer be framed as Democrats versus Republicans.  It's now the Health Care Swamp versus the rest of us.  That Swamp filled with captured regulators and the jumbo corporations that profit when our children are vulnerable or sick.  Babies reliant on formula for their survival, either because breastfeeding has not been possible or effective, or because they're adopted, are some of the most heartbreaking victims of regulatory incompetence.  You may not realize that the critical shortage of baby formula that made headlines two years ago is still in effect.  Initially the news covered reasonable complaints of parents, and Facebook support groups like "Baby Formula Search and Swap: Parents Helping Parents" cropped up, but these grassroots work-arounds are no substitute for a regulatory enterprise doing its job.

Putin has devastated Russia.  I am torn on the Ukraine war.  I think Putin is 100% in the wrong and that Ukraine fighting in self-defense is both just and generally good for the West.  I also believe that we have taken our eye off the much more important conflict, still a Cold War, with China.  The fate of Ukraine is a moral issue but not of strategic importance to the West, whatever hype is used to gin up our support.  Putin's army is done, and it is clear that it didn't have far to fall even before the invasion.  The Russian army is, if anything, even more ineffectual and corrupt than the old Soviet army.  It literally cannot feed and clothe its own troops, and in some cases, it cannot arm them.  It currently poses no threat other than nuclear to any NATO country.

Why I'm Not a Republican.  We no longer have a liberal Democrat Party and a conservative Republican Party.  We have a far-left Democrat Party bullied by Marxist adolescents and a weak divided Republican Party.  There are a handful of good conservatives in the Republican Party but the "leadership" and too many other elected Republicans, are only interested in cashing checks, putting on make-up for the camera, "losing gracefully", asking their donors what they're required to do, taking pictures with birds, confirming leftist justices that don't know what a woman is, fawning over the Messiah, betraying their voters and, of course, stabbing other Republicans, generally the few with a backbone, in the back.

Is The Federal Reserve Trying To Cause An Economic Depression?  Even though banks are collapsing, the commercial real estate market is imploding, home sales are plunging, and large companies are laying off workers all over America, the Federal Reserve just decided to raise interest rates even higher.  This is nothing less than economic malpractice.  They know that higher rates are crushing the economy, but they apparently believe that more pain is needed.  Officials at the Fed just hiked rates another 25 basis points, and they are now the highest that they have been since August 2007.

America's empire is bankrupt.  Empires rise whenever a nation becomes powerful enough to dominate other nations and drain them of wealth.  They've thrived as far back as records go and they'll doubtless thrive for as long as human civilisations exist.  America's empire came into being in the wake of the collapse of the British Empire, during the fratricidal European wars of the early 20th century.  Throughout those bitter years, the role of global hegemon was up for grabs, and by 1930 or so it was pretty clear that Germany, the Soviet Union or the US would end up taking the prize.  In the usual way, two contenders joined forces to squeeze out the third, and then the victors went at each other, carving out competing spheres of influence until one collapsed.  When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the US emerged as the last empire standing.

Did Zelenskyy get Tucker Carlson fired?  There is nothing inherently nefarious about this sort of thing.  It would be odd if he didn't try to influence coverage of the war.  Just as coaches in sports, one of the jobs of world leaders is to "work the refs" in order to get better outcomes for their team.  Of course, one of the jobs of the refs is to ignore the coaches as much as possible because their job is inherently in conflict with the desires of the coaches.  So what is at issue is not Zelenskyy's attempt to shape the coverage at Fox, but rather whether Murdoch was unduly influenced by the pitch.

Kennedy Jr. is a Trojan Horse.  Commentators on the right tend to suffer the Bush Syndrome of wanting love and respect from the enemies of America we call the left.  This explains the praise of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., who is challenging Biden for the presidential nomination.  I warn readers that Biden is not Kennedy's target.  It's Trump.  Democrats want a Pretend Populist to keep him from winning re-election.

On Race and Crime, a Counterfactual Narrative.  On April 13, 2023, at around 10 P.M., 16-year-old Ralph Yarl went to the wrong address in a Kansas City residential neighborhood to pick up his younger brothers.  Yarl rang the doorbell, summoning the 84-year-old homeowner, Andrew Lester, from his bed.  Lester, who lived alone and who appears from photographs to be in the early stages of dementia, grabbed his handgun and went to the door.  He became "scared to death," he told the police, when he saw the larger Yarl pulling at the exterior storm door handle.  (Yarl denies trying to open the door.)  Lester shot Yarl, once in the head and once in the arm, through the storm door.  Thankfully, Yarl will likely survive the horrifying attack.  Every news outlet that covered the shooting led with the race of Yarl and of Lester.  Yarl was inevitably identified as a "Black" teenager and Lester as a "white" homeowner.  The Kansas City district attorney validated the race narrative.  The shooting had a "racial component," the prosecutor said, without offering evidence.  (The DA has charged Lester with assault in the first degree because the potential maximum sentence — life in prison — is higher than that for attempted murder.)

Why SVB's meltdown shouldn't make you panic.  Silicon Valley Bank grew deposits by $100 billion in a year and a half.  That is the first wave in a perfect storm.  The problem or opportunity originated from easy money with which the Federal Reserve flooded the economy (printing $9 trillion via Quantitative Easing).  SVB depositors were high-tech recipients of government spending on ESG and DIE projects.  Those deposits are considered hot, subject to withdrawal at a moment's notice.  SVB's next mistake was to mismatch volatile deposits by investing in long-term bonds.  They invested those deposits in ten-year Treasuries yielding 1.6%.  Then SVB execs and bank examiners were distracted by meaningless woke activity; they spent more time on social justice than on bank fundamentals.

Tucker Carlson is Right: It's about Evil.  Prior to being fired by Fox News, Tucker Carlson spoke to a Heritage Foundation audience.  Carlson's remarks were seminal.  He identified the clash between traditional America and the Left as rising to an entirely new and ominous level.  We've moved beyond mere politics and policy differences, Carlson claimed.  The conflict is with a Left that has increasingly embraced evil.  That's hard to accept.  Most Americans don't want to regard other Americans as evil.  But the evidence is abundant and growing.  Maybe Carlson's bold assertion was a reason why the Murdochs canned him?  The Murdochs are quintessential players.  Their interests aren't served when their network's marquee personality infers that a civilizational clash is underway.

RFK Jr.  Slams Dems for Rigging the System.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to give the Democrat establishment fits, and it's wonderful to see.  Just when the far-Left authoritarians who control the party thought that they had their entire membership (with the partial exception of Joe Manchin) marching in lockstep, along comes RFK Jr., daring to think his own thoughts.  As a scion of the nation's most celebrated political family, Kennedy is hard to ignore altogether, but the Democrat leadership is doing its best.  On Sunday, in what must be a first for a Democrat presidential candidate, RFK even appeared [...] to denounce the Democrat establishment's efforts to sabotage his candidacy and make sure that Old Joe Biden coasts to renomination.

Russia Appears to Be in Very Bad Shape.  Recently Dr. Bastiat initiated a discussion about Russia with this post titled "Pretending to Be Mystified by the Obvious."  Nicholas Eberstadt was mentioned in the post and this reminded me of a podcast that Eberstadt participated in about a month ago.  In that podcast, Eberstadt mentioned that Russia has managed to have a society with European levels of education and Haitian levels of life expectancy, at least for 15-year-old males.

Jack Teixeira Isn't the Only Person Who Shouldn't Have a Security Clearance.  ith the recent arrest of Airman First Class Jack Douglas Teixeira for mishandling classified material, we are all left wondering how such a thing could happen.  A thorough investigation will follow, but we have too many people with clearances who do not need them.  We also have too many programs and operations that are unnecessarily classified, and far too many people with clearances have unnecessary access.  I've listened to the pundits cry out with incredulity at how a 21-year-old could access classified materials.  The truth is that it is more common than rare for a 21-year-old to have such access.  Most recruits for military service are between the ages of 18 [and] 22, and many are assigned to positions that require clearances.  There are not many 30-year-old recruits signing up for military service.

The Very Bad Wizards of the Banking System.  [Scroll down]  [W]hy do banking industry regulators need to reassure depositors that "the U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation" if the U.S. banking system is actually "resilient and on a solid foundation"?  Does the banking system merely appear to be in a state of disarray?  Or are crashing banks and billion-dollar bailouts just the way things go?  It's interesting to note the joint press release doesn't specify which "financial crisis" spurred "reforms that ... ensured better safeguards for the banking industry."  Did they mean the recent SVB/ Signature bank bailouts?  Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX $32-billion crypto exchange implosion?  The 2007-2009 "Global Financial Crisis"?  Bernie Madoff's $80-billion Ponzi scheme?  Or any of the long list of financial crises that have occurred over the past hundred years under the not so keen oversight of the federal regulatory apparatus?

Okay, What About Ukraine's Ongoing Infatuation with Nazis?  Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, where the American dollars are crisp and clean, has just dodged a bullet.  This one didn't come from Russia; the shot was self-inflicted.  Mayor Vitali Klitschko overruled the city council and a popular vote of city dwellers to prevent the naming of a street after a World War II-era Nazi collaborator.  The European Jewish Press reported Wednesday that the city "wanted to name a street after Volodymyr Kubiyovych, a Nazi collaborator and SS official," until Klitschko, apparently mindful of how bad this looks in the West, stepped in and put a kibosh on the plan.  Until his intervention, everything was going swimmingly:  the Jerusalem Post reported last Tuesday that according to Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, "a street in the Ukrainian capital will be renamed following a motion passed by the city council, and will bear the name of Volodymyr Kubiyovych, who during the Holocaust was heavily involved in the formation of the Waffen-SS Galizien, a Nazi military force made up of Ukrainian volunteers."

Both American Political Parties Have Adopted Lenin's Strategy for the Destruction of Capitalism.  Ironically, uncontrolled spending and the massive assault on capitalism are the products of our irresponsible democracy.  There are three critical points.  First, the Democrat party made an epochal ideological shift toward egalitarianism.  For years the Democrat elite and party leaders have displayed their distaste for capitalism, fracturing the country's moral consensus.  Second, the Republican Party opted, for the most part, to ignore the ideological challenge.  Third, the American voters, who are dumb enough to elect untutored graduates of American universities that are uninformed and poorly read; a few have even earned notoriety for inconceivable stupidity.  Some of them, aware of self-worthlessness, adopted Marxism and can hardly contain their awe and envy at the American enterprise and question its moral validity.  The others are pedestrian opportunists with no intellectual basis and, as such, going along just to get reelected.  Since 1971 when the gold standard was abandoned, the Democrat and Republican administrations, with the support of the House and Senate, have been replaying Lenin's strategy for the downfall of capitalism, spending, and printing money at unprecedented levels.

About that New York Times Story Concerning the "Online Leak" of U.S. Ukraine and Geopolitical Plans.  First, the story surfaces from the New York Times.  What does that tell us?  It tells us the stakeholders in a background narrative surrounding the issue as constructed are domestic intelligence interests.  If there was a State Dept stakeholder interest, the story would have been presented by CNN.  If there was a U.S. foreign intelligence operation stakeholder interest, the story would have surfaced in the Washington Post.  The story surfaces in the New York Times, indicating a U.S. domestic intelligence interest; and the story is sourced directly to the White House via "senior Biden administration officials."  What does that mean?  It means the narrative that flows from the story has a direction to shape opinion from the perspective of U.S. government domestic public relations.  It means the narrative is intended to sway a domestic audience with a motive toward something else.  Secondly, and in full alignment with the first point, the centerpiece of the story is focused on a leak that surfaces in "social media."  This fits perfectly with the domestic intelligence stakeholders (DHS, National Security Council, etc).  We know domestic intelligence operates in the backbone of social media platforms.  An example is DHS and domestic Intelligence Community (IC) work as outlined in the Twitter files.

The war on those with good credit.  Here's a story that hasn't drawn nearly enough attention yet.  A new change being driven by the Biden administration's Federal Housing Authority will cause new fees and increased interest rates for home mortgages.  Starting on May 1st, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer discounted mortgage rates to prospective home buyers with "riskier credit backgrounds" (meaning people with poor credit ratings) to enable them to qualify for a mortgage.  But that will generate more losses in the system and that money will have to be made up somehow.  So people holding lower-cost mortgages because they have a good credit rating will be charged more, leading to their monthly mortgage payments going up.

What Does Chat GPT and AI Mean for Opinion Writers?  [Scroll down]  One of the biggest concerns with Chat GPT is the potential for misuse.  Because Chat GPT can generate text that sounds human-like, it can be used to spread propaganda or misinformation on a large scale.  Additionally, malicious actors could use Chat GPT to generate spam or phishing messages that appear legitimate, increasing the risk of cyber attacks and fraud.

A Trump-DeSantis Ticket Can Win in 2024.  The Democratic Party and President Joe Biden are wrecking the country.  Their ongoing economic blunders, perverse cultural agenda, and corrupt foreign policy, if unchecked in the near future, will turn the United States into a dystopian nightmare comparable to Venezuela.  This can be averted if former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis run together on the 2024 Republican presidential ballot.  Neither can win in 2024 without the other, even if the Democratic alternative is an unpopular incumbent whose running mate is a running joke.  DeSantis can't win without Trump because the latter is all but certain to capture the Republican nomination.  Trump can't win without DeSantis because his legal difficulties — no matter how illegitimate — will turn off many of the independent voters who will decide the outcome of the 2024 election.

Ukraine's Nazi Problem Gets Worse.  There has been considerable concern since before the start of the war in Ukraine about the influence of National Socialists, or Nazis, there, and now it has gotten considerably worse.  Rather than apologize for or at very least ignore the nation's past ties to National Socialism, the city council in the nation's capital of Kyiv is reportedly considering naming a street after a National Socialist collaborator who actually served in the SS during the Holocaust, Volodymyr Kubiyovych.  Apparently the Ukrainian government is so certain that Western aid will continue that it feels no hesitation about flaunting its openness to National Socialism.

Everything We Have Been Told About the War in Ukraine is a Lie.  We have been told since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine that it is not a proxy war between the United States and Russia.  We've been told that there are no U.S. forces deployed in the war zone, and we have been told that Ukraine is winning.  That is the narrative that has been pushed by the media and our government on repeat for more than a year.  But the leaked documents completely shatter that narrative.  The leak revealed that there are U.S. forces deployed in Ukraine.  In fact, this was confirmed on Wednesday by John Kirby in an interview with Fox News.  This is not only a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.  We are quite literally in the middle of a hot war with Russia.  A war which has not been approved by Congress as our laws would require.  That makes it a crime.  The documents also reveal that Ukrainian forces are in dire straits. [...] Furthermore, just two weeks ago Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made the assertion that Ukraine was winning the war while he was testifying before Congress.  That is not true.  Ukraine is not winning the war and Austin knew that when he made a claim to the contrary.  Lying before Congress is a crime.  And now the administration is asking the media to cover all of this up.

Air Force Academy Cadets Don't Know What Their Oath to the Constitution Means.  U.S. Air Force Academy cadets reportedly don't understand what the oath they take to uphold the Constitution even means.  Apparently, the U.S. military is so busy implementing pro-LGBTQ initiatives and critical race theory programs that it forgot to teach cadets what their job is as American servicemen and women. [...] Of course, a lack of understanding of the Constitution because of bad or insufficient education on the topic isn't, unfortunately, limited to the Air Force Academy.  Many if not most conservatives absolutely believe in unconstitutional programs like Medicare nowadays.  The point is that, whether leftist or conservative, the overwhelming majority of Americans pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they believe in following — most without even knowing that's what they're doing.  America has the greatest Constitution in history, and a significant part of our problems in this nation today comes from the government not abiding by the Constitution.

Confused About MRNA Vaccines in Meat?  That's Exactly How They Want It.  When Holly Jones introduced Missouri House Bill 1169 there was industry pushback.  HB 1169 is a tiny little bill; all it does is mandate reporting on whether or not food products have been treated with gene therapy products.  Nothing is banned.  The bill simply empowers consumers to make the best choices for themselves and their families.  Free markets can't function when people can't make informed choices.  The past three years have made many people deeply distrustful of the expert class; they don't want their food being tampered with.  They feel strongly enough about avoiding mRNA-treated meat to be willing to look around and shop carefully.  HB 1169 would give these people the knowledge to make informed decisions, and that's exactly what the pharmaceutical giants and industry lobbyists don't want.  Industry lobbyists want things to be vague.  They want the general public confused and willing to do whatever "the experts" tell them.

Russia's Rise.  The West's sweeping sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine are shaping up to be the West's most monumental miscalculation in modern history.  The sanctions have not brought the Russian economy to its knees, as was widely predicted.  Instead, it's the Western economies that are reeling, their economic growth all but stopped.  Many of them are simultaneously suffering from both high inflation and energy shortages.  Russia, meanwhile, is not only surviving but thriving, acquiring more potency and prestige throughout Asia, Africa and South America than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Review of 'Grid Down, Power Up'.  Dennis Quaid went viral in early April after he appeared on Fox News to promote his documentary "Grid Down, Power Up."  So, I decided to watch it, and now I can't sleep.  The documentary, narrated by Quaid, focuses on the vulnerabilities facing the American power grid and the risks posed by failures to upgrade facilities to withstand physical attacks from terrorists and our immediate cosmos.  While it is definitely not the best-made documentary I've ever seen, it is arguably the most important piece of informative entertainment in modern history.  "Grid failure is a real and imminent threat, a devastatingly deadly occurrence leading to life-threatening shortages of heat, food, and water.  If protective measures are not taken, we will experience catastrophic failures leaving citizens in states of starvation, death, destruction, and darkness for months," the documentary's official website describes, and it's spot on.

Treat Student-Loan Borrowing Like Medicare.  Irecently turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare.  Like other medical insurance, Medicare requires providers who accept reimbursement to agree to a set rate for the services they provide.  Since Medicare is one of the largest healthcare payers in the country, it uses its size to negotiate very low reimbursement rates, sometimes even lower than the cost to provide services.  Capping reimbursements for services is one of the reasons people have health insurance; the leverage of a big insurance provider helps to keep costs low.  If Medicare paid whatever the provider billed, the system would soon go bankrupt.  And yet, that is exactly what the Federal Student Loan program does with higher-education institutions.

The Return to Enumerated Powers America.  America must return to the pre-"progressive" era of the early 20th century.  American government must be reduced to the size it was for the first century and a half of its existence, it must be restored to the ideal government that the founders laid out in the Constitution, and must never again be allowed to go outside of the size or scope that the founders envisioned.  Government, in essence, must return to only performing the duties that the Constitution explicitly demands and allows them, and absolutely no more.  It must be a government that looks like the one described by the Enumerated Powers in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution.

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  We must push all the toothpaste back into the tube!  This dream of returning to the government we had in 1910, while admirable, is just not gonna happen.  Too many people have tasted power and won't give it up.  The system is very comfortable for thousands of other people with less power, and they don't want to rock the boat, either.  If the welfare state were dissolved overnight, millions of surly freeloaders would immediately start an armed rebellion.  Even if the federal government could be put back in its cage, every politician to the left of Ted Cruz would immediately start to "push the envelope" back outside its prescribed limits — for personal gain, as usual.  The fifty formerly-united States (in my opinion) cannot be salvaged as a unit.  There is only some hope that a few solidly conservative states can survive on their own.  In any event, it's going to be messy.

Is It Time to Panic Yet Over the State of America?  The economy is a mess with daily news stories about another country abandoning the U.S. dollar for trade and commerce, favoring the Russian ruble, Chinese yuan, or gold, but no longer the U.S. dollar.  What happens as these countries, now making up most of the world population, start dumping dollars?  Today's current inflation will look the good old days.  As these dollars otherwise held and used by many countries flood back into the U.S., "too many dollars chasing too few goods" will go into overdrive, fueling hyperinflation, destroying the savings and pensions of most Americans, leading to economic misery as we see in Argentina or Venezuela.  Politicians are oblivious, those of both parties continuing to throw money into a losing proxy war in Ukraine, adding to a national debt that we soon will be unable to even pay the interest on.  Is that panic time?

A Sober Look at the State of Our Beloved Country.  Young people tend to look to the government because they are less familiar with the virtue of self-reliance, which has been under attack by the left for many years.  Many people believe they can't manage things by themselves.  Democrats and government officials encourage this idea.  A new level of dependency is developing, and a sense of surrender to big government seems to be growing among some conservatives, too.  But rather than a "conservative" program of more government services, what Republicans need to offer — and it's a lot more work — is a re-education in the great American virtues of self-reliance and independence, the stuff of the old western movies, as well as the classical and Christian virtues.

Why a desperate America may soon annex its 51st state.  US government finances are appallingly bad.  The national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, annual deficits run into the trillions of dollars with no end in sight, and major trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will soon run out of money.  Political incompetence is mind-blowing; politicians fail to be able to even identify problems, let alone understand them, let alone reach compromises to solve them.  Ditto for central bank incompetence.  These people simply cannot understand how, by keeping interest rates at zero for nearly a decade and conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air, they engineered record high inflation.  And they also fail to understand how their actions to 'fix' inflation are causing widespread havoc in the economy and financial system.  Social divisions across the country are extreme.  Censorship and cancel culture prevail, and corporations now wag their fingers at their own customers to "be better".  The education system is in pitiful shape, with many politicians and school board officials turning classrooms into activist training camps.  The population is terribly unhealthy.  Obesity and drug addiction are epidemics.  Plus there's an obvious mental health crisis that drives far too many people to commit horrific acts of violence on innocent people, including children.  National security is in decline.  Military readiness is down, yet top officials seem more concerned about diversity and inclusion rather than the ability to prevail in war.  The rule of law has been perverted, including for political purposes and self-aggrandizement.

This Is Why We Need Other Countries To Fight Our Wars For Us.  Right now, the U.S. Army is actually shrinking because so few young people are being recruited.  Interest in serving in the military has plummeted dramatically, and meanwhile the percentage of our young adults that actually qualify to serve has fallen to a depressingly low level.  According to a recent Pentagon study, 77 percent of all Americans from age 17 to age 24 are ineligible to serve in the military for one reason or another.  That is a pathetically low figure, and it is the main reason why we need other countries to fight our wars for us at this point.  Just look at Ukraine.  We are providing the funding, the equipment, the ammunition and the intelligence, but they are providing the warm bodies.

We send politicians to stop the madness of government, but nothing changes.  Why?  Washington DC is a Potemkin village.  We focus on the visible but the constructs that impact us do not originate from the false facade.  There's something behind that facade, and what we see is — entirely — a facade.  That's why sending the politicians doesn't change the outcome.  To get to the core of the issue, we must first stop looking at the Potemkin village and instead look behind it.  Legislation, rules, regulations and laws are not written by congress.  The paperwork comes from the assembly of legal and lobbyist foot soldiers on K-Street.  That's where the ink is put to the paper and the legislative outcomes first originate.  K-Street is where the corporations, multinationals and financial organizations control the process.  If the corporations behind the DC facade want to shift the money, they proactively write the rules, regulations and laws that steer the actual policy outcomes to their financial target or destination.  Their wealth expands and they reward the participants, the politicians.  Most of the entry level politicians are oblivious to where the corporations have proactively moved; however, a few of the politicians — the leadership groups — know exactly where the destination of the legislative intent is going.  The latter are tenured in the power structure behind the facade.

Australia shows the devastating power that modern banks have over people's lives.  My parents were loyal to Australia's Commonwealth Bank way beyond what was logical.  It took a lot of evidence from the bank's own actions for them even to consider changing banks, and even then, it was emotionally painful for them.  The reality is that banks have been appalling for a very long time, and their pathology has been progressing exponentially lately, as they no longer try to hide their craven intent.  Here in Australia, for a $10.00 "overdraft" that exists for less than 24 hours, banks charge $25.00.  They call this a "fee" because, if they acknowledged that it's an interest charge, that rate per annum would be over 90,000%!  Banks block our accounts for any number of reasons.  My favorite is because a government bureaucracy decides the accountholder transgressed.  As we all know, in the world of bureaucracy, everyone is guilty until proven innocent.  Getting access to the account again is an uphill battle.  You must spend time and money proving that the money you earned and that you put into the bank for safekeeping is, in fact, your property.

Kamala In Africa: What Could Go Wrong?  During the first Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa was red hot with proxy wars.  With China and Russia continuing to increase their footprints in the region, Cold War II looks like a sequel, perhaps with a different ending.  Given the consequences of losing Africa to despotic nations, it makes sense that the United States is strengthening alliances there.  This past week, Kamala promised $139 million in direct assistance to Ghana and $100 million to help counter armed Islamic militants in the region.  Presently, Ghana is experiencing an armed inter-tribal conflict between the non-Muslim Kusasi and the Muslim Mamprusi, who have attracted Al Qaeda.

End of the Republic:  Is the title of this piece apocalyptic hyperbole?  I wish it were.  But everyone in the country and most of the people in the wide world know that Donald Trump has not actually been indicted for the crime of giving hush money to a prostitute.  He has been indicted for the crime of opposing the Leftist elites and challenging their control over the political system.  For the first time in American history, a politician — indeed, a front-running presidential candidate — has been indicted in order to destroy his political chances.  Americans used to take pride in the fact that such things didn't happen in the United States of America.  But that United States of America is over.

On Little Men and Big Men: Donald Trump Is the Next President.  The struggle now being waged for the soul, and likely the survival, of the nation is generally understood as a political and cultural battle between competing visions of the future, a globalist and technocratic dispensation against a national and populist resistance.  It is being fought in the institutions of governance and frequently on the streets.  It involves the diverse agencies of power, legislative interventions, radical interpretations of the Constitution, media censorship, and the weaponization of law on one side; on the other, an originalist reading of the Constitution, the Rule of Law, an impartial justice system, and the defense of the democratic order.  But the issue can also be simplified as a battle between a modest platoon of political actors we may describe as "big men" and a veritable army of "little men."  This is not to suggest that little men are harmless.  A little man can wield "a bow and arrows," brandish a dagger, fire a gun, raid homes, or pass criminal legislation in spades.  Indeed, powerful organizations are replete with little men.

Everyone Is Just Pretending Nothing's Wrong.  The fact is that I just don't care about how the bowels of the system works.  I don't need to care.  All I need to know is that money creation as a method of "solving" recessions can't continue in perpetuity: the dollar amounts necessary for bailouts become astronomical, too quickly, and inflation becomes a pressing issue.  Then, as we are now, Central Bankers get stuck between an "inflation vs. recession" rock and hard place.  It's a flawed system that once exploited a loophole (money printing) to slap band-aids on problems.  We then thought we could do it in perpetuity to keep ourselves and voters consistently comfortable by presenting the illusion that everything had done "back to normal" — and now we're finally going to have to deal with very uncomfortable consequences of our actions.

How Much Longer Can Western Governments Spit on Their People?  Labor strikes and fiery riots dominate French news after King Macron's imperial decision to raise the nation's retirement age without any vote from parliament.  In reaction to spiraling inflation, German transportation workers shut down the country on Monday in one of the largest European walkouts in decades.  In the Netherlands, a new anti-globalist, pro-farmer political party fighting back against the World Economic Forum's climate change — obsessed "Great Reset" agenda just dominated Dutch elections. [...] Clearly, revolution is in the air.  If you thought incendiary political turmoil threatened to combust only in the United States these days, then you have missed the growing protest movements throughout the collective West.  From belated pushback against government COVID tyranny in New Zealand and Australia to percolating hostility across the European continent stemming from the ruling class's "Build Back Better" pipe dreams, State-sanctioned illegal immigration, and costly "green" energy — induced inflation, there is a powder keg of popular resentment against governing authorities just one spark away from a history-altering explosion.

Are rich people dishonest?  Why do so many people believe that rich people are dishonest?  It is because of "zero-sum beliefs."  This is the view that the rich are only rich because they have taken something from the poor. [...] I suspect that a majority of prison inmates are adherents of zero-sum beliefs.  They believed they could only get rich by robbing a bank, breaking into someone's home or cheating someone.  But many intellectuals also imagine economic life as a zero-sum game.  Accordingly, rich countries should give some of their wealth to poor countries, and rich people should give aid to the poor.  From this point of view, it is only because the rich are so selfish and mean-spirited that so many people are still poor.

Tim Burchett Spoke The Truth About School Shootings.  The mainstream media is apoplectic after a Tennessee congressman spoke an uncomfortable truth.  Following the horrific Covenant School shooting, reporters hounded Republicans to get them to support gun control.  Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett gave them the answer they definitely didn't want.  [Tweet]  "It's a horrible, horrible situation," Burchett told inquiring reporters.  "And we're not gonna fix it.  Criminals are gonna be criminals.  My daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me... 'Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'"

The Federal Reserve shot itself in the foot.  By now, most understand that SVB failed due to an extreme mismatch in maturities between its deposits and its assets.  Can you believe that the Federal Reserve has fallen prey to the same mistake?  Further, the Feds' own actions caused its problems.  Ever since the Federal Reserve started printing U.S. dollars in 2008, called Quantitative Easing (Q.E.), we have expressed grave concern that the Treasury bonds the Fed was buying were short-term and therefore subject to a rising interest rate environment.  Further, those Treasuries decline in face value as rates rise.  That has all come to pass.  The Federal Reserve shot itself in the foot: since the same entity that printed dollars (Q.E.) invested those dollars (Treasuries), and then raised interest rates (FOMC), which impacted its income and its balance sheet (the value of the Treasuries also declined when the Fed raised rates), the Federal Reserve is the instrument of its own demise.

The Decades of Evidence That Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings.  Prior to the Covid vaccinations, psychiatric medications were the mass-prescribed medication that had the worst risk-to-benefit ratio on the market.  In addition to rarely providing benefits to patients, there is a wide range of severe complications that commonly result from psychiatric medications.  Likewise, I and many colleagues believe the widespread adoption of psychotropic drugs has distorted the cognition of the demographic of the country which frequently utilizes them (which to some extent stratifies by political orientation) and has created a wide range of detrimental shifts in our society.  Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have a similar primary mechanism of action to cocaine.  SSRIs block the reuptake of Serotonin, SNRIs, also commonly prescribed block the reuptake of Serotonin and Norepinephrine (henceforth "SSRI refers to both SSRI and SNRI), and Cocaine blocks the reuptake of Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine.  SSRIs (and SNRIs) were originally used as anti-depressants, then gradually had their use marketed into other areas and along the way have amassed a massive body count.

How Will We Know When We're Winning?  American leftist ideologues — those Democrats philosophically aligned with our communist adversaries — have been part of the Democrat Party for decades.  In the last few years, though, these leftists and our communist adversaries have finally made their move.  Leftists have now fully taken over the Democrat Party.  They've purged any Democrat politician holding office who wasn't on "the team" by using the primary process.  The Democrat Party, as we once knew it, doesn't exist anymore.  Further, Chinese connections and money have coerced established, regular politicians into joining "the team," turning them into willing allies of the leftists.  This may even include some Republican leaders, who now seem to be active saboteurs of their own political party.

Count on a Conservative Comeback — in America and Its Neighbor to the North.  As a country with a revolutionary tradition, the United States has always considered the right to own and carry firearms as implicit in the success of the American Revolution, and in the right and ability of all Americans to protect their property.  This was implicit in the Declaration of Independence, in particular in Thomas Jefferson's ungenerous references to the Native people. [...] The constitutional right to bear arms has been indicative and supportive of the muscular citizenship of a very free people.  In Canada, the imperial monarchical state conferred liberties that conservatives and liberals benefit from and exercise in a narrower band of prerogatives, largely defined by rates of tax and the extent of behavioral regulation.  This brings us to the perturbed present, where a glance at both Canada and the United States, and Great Britain also, might incite the inference that the mainly English-speaking countries have lost the capacity for self-government.  But with regime change, as both Canada and America have surely now earned the right to enact, we could slightly replicate the tale of the tortoise and the hare.

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley?  Bank failures tend to come in waves, and we are experiencing at least a mini-wave now.  Banks fail for three basic reasons:  1. Credit transformation:  deterioration in borrower creditworthiness, usually due to an adverse economic shock (e.g., a real estate bust).  2. Maturity transformation: borrowing short, lending long, and then getting hammered when interest rates rise.  3. Liquidity transformation combined with an exogenous liquidity shock, à la Diamond-Dybvig, where idiosyncratic depositor needs for cash lead to withdrawals that exceed liquid assets and therefore trigger fire sales of illiquid assets.  The two most notable failures of late — Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate — are examples of 2 and 3 respectively.  In some respects, SVB is the most astounding.  Not because a bank failed in the old-fashioned way, but because it was funded primarily by the deposits of supposed financial sophisticates — and because of the disgusting policy response of the Treasury and the Fed.

What it's like to live life not trusting your bank or your money.  Now that we are seeing inflation and serial bank failures in the U.S. with few prospects of any improvement so long as Joe Biden is in the saddle, perhaps a look at what that's like when the experience is extended is worth the trouble.  Emily Stewart, at Vox of all places, has written a brilliant, yes, brilliant, piece describing in minute detail just what the hell that kind of living is like.  What is it like for a modern economy and a first world lifestyle to go the way of, well, Argentina?  She describes it from a recent trip very, very well.  It all kind of looks the same as here.  It's first world.  People have kitchens and electricity and flush toilets.  They wear shoes, go to school, and speak English.  But it's not the same, and the changes creep up in the manner of the boiled frog — until they become complete lunacy around the issue of money.

NATO's Perilous Quest to Justify its Existence.  The unraveling of the Soviet Empire was widely perceived as a vindication of American verities and the beginning of an era of universal peace.  Unfortunately, the preservation of the military alliance and its subsequent eastward expansion created an atmosphere of mistrust and trepidation.  Established in April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO's prime purpose was deterring Soviet expansionism.  By 1989 with the Berlin Wall coming down, NATO accomplished its founders' stated objective.  "Mission accomplished," however, was not good news for the military alliance — it needed to be dissolved, find new enemies, or find a new mission for self-preservation.

Did 'Woke' Banking Trigger America's Banking Crisis?  The rising threat of bank insolvency implies that Dark Ages are ahead.  Banking analysts forecast that many "smaller and regional banks could be consolidated or collapse in a manner resembling the savings and loan crisis," which triggered the failure of 1,000 banks from 1986 to 1995.  Rising uncertainty could result in banks tightening credit application rules, thus making it harder for people to get mortgages or credit cards.  This could push the nation into a recession, spurring layoffs and economic decline.  The necessity of assigning blame goes to the heart of the world's current financial problems.  Properly assigning blame rests on two propositions:  first, the failure of regulators and regulations, and second, the imposition of new regulatory objectives focused on social justice rather than sound banking practices.  These two propositions are related.  SVB's failure confirms this claim.  Lessons embedded in SVB's collapse apply to the entire banking system.

Nagging Unanswered Questions About War in Ukraine.  Ukrainians — and many Europeans and Americans — are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders.  Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square.  But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas.  What would that goal entail?  Giving Ukraine American F-16s to strike bases and depots in Mother Russia?  The gifting of 1,000 M1 Abrams tanks?  Using American Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea fleet?  A huge arsenal that would guarantee total victory rather than not losing?  Russia's cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape.  So, is a brave Ukraine really winning the war when it loses about 0.6 soldiers for every Russian it kills?

The Other Things Fueling Inflation.  The financial sector is still roiling from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.  At the epicenter of factors triggering the collapse is the Federal Reserve's strategy of hiking interest rates.  This would be a good time to ask:  How else might we tamp down inflation?  Rapidly ratcheting up interest rates is intended to "cool down" the economy by inducing unemployment, or at least reducing job openings.  Policies that lower labor demand make it easier for companies to compete for employees without triggering so-called "wage-price" inflation.  And lower employment, in turn, also means there are fewer people with "excess wealth" demanding goods and services and thus driving inflation.  The alternative is an economy that meets or over-supplies goods and services.  Such an economy is disinflationary because it drives competition and thereby lowers prices.

Ferraris and Hungry Children: Venezuela's Socialist Vision in Shambles.  After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by.  The nation of grinding hardship has increasingly become one of haves and have-nots. [...] Venezuela's economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history.  Now there are signs the country is settling into a new, disorienting normality, with everyday products easily available, poverty starting to lessen — and surprising pockets of wealth arising.  That has left the socialist government of the authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro presiding over an improving economy as the opposition is struggling to unite and as the United States has scaled back oil sanctions that helped decimate the country's finances.

Is There A Way To Stop Bank Panics Like The One That Took Down SVB?  In recent years, the U.S. has suffered recurring banking crises almost like clockwork.  Indeed, about every 10 years or so we seem to go through another financial panic, only to be followed by a spate of bad regulations passed to ensure "it won't happen again."  But it always does.  So how do we end this cycle?  U.S. banking disasters plagued the late 20th century and early 21st century.  But of course they go back long before even that, to 1907 and 1929, as two examples.  More recently, there was the 1980s and '90s savings and loan crisis, the 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management and global crisis, the 2007 financial crisis (which also became a global bank crisis), and, now, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, which has already hit both smaller U.S. banks and foreign banks hard, and still remains a threat to the stability of the global financial system.

There Are Compelling Pragmatic Considerations Behind Supporting Trump Or DeSantis.  It's still very early in the cycle, but my guess is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will not run for president.  Many voters do not like a governor who was just re-elected walking away from the job, especially when the election was a few months before the announcement.  In Florida, officeholders running for federal office must resign their position.  It's being reported that the legislature is quietly preparing to change the law.  Although Florida Statute 99.012 has wiggle room, having it changed solely to benefit DeSantis would be seen by many as an unethical perversion of legislative power.  Should DeSantis resign, Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez would become governor.  Those relocating to Florida primarily because of how DeSantis runs the Sunshine state should start researching Nunez.

It slowly dawns on the West that Ukraine is not going to win.  Writer David Goldman, who writes as the brilliant "Spengler" at Asia Times, foresees an ending of sorts to the Ukraine conflict, based on the West's inability to supply the resources to keep an extended war coming. [...] While most participants continued to favor the Biden administration's gung-ho stance on keeping Ukraine supplied and paid until they could fight off the Russians, the numbers were not in its favor.  Russia was just so much bigger than Ukraine in terms of manpower and resources and money and alliances with other big powers — such as China and India.  The small still voices came through at the end of that conference, noting that most of the Ukrainian army was dead, its best soldiers, trained by the U.S., were now war casualties.  Ukrainian valor was real but Russia could nevertheless win that war based on its overwhelming resourcing, for the same reason the North won over the South during the Civil War, despite the South having many effective and motivated soldiers.

The government wants you to be terrified of emergency medicine.  Patient safety studies by government agencies and officialdom in general have always been plagued by methodology problems, all the way back to original 1978 study by Don Harper Mills for the California Med Association, intended to evaluate feasibility of no-fault malpractice insurance.  Here's the problem: patient safety bureaucrats are motivated to exaggerate the risks to the public so they can ride the wave as saviors and rescuers.  That's what public officials enjoy a lot:  a role as a savior bureaucrat, scholar, and conscientious public official. [...] Many emergency medicine medical organizations have objected to this effort by the AHRQ to denigrate and vilify emergency care providers, to knife them in the back with a ridiculously biased and inadequate study, and then publicize it for their own selfish bureaucratic purposes.

SVB collapse Shows ESG Is a counterproductive, virtue-signaling scam.  If there is one giant takeaway from the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it is that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores are utterly pointless in assessing the health and vitality of a major financial institution.  On the other hand, as the SVB saga demonstrates in spades, ESG scores are extremely helpful in determining whether or not a bank is likely to receive a government bailout when it goes belly up because it was fanatical with its fidelity to the ESG cult instead of making sound financial investment decisions.  Incredibly, the now insolvent SVB, which held $200 billion in net assets not that long ago, remains in very good standing when it comes to its ESG score.  As the record shows, to this day, SVB is still in the good graces of the ESG crowd.  In fact, all three of the big ESG ratings agencies still give SVB a solid ESG score despite its pending bankruptcy.  So, how did SVB attain such a stellar ESG score while it was making terrible risk-assessment decisions and putting its clients' funds in peril?

When Leaders Get Scared.  While it may look like the United States is being tough and forceful in Ukraine, the reverse is true.  The US is showing incredible weakness, and it is wearing it on its sleeve.  Let's start with Ukraine.  The US has gone all out to try and help Ukraine win a victory over the Russians.  The Biden administration wants this to happen for two reasons: to show that Biden is not a wimp and won't cut and run like he did in Afghanistan (and on this the 20th anniversary of the War in Iraq, like his predecessor Obama did by pulling US forces out of Iraq) and that he wants to "strengthen" NATO by eventually putting a NATO army in Ukraine.  The reason for not wanting to look like a wimp is self-evident and does not need any further explanation, other than to say that Washington elites have bought into the false narrative that Ukraine is a glowing democracy and we should defend it.  Of course, the US disrupted Ukraine's free politics and pushed the rebellion against a properly elected government.

What Does it Mean that Our Rulers Didn't Learn from 2008?  If you go by this Bailout Meter, from FRED courtesy of Breitbart Business, we are already in 2008 Meltdown Range. [...] You know, back in the day, Warren Buffett said that he ought to hire a guy whose only job was to tell him not to buy airline stocks.  Maybe we ought to have a law that every banker needs an assistant whose only job is to tell him how far its bonds have to fall to wipe out the bank.  Although I would think this is not that hard.  Yet SVB operated without a Chief Risk Officer for most of 2022.

Biden and Putin: Pawns on China's Chessboard.  In the Russo-Ukrainian war, Ukraine is the victim, and Russia is the aggressor.  However, the victim and the aggressor are not acting alone.  Who made Ukraine the victim?  Who helped Russia make the blunder of aggression?  While analyzing the current Russo-Ukrainian war, the media tend to overlook one thing.  Namely, President Biden and President Putin are — for the lack of a more appropriate word — vassals to China's triple-emperor, Xi Jinping.  From that perspective, the notion of "a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine" evaporates.  The WWIII scare disappears, too, if one recalls two main China objectives: Taiwan and South Siberia.  The occupation of Taiwan requires a weak United States, and the annexation of South Siberia demands a powerless Russia.  It looks as though everybody overestimated Biden and Putin, treating them as independent players and not as order-takers on the Chinese payroll, which they are.

A Cheat Sheet on the SVB Collapse.  This week, a lot of attention has been focused on the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.  It is, in fact, a story of faulty accounting practices, poor government oversight, and the effects of government micromanaging markets at the same time that it fails in its oversight responsibilities.  And you will be paying for it.  Over at the Wall Street Journal, William L. Silber explains this better than anyone, and in terms anyone who ever purchased a government bond can understand.  They are safe.  The problem is liquidity:  ["]SVB held tens of billions of dollars in long-term government bonds.  On its face, this may seem like a prudent investment for a bank, but Treasury securities are riskless only when held to maturity. [... "]

The Creepy Advent of Digital Currency.  With the recent spate of bank failures, public concern has gravitated to the solvency of our money itself.  Many have raced to withdraw a portion of their savings in cash.  Others have looked to move it into alternate investment vehicles like I-Bonds or Treasury Bonds, commodities like gold or silver, and even cryptocurrency.  With the coronavirus pandemic and government attempts to shutter and then manage a shuttered economy came massive injections of new cash and record inflation.  This inflation resulted from an increase in prices based on an expansion in the supply of money without a corresponding expansion in the supply of goods.  When the Federal Reserve moved to tamp down this inflation by increasing interest rates to retract the available credit supply, it created an inverted yield curve, where short-term interest rates are higher than long-term interest rates.  To write new loans, the banks must borrow at a higher rate than they get in return on existing loans, and profitability tanks.

DeSantis Is Right About Ukraine.  Ron DeSantis came out against our current blank check n' hack cliches Ukraine policy, stating the indisputable truth that Ukraine was not a vital US interest worthy of risking World War III with Russia.  The next day he was proven right when a Russian SU-27 knocked a US Reaper drone into the Black Sea.  Hey, feeding Russians (and Ukrainians) into a meat grinder is all fun and games until we get dragged into the abattoir too.  Of course, all the right people got really mad about it — when Bill Kristol, Adam Kinzinger, David French, Max Boot and Mitt Romney are all for something, you need to be against it.  Hardest hit was the GOP establishment — it was very sad because the governor refuses to be dragged along into cheerleading yet another massive foreign policy failure.

ESG Will Bankrupt You — Financially and Morally.  Do you believe in cautionary tales or think most things happen without warning?  Your answer might reveal how your psyche processes information to which you are exposed.  Everything you need to make good decisions is readily available, depending upon which sources you rely.  Recently publicized topics should set your spidey senses twitching:
  [#1]   Silicon Valley Bank suffers an abrupt collapse.
  [#2]   Joe Biden resurrects the all-but-dead Willow Creek Oil project.
  [#3]   Biden's Energy Secretary praises China's work on climate change.
  [#4]   The president delivers his vision for his FY 2024 budget, with a $6.9 trillion price tag.
  [#5]   40,000 hours of security footage inside the Capitol on January 6th are released to the public, initially through Tucker Carlson.
All of these bullets connect — ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ideology permeates everything, and it will cost us all.  You'll understand who wins and who will lose when ESG is fully implemented.  ESG is intended to replace the profit motive for large companies with something more akin to a social conscience.  What could go wrong?  Prepare to be amazed!

Putting 'diversity' and 'equity' first nearly crashed the economy.  Several years back I asked what it would take to halt the diversity, inclusion, equity obsession in America.  What would it take to get back to excellence and competence as the only criteria for employment?  Perhaps it would require the bridges to start falling down.  Though I suspect that if they did then certain people would claim they'd only fallen because of "structural racism."  Still, this week we had a good reminder of just how over-tolerant we have been of this insane, anti-excellence agenda.  Because although the bridges haven't yet started to collapse, the banks have.  And one reason is that the banks in question prioritized equity over excellence.

Sorry, Media Nerds, The War In Ukraine Is Literally A 'Territorial Dispute'.  The "territorial dispute" quote is from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' recently released statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine (a place our elected leaders in Washington sometimes refer to as "Our Last Great Hope.")  What he said more fully is that "becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia" is not a "vital interest" to the United States.  That's a view shared by anyone who thinks yet another foreign war without clear and substantial strategic benefit to America is not something we should busy ourselves with.  (It's not like we have any pressing problems here!)  But French, Rubin and the rest of the national media really hate that view.  It's "pro-Putin"!  It's "astonishing" and "dangerous"!  DeSantis should say it one more time for the people in the back.  The war is literally a dispute over territory.  Russian leadership claims Ukraine as its own and the Kremlin's settlement offers are based almost solely on territory concessions (with some details related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

Was the US drone supplying reconnaissance data for Ukraine to target Russian forces and territory?  I find the contention that the U.S. drone was supplying targeting information believable.  Why wouldn't the U.S. do so, especially given the fact that Elon Musk's Starlink system has been used to enable battlefield communications for the Ukrainians to target Russian facilities?  Does this make the drone a legitimate target for Russia?  I am no expert in the law of war, but the contention that the drone was supplying intelligence used for targeting weapons, if true, would make it an instrument of war against Russia.  RT, the Russian state-sponsored propaganda agency, makes some other interesting claims.  Use skepticism, of course, and weigh these claims against what else you know and your common sense.

Biden killed SVB. We're next.  The blame game over SVB's collapse is a diversion. [...] The media is not that bright.  James Hickman is.  He is the founder of Sovereign Research.  He looked at the numbers and he found the culprit.  Biden.  He made government bonds worth less which has banks dropping like cockroaches in a Raid commercial.  Using the pen name Simon Black, Hickman wrote, "Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers.  Whereas Lehman bet almost all of its balance sheet on risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.  "According to the bank's annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet only $74 billion in loans."  So where did the money go?  Hickman said, "SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors' money ($99 billion) in U.S. government bonds.  "This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.  U.S. government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most risk free asset in the world.  But that's totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value.  And that's exactly what happened."  SVB lost money on government bonds by the billion and that brought the bank down.  That is like water catching fire.

The John Fetterman Situation Just Got Much Weirder.  Despite a "recovery" from the stroke that is clearly going in the wrong direction, talk of Fetterman resigning has been dismissed as ableism. [...] The New York Times wrote a full spread actually suggesting that it is normal for a senator to co-sponsor legislation that he's not even aware of.  That's the best defense they could come up with for a guy who not only can't perform the duties of his office, but can't even hold a conversation with someone.  The entire point of electing a representative is that they make decisions in the interests of their constituents.  In all my time covering politics, I have never once heard of a Senate staff co-sponsoring legislation for their boss without his or her knowledge.  That's so insane and contrary to the electoral system as to be scandalous all on its own.  We aren't supposed to be a government run by staff proxies.

These are the people who rule the world.  For those of you who don't know what central banks do, all you need to know is that they control the money supply by putting a stranglehold on credit.  In the US the central bank is the Federal Reserve, and if you have noticed mortgage rates jump dramatically in recent months, you can thank the Federal Reserve.  You can also thank the Fed for helping fuel inflation, after pumping trillions of dollars into the economy.  You like inflation, right?  Thank the Fed.  You're gonna like what they are about to do to reign [sic] in inflation even less, I assure you.  Wringing inflation out of the economy is very painful.

The US's March of Folly in Ukraine.  One tries to read widely on the state of the Ukraine war, though it's extremely difficult to cut through the fog of propaganda and obvious lies.  But slowly, the picture of a determined, slow-moving, grinding, painful Russian victory emerges.  Ukrainian casualties are almost certainly at unbearable, unsustainable levels.  Closest guesses are in the range of 250,000 KIA, orders of magnitude greater than Russia's, which draws from a vastly larger population.  Ukraine is losing a generation of its male youth, all to prop up a declining US planetary hegemony.

The Deadly Incompetence of our Leadership.  [Scroll down]  Given that Iran subscribes to a martyrist view of Jihad, a major loss of life would not deter Iran from a war in order to achieve its aim of destroying Israel.  The Jews however want to live, and given Israel's diminutive size — where 1 nuclear weapon could wipe out a large part of the country — Israel has no options but to preemptively attack Iran.  This is not avoidable by negotiation.  President Biden would not be able to stop the war, and Israel would go ahead with or without American approval.  Israel has no choice.  When that attack comes, it may require Israel to use nuclear bunker busters to demolish Iran's well sunken and fortified manufacturing sites.  The genie would be out of the bottle.  Russia may then decide to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine, citing Israel's use on Iran as a precedent.  All hell would break loose.

Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman Really Are Two of a Kind.  The nation watches in horror as Joe Biden pretends to be capable of being president of the United States, and behind the shell of a man is a woman:  Jill Biden, who most certainly knows better than anyone that Joe Biden is many fries short of a Happy Meal® but pushes her husband along, away from the occasionally inquisitive media that dares to think that the president of the United States should be able to answer a few simple questions. [...] Yeah, it's crazy to think that Joe, who often doesn't even know where he is, forgets basic information, and mumbles words.  How dare anyone even suggest mental competency tests?  Her response is eerily reminiscent of Gisele Fetterman's lame attempt at defending her husband last year from questions about his cognitive health after his public appearances showed severe mental impairment.  When the media honestly reported on her husband's communication problems, she demanded an apology and likened the reporting to an attack on the disabled community.

Just how unjust is our system of justice?  The CIA and FBI have turned away from investigating foreign threats (like China) and against law-abiding Americans, especially conservative and/or Christian Americans.  Turns out the Church Committee did not effectively reform those institutions as promised.  The FBI/DOJ/CIA/DNC complex robbed Trump of his 2020 victory because he was and remains a threat to their personal wealth and power.  Now our blighted and corrupt administration is fighting a proxy war with Russia over the national security of their eastern border which is insignificant to America.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says this is the most important issue on the planet?  China is our most dangerous adversary, not Russia.

Will DeSantis Rescue Republicans or Let Them Down?  Unfortunately for Ron DeSantis, expectations of him could not be higher.  For a critical mass of Republicans seeking to move past Donald Trump, the Florida governor is already the anointed savior.  While Trump still holds the lead in most polling, DeSantis is almost always second choice and is the favorite for many Republicans who want a new standard bearer because they believe Trump can't win.  Though he has not yet launched a campaign, and his allies say he would not until the state legislature completes its session in May, DeSantis definitely wants us all to think he will soon be a presidential candidate.

No, Ukraine Aid Isn't a Top Priority.  Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is on board with one Biden initiative:  funding the administration's war packages to Ukraine.  The Kentucky Republican claims this is a top priority among Republicans.  Polling suggests otherwise, and it's not just members of the GOP — the nation at large is starting to get tired of the Ukraine excursion that's rapidly becoming yet another endless war for the United States, albeit by proxy.  The situation on the ground there is stalemated because Russia's military is racked by incompetence, coupled with shoddy weapons and tactics, while the Ukrainians have some of the best weapons but lack the manpower to rout Russian forces entirely.  That's the 30,000-foot overview, but if this conflict requires NATO troops, specifically our forces, to move the needle, and there have been insinuations to that effect, then this whole affair could take an ugly turn.  Biden is a disaster abroad, but let's hope what little brain activity he has left knows the danger that could come from American troops being deployed.

Fetterman Chief of Staff 'Acting Senator' Adam Jentleson Repeatedly Questioned President Trump's Mental Health.  Adam Jentleson, chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is steadfastly supporting his nmentally ill boss who has been hospitalized because he is an apparent danger to himself, was singing a different tune about elected officials' mental fitness for office during the Trump years.  Jentleson even warned against efforts to "normalize... mental illness".  Jentleson is a sharp-elbow throwing partisan who was deputy chief of staff to one of the dirtiest Senators in recent history, the late Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)[.]  Fetterman suffered a debilitating stroke last May and has struggled to do his job as Senator since being sworn in on January 3rd.  Fetterman has been hospitalized twice this year after assuming office because he is unable to take care of himself and because his chief of staff, who should have been looking out for his boss' health and well-being, ran him into the ground.

The names of some of the 51 anti-conservative American businesses may surprise you.  The major retail giants are also pushing leftism.  We've seen it with Target, which has been in the forefront of Gay Pride for decades, but it may surprise you to learn that Walmart and Home Depot are also using their economic power to push leftist policies. "For example, 1792 Exchange notes Home Depot 'advertised flyers to its employees about confronting their 'white privilege, Christian privilege, heterosexual privilege, able-bodied privilege,' etc.'"  The leftist madness continues with food and beverage companies.  We already knew about Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Kellogg's (with a history of weird progressivism spanning more than 100 years), but you probably didn't know that McDonald's and JM Smucker were also on the leftist bandwagon.  Again, they sell their products to everyone but use their profits to advance leftist political goals.

Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You An 'Isolationist'.  It's not exactly a sign of a healthy democratic discourse that it's virtually impossible to ask a critical question about the United States' role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict without being smeared as a Putin apologist or an "isolationist."  We've been bombarded with bromides about a civilizational struggle that pits the forces of autocracy and liberalism against each other.  "It's not just about freedom in Ukraine," Biden tells us.  "It's about freedom of democracy at large."  Yet Ukraine — which, before the war, regularly slotted in somewhere beneath Burma, Mexico, and Hungary on those silly "democracy matrixes" left-wingers used to love — isn't any kind of liberal democracy.  Maybe one day it will be.  Today Ukraine still shutters churches and restricts the free press.  Maybe you believe those are justifiable actions during wartime, but under no definition are they liberal.  Ukraine has never been a functioning "democracy."  Its people defend its borders and sovereignty in the face of a powerful expansionist aggressor.  That's good enough.

Injustice of the Court.  I was encouraged to look at sacrifice for my nation as the highest honor.  I saluted the flag, got choked up at the sound of the national anthem.  Now, I have to ask what purpose would my sacrifice serve?  Would it be to keep Hunter's diary a secret?  Would it be to hide all the crimes of pedophilia among our representatives, senators, presidents and judges?  Would my sacrifice be to see drag queens in Kindergarten?  Would it be to keep political prisoners of the current regime?  Would it be to fund extortion and brutality of parents concerned about their children and the schools they go to?  The problem that has been created is that as a patriotic son of the founding ideals, I would have to fight against all of that, against the crooked institutions of today.  I could not, in good conscience fight to sustain this treason.  It's a paradox created by their lies and deceit that I could not fight for the government of my nation, but am forced to try and bring it to heel, to bring it back under control.

The Façade of Democracy.  During Biden's latest visit to Kyiv and Warsaw, the Oval Office occupant defended his administration's escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war and pledged unlimited U.S. taxpayer support in the name of "defending democracy."  But is Ukraine a democracy?  In 2004, the Bush Administration and the West amplified claims that the Ukrainian presidential election had been rigged after the Moscow backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych defeated the U.S. and West backed candidate Viktor Yushchenko.  Western pressure combined with mass protests in Ukraine — known as the Orange Revolution — resulted in the overturning of the election results and a redo election that fulfilled the West's desired outcome.  Yushchenko was elected president, instead.  Afterward, then-President George W. Bush called the Orange Revolution a "powerful example of democracy for people around the world."  In 2010, however, Viktor Yanukovych — who had been accused of stealing the 2004 election — ran again and won.

How to save ourselves from Chinese, Democrat Party communism.  The Biden regime's support for socialists throughout Latin America is aiding China's efforts to dominate the region.  We must recognize and counter the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) imperialist ambitions or lose our liberty.  We cannot do so with an antiliberty regime in the White House that hates America and all it stands for.  We must survive the next two years with Biden in the executive and recover our government from those whose goal is to transform the federal government into a dictatorship.  One step in this direction, which has begun, is congressional Republicans investigating the Biden regime and informing the public of the truth.  Even though meaningful legislation will almost surely not become law, the Republican-majority House must propose bills to counter the Biden regime's harmful policies.

Is the United States Really Ready for Any Disaster, Whether Man-Made or Natural?  [Scroll down]  [W]hat if the United States were to have a large electrical blackout like the one that affected the east coast in August of 2003?  Thankfully, that happened in the summer and in most places lasted no longer than 18 hours.  What would happen if 50, 60, or 70 million people on the east coast were all of a sudden left without electricity in the middle of winter, like in the summer of '03 — but for a longer period of time?  I sincerely doubt the United States government would be able to mobilize quickly enough to help citizens stranded without a basic tool that we take for granted each and every day like electricity.  Without electricity you can't keep food cold, medicine that needs to be refrigerated will go bad, and the gas that is needed to fuel cars to move around will be stuck in the ground because pumps won't operate.

This Is America.  Consider recent news items reporting stories of unusual events, ones growing in frequency.  With the technology and knowledge developed over decades, stupid stuff shouldn't happen nearly as much as it does.
  •   "Balloongate" raised the specter that China or Russia could have been floating nukes over the U.S. for years because someone manually changed the filters on U.S. radar displays to exclude balloons.
  •   Ford halted production of their newest E.V. vehicle due to battery problems.
  •   Southwest Airlines stranded thousands of passengers because outdated scheduling software was not equal to the tasks at hand.
  •   An outside hack crippled Florida's Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.  Surgeries were canceled, manual record-keeping returned to use, and general chaos ensued.
  •   mRNA Vaccines may not be vaccines at all?  Traditionally, vaccines provide immunity from a disease.  Today, we understand that the primary value is not immunity but rather a reduction of symptoms and death.  This is not what was asserted to the public by the CDC, which continually appears to redefine the intent of the shot.
  •   Approximately 9 million Americans receive Federal Disability Benefits, and another 5.5 million former military receive full or partial disability.  An additional million plus receive private disability.  These numbers are the highest in history and call into question the legitimacy of the process, which seems to offer government-funded disincentives to work.
  •   Is our education system failing?  Today, 65% of children can't read at grade level.  Reading ability has been on a downhill trajectory since 1992, but the government and teachers' unions underplay that obvious and disturbing failure all too easily.

The Editor says...
The writer goes on to blame incompetence and "woke" nonsense, but I think he's on the wrong track.  All of the above is, in my opinion, the result of malfeasance on the part of our government, or cyber-attacks from other governments, most likely China.

The Institutional Pathology That Took Down James O'Keefe.  Was this really due to the long arm of Pfizer as so many assume, or was it just old fashioned jealousy and fragging which has cleaved James O'Keefe off of the "Project Veritas" organization which he built to support his passionate activities?  I have seen versions of this sad story play out time and time again.  Yet another version of the very human social forces that prevent our species from reaching its full potential.  Whatever his personal character flaws may be, my heart goes out to James O'Keefe.  From where I sit, this appears to be yet another case of an innovative, hard working, highly motivated leader brought down at the very moment great achievement by the pettiness of the small minded.

Why was the East Palestine tank car blown up?  While much has been written about the aftermath of the East Palestine train wreck burn, there is little regarding why the rail tank containing hazardous chemicals needed to be blown up.  I am a retired engineer having significant experience with pressure vessels and some background with DoT tank regulations.  I offer my thoughts based on limited knowledge and a little thinking.  From what I could learn, the contents of the tank(s) were becoming unstable, and pressure was increasing.  It was feared that the tank would explode and send shrapnel everywhere.  So the decision was made to relieve the pressure with a "controlled burn."  This story raises many questions that must be answered.  The first question is, what was causing the pressure to build?  Physically, there is no difference between a tank sitting on its wheels on a track and a tank lying on its side on the ground.  There is nothing about a tank lying on the ground that would cause pressure to build.  Was there a fire around the rail cars?  I've seen nothing indicating that this was the case, nor is it likely there was a wild land fire in the middle of winter in Ohio.  How did they know pressure was building?  Were they monitoring a pressure gauge on the tank?  If so, they were close enough to put out any fire that might be threatening the tank.  Furthermore, transport tanks are equipped with a pressure relief valve that would not allow pressure to build enough to burst them.

The Curse of the One-Sentence Paragraph.  The once-mighty paragraph that adorned our best writing in history and politics, as well as literature, is getting shorter by the day, often settling into the one-sentence fragment.  Not only a block of print on a page, the paragraph is a unit of thought, a means of conveying a description, a theory, a report, an impression, a complex idea, or a rhetorical flow with a degree of authority.  It is holistic by nature and, as such, an aid to contemplation.  It is not merely a stylistic tic or a passing literary convention that can be denatured for convenience.  A paragraph properly leads to another when the mental trajectory it favors and permits is complete.  It is, in its way, like a cerebral lobe that serves a particular function.  One-sentence paragraphs are like lesions.  Of course, a standard paragraph these days may run to two or three sentences, but the difference is not significant.  The sense of continuity is stunted.

Meeting Military Recruitment Goals.  Recently we've heard arguments that the failure of the military to meet its recruitment goals is a product of recruitment policy. [...] Does the media shout our servicemen's bravery, their commitment to national pride and support?  No — they are shown as failures of our politicians, failures of our foreign policy, stupid for even joining and ignored at home.  Returning soldiers commit suicide at record levels because of lack of public and political support.  There is no end to the wars in far-off lands where politicians bloviate and big business grows wealthy.  I spent 26+ years in green, so I know what the military can do for you and how it can help make you a better person.  That military is gone.  It died as we went to war in Iraq.  Vietnam was bad enough for politicalizing foreign wars.  The Middle East is worse.  There is no end to battling a religion.  As long as one person believes, the war rages on.  Especially when some areas are off limits to attack, as were Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos.  Or Pakistan and Iran.  We never seem to learn that war is either all or nothing.  The military knows this simple fact; politicians don't.

Educating for Freedom.  How do we educate our students for freedom?  After all, many of them arrive in college today believing that the United States is systematically oppressive, hopelessly unjust, and that there is not much worth celebrating or defending about our country (or so they have been taught).  So I often start my class by asking them a simple question:  "Out of the world's twenty largest countries, in which country would you rather live?"  I pick the world's twenty largest countries because size matters.  The larger a society's size, the more complex will be its social, economic, and political problems.  There is also the difficulty of maintaining freedom and representative government in the midst of sharp political differences and quarrelling factions and interest groups.  Each country's character as a free society must be judged not by reference to some abstract ideal standard but by reference to societies that actually exist in today's world.  This is not a trivial point.  The most horrible atrocities committed in the last century, numbering in the hundreds of millions of victims, were carried out by people enamored of some beautiful future vision of perfection.

The oblivious masses have no idea they are being systematically exterminated by a series of planned disasters.  The chemical weapons gas bomb that was ignited by government authorities in Ohio was, of course, both an act of deliberate terrorism and a crime against humanity and the environment.  I spoke with an accredited hazardous materials emergency response expert who told me that these chemicals should never have been set on fire by authorities.  The burning of vinyl chloride, of course, releases phosgene, a World War I chemical weapon that maims or kills biological beings on contact.  The train crash provided the perfect cover story for genocidal government agents to essentially detonate a chemical weapons bomb over prime farm land, not far from heavily populated cities.  The entire Ohio River basin will be impacted by the fallout for years to come, with massive die-offs already being reported, and both soils and foliage to be impacted with actual acid rain (hydrochloric acid), formed as the combustion products of vinyl chloride combine with water vapor in the air.  (The media are largely silent on all this, pretending that the real threat to humanity is carbon dioxide.)

Who Killed Philip Haney?  The Mystery Continues.  February 21 will mark three years since Philip Haney, 66, was "found deceased" in Amador County, California, killed by a gunshot to the chest.  The victim was not the typical Sierra foothills resident.  Philip Haney was the author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad, first published in 2016.  The DHS whistleblower also authored Frontpage articles, "Deobond Attacks in San Bernardino, Sri Lanka," "The Terrorist Ties that Bind," and "The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America's Ominous Post-Election Statement."  The expert on Islamic jihad had been punished for doing his job at a high level.  This is the man found deceased in Amador County.  In Haney's RV, the sheriff found numerous thumb drives, a laptop computer, and other materials.  Sheriff Martin Ryan turned these over to the FBI, which did not reveal what the devices contained, and the bureau remained silent on the case through 2021.  Last year, the Amador County sheriff's office told Frontpage there was "no new news" about Haney and that the case was closed.  A month later, in March, 2022, more than two years after Haney was found deceased, the case was proclaimed a suicide.  Claims that Haney killed himself had appeared from the start, but were steadfastly denied by Haney's friends, family and members of Congress.

A counterintuitive take on the risk that China poses to the world.  David Archibald, an Australian scientist and analyst, counterintuitively argues that China is weaker than we think.  I don't agree with everything Archibald says, both factually and theoretically, but I thought his essay is interesting enough to bring to your attention.  The premise of Archibald's claim that China is not as forbidding as Xi Jinping makes it appear is summed up in a single sentence: "China has a lot of structural problems that make it a fragile state, a frail state and even potentially a future failed state."

The Shameless Abuse of John Fetterman Comes to a Head.  As RedState reported, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is back in the hospital for a second time since taking office.  According to a statement put out by his staff, the senator recently checked himself into Walter Reed to receive treatment for severe clinical depression.  That should be news to Pennsylvanians given there was never any admission during the 2022 election that Fetterman suffered from depression.  Apparently, this has been a long-running issue, separate from the stroke that has left him unable to perform the basic functions of his office.  Where do things go from here?  Who knows.  Pennsylvania elected a man who was clearly not capable of doing the job, and now they are stuck with him until he resigns, at which point the Democrat governor will appoint the replacement.

Since When did Ukrainians Become Entitled to the State they Got?  The historical record demonstrates that contemporary Ukraine emerged from a mosaic of lands assembled by Russian conquests and paid for with Russian blood and treasure.  Except for a small area of the Zaporozhian Host, Ukraine has no historical connection to the land it occupies and is the product of Russian geopolitical engineering.  The foregoing is the reason Henry Kissinger wrote, "The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country."  If Americans had been more aware of Ukrainian history, they would have raised reasonable doubts about the validity of Ukraine's territorial aspirations.  Konrad Adenauer once said, "History is the sum total of things that could be avoided."

CVFC PAC: Chinese War Planners Are Ecstatic with Biden's "Opens Door Policy" Allowing for Chinese Sabotage.  Communism China poses an existential threat to the United States and all Mankind.  Over the last two years the Biden/Obama administration has had an open-door policy with Communist China which has been predictably disabling the military defenses and disarming intelligence defenses of the Republic.  In this article, read what China Expert Gordon Chang writes Chinese sabotage at the Gatestone Institute, where he is a senior distinguished fellow and an Advisory Board Member.  While Biden recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia, he incoherently stated we are not adversaries, there is no need for a Cold War.  He said the US and Communist China are friendly competitors.  However, one would have to be brain dead to believe that the US and Communist China are not in a Cold War.  The Chinses Communist Party (CCP) is conditioning the population of Communist China to expect a coming war.  Yet the Biden/Obama administration is ignoring the continued threats by Communist China to Taiwan, and the repeated outright warnings to the United States not to defend Taiwan.

New Report Reveals the Depths of Fetterman's Problems.  It was a shameful thing that Democrats were so concerned about power and holding onto the Senate that they kept John Fetterman in the race despite his medical problems. [...] There's a new report that among the issues he's dealing with is the depth of his cognitive issues.  According to the report, he hears people speaking like the way you hear the voice of the teacher from the "Peanuts" cartoon. [...] Fetterman has to carry around a closed captioning device to have conversations since he can't understand what people are saying on his own.  They've wired his office and the Senate chamber so closed captions can be typed out for him by professional broadcast captioners.  Even with all that help, he's refusing to take questions from reporters in the Senate hallways because he can't understand them.  His fellow Democratic senators also tried to downplay it, with folks like Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) saying, "There are a lot of people out there who understand disability, and understand struggle."  Yes, there are, but you also want to have people in the position who can fully serve.  If you can't even understand what people are saying in the hallway, that's a big problem.

The Real Russia — and Ukraine.  I first arrived in Russia in 1994.  I was shocked at the filth, poverty, and violence.  I immediately understood that Soviet Russia had been waging war on itself (and its neighbors) since the Revolution, while playing the victimhood card for generations, claiming their military buildup was out of fear of NATO.  When the Soviet "Union" collapsed (1989) their only fear was of each other.  They needed NATO and their former Eastern European slave states to save them from themselves.  Soviet Russia was a terrible place created by murderers and criminals.  The resulting poverty has always attracted western lackeys looking for attention. [...] Ukraine gets along with its neighbors and lives within its borders.  But poor little Russia can't do that, because it fears Ukraine, America and Europe.  The real reason is that the failed Russian state does not want prosperous free republics on its borders.  It's that simple.

Julie Kelly of American Greatness could just be our George Smiley.  Joe Biden has numerous shortcomings as a political leader; apart from apparently being challenged by a severe shortness of brainpower, the commander-in-thief regards the people of MAGA not as fellow citizens to be respected, but as political foes to be destroyed.  Applauding a charlatan's State of the Union address throughout, not just politely at start and end — as Speaker McCarthy did — assumes geniality and kinship.  Such a speaker needs guidance in Political Reality/USA 101.  The person to provide such guidance, I submit, is Julie Kelly; Ms. Kelly's exposés regularly blast openings in the media's Iron Curtain around Biden to keep Americans informed about the repressive conduct, particularly post-Jan. 6, of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the federal courts, and the maltreatment of detainees as if they were political prisoners in a ruthless dictatorship.  Significantly, Ms. Kelly does not say, as did the Speaker, that the Capitol cop who shot the late Ashli Babbitt was "just doing his job."  To the contrary, every member of Congress, not just the panel on un-American practices by the federal government, should read this very important disclosure by the one and only Kelly on Capitol Hill brutality:  January 6 Was the Worst Incident of Police Brutality Since Civil Rights Era.

Has The State Of The Union Ever Been Worse?  [Scroll down]  In answer to our own question, yes, the state of the union has been worse.  There was a bitter war between the states that ripped the nation apart in the 1860s, Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the Great Depression was egregious, and there were moments in the 1960s when it appeared the country had lost its way.  The 2020s so far are more like the late 1970s, when Jimmy Carter, having no idea how to leverage America's immense advantages, used the office of the presidency to try to soften a national crash.  Except in the case of Biden, the decline is by design.  He's not trying to minimize the damage of a wreck he could avoid.  He's accelerating as we head for the ditch.  Why voters chose Biden over Trump might forever be a mystery.  Yes, the Democrats did all they could to fix the election for Biden, working within a cabal that changed election rules and laws in ways the hurt Trump, manipulated media coverage so that it was more favorable to Biden, and controlled the gates of information.  But even with that advantage, voters should have easily seen the difference between the candidates:  one who might appear crass but believes in the American people; the other wants to subjugate them to the authority of the ruling class that has helped cover up his lies, failures and corruption — the one who will tell us tonight to trust him because he's been doing such a good job.

Cancel the State of the Union.  ow did the State of the Union — which owes its origin to a one-liner in the Constitution instructing the president to "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the state of the Union," become an annual political carnival that requires an UltraMax security cordon to be cast over the Capitol Building, swallows hours of live TV coverage on a half dozen networks, and goads reams of pre- and post-analysis out of the typing press — become such an all-consuming gala?  The Constitution's authors didn't think the SOTU was essential, giving presidents the wide instruction that they must only address remarks to Congress "from time to time."  If the president stiffed Congress on the SOTU, no constitutional crisis would ensue.  Nor must the president present his remarks in person.  Every president from Thomas Jefferson to William Howard Taft produced remarks for Congress and then mailed them in.  And the State of the Union wasn't even called the State of the Union until the 1940s during Franklin Roosevelt's reign.  Previously it went by the more humble name of the "Annual Message."

Ukrainian Paradoxes.  One of the strangest things about the American response to Ukraine has been the willingness of the Left and the establishment Right to discount completely that the war is heading toward a rendezvous with ever-deadlier weapons and staggering fatalities — even as we witness increasing nuclear threats from a weakened and adrift Vladimir Putin. [...] If we wish to wonder why Vladimir Putin believed that the Biden Administration's response to his aggression would be like the Obama-Biden reaction in 2014, then we need only look to the August 2021 American collapse in Afghanistan.  That summer, Joe Biden made the decision to yank precipitously all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, abandoning a $1 billion embassy, a multimillion-dollar refitted airbase, and hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment, including 22,174 Humvee vehicles, nearly 1,000 armored vehicles, 64,363 machine guns, and 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs 358,530 assault rifles, 126,295 pistols, and nearly 200 artillery units.  Recent reports, denied by the United States, allege that Putin is negotiating with the Taliban to buy some of the abandoned American arsenal to help replenish Russia's enormous materiel losses in Ukraine.  What helped the Soviets win World War II were the American gifts of 400,000 trucks and Jeeps.  Over 60,000 American armored vehicles, Humvees, and trucks, now in the hands of the Taliban would be a valuable addition to Putin's arsenal.

They're Not Worried About 'Russian Influence', They're Worried About Dissent.  Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of "Russian propaganda".  I know I'm not a Russian propagandist.  I'm not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia.  My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind.  I'm literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.  Yet for years I've watched people pointing at me as an example of what "Russian propaganda" looks like.

Everything They've Told You About Russia Is A Lie.  I'm going to show you why I always thought it was lunacy to start in with the Russians.  [#1] Russia Is Not Iran, Iraq or North Korea.  It's not just Americans who misjudge Russia.  The United Kingdom — America's faithful lapdog — is utterly delusional when it comes to the Russians. [...] There's nothing in Europe or North America that Russia absolutely needs.

Sifting through the Mess of the Ukraine War.  [Scroll down] However, the fundamental feature of the war is that nobody was ready for war — not Russia, Ukraine, or their allies.  By the day of the invasion, the Russian army was embezzled, the Ukrainian army was disassembled and had not reassembled, and NATO armies were depleted.  With artillery, for detail, the American industry currently produces about fifteen thousand 155-mm howitzer shells per month; typically, Ukraine uses five thousand shells daily.  Thus, Ukraine uses a month's worth of American shell production in three days.  That is not sustainable.  Overall, the present war demonstrated widespread ammunition shortages, exacerbated by the mostly peaceful post-WWII decades.  From the White House perspective, the war in Ukraine is out of control.  The working hypothesis is that President Biden, in a Chamberlain-like move, had committed to giving about one fifth of Ukraine to Putin.

Guilty Unless Proven Innocent is the Army Norm.  For most of the history of the Army, what would in the 21st century be known as Equal Opportunity (EO) and Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention (SHARP) programs were sorely lacking effectiveness.  Soldiers could face bias, harassment, even sexual assault, with little or no real recourse.  Soldiers could report the offenses, but leadership often swept accusations under the rug.  In the mid-2000s a female senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) was raped by a male officer.  She would not file a complaint against the man because, "nothing's going to happen about it."  This was all too common.  Forward to the early 2010s and things began to change.  The Army threatened commanders that if EO or SHARP were not properly investigated, and a blind eye was turned, their careers would be endangered.  EO and SHARP complaints began to be taken seriously.  Investigations occurred.  Guilty perpetrators were held accountable.  Accusations soared because soldiers felt more comfortable reporting.  But the pendulum continued to swing away from the do-nothing of the past towards the #metoo and #trustallwomen knee-jerk reactions of the late teens where accusations equal guilt.

The biggest, most ignored demographic in electoral politics.  The majority of non-voters are independents who do not identify with either party.  Most have no higher than a high school education and also make less than $40K/year. [...] Here are potential remedies to the real or imagined disincentives for non-voters to participate in the Great American Experiment:
  •   Break the two-party duopoly.  The American Conservative published a thorough article on how to accomplish this.
  •   Term limits.  The McCarthy refuseniks actually pushed for a vote on this issue as a precondition to elect the new House speaker.
  •   Spotlight the corruption.  Require politicians to wear an insignia on their $1,000 suits for every corporation that has funneled money into their campaign, directly or indirectly, like NASCAR drivers. [...]
  •   Transparency.  Declassify all the documents currently hidden from the public that do not have a legitimate national security justification to remain classified, as determined by some truly independent panel empowered to make such judgment calls.  By the government's own admission, up to 90% of these documents would not adversely affect national security if they were released.  Their status as classified does not serve "national security"; it keeps the Deep State's dirty secrets hidden from those of us who pay for their dirty deeds to be performed in our name.  JFK expressed the essence of this wild notion, and he was rewarded with a bullet in the head.

Ukraine and the Unlearned Lesson of History.  What is happening in Ukraine is not an isolated event that arose either by misunderstanding or as a result of one man's ill will.  It would be wrong to assume that Russia's attack on Ukraine was due to an unfortunate miscalculation by the Russian president.  On the contrary, all current events are a logical step in the centuries-long history of the Russian state, which has always been aimed at imperial expansion and the conquest of foreign lands.  The conquest of Siberia, Central Asia, countless wars with Turkey, with Sweden, with Lithuania, with Austria, with Persia, with Napoleonic France, with Finland, with Afghanistan — it's only a small list of the Russian wars of aggression.  Russia has never been interested in developing its own country and improving the lives of its people, but only in expanding its territory at the expense of its neighbors.  Putin's power is not a legacy of past traditions, but an inseparable continuation of centuries of the Russian expansion, one inseparable chain of colonialism from the time of Ivan the Terrible, to Alexander the First, to Stalin, to Brezhnev and now Putin.

Opposing viewpoint:
The Real Lessons of the Real History of The United States and post-Glasnost Ukraine.  I am responding to "Ukraine and the Unlearned Lesson of History," by Jacob Fraden, published in AT 1/31/23.  I'll start with the author's contention that Russia's war against Napoleonic France was one of its wars "of aggression."  On June 24, 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of 650,000, approximately the 12th European county to receive the French tyrant's military attention.  Who was the aggressor here?  Tsar Alexander I was a hero at the Congress of Vienna, for crushing that invasion and breaking the French chronic aggressor's back once and for all.  And most of Christian Europe had the sense to be grateful to Russia for driving the hated Turkish muslim conqueror and oppressor out of the Balkans and other parts of Europe.

To Save America, Abolish the Civil Service.  Over the past few months, we've been considering the wholly negative history of the so-called "Progressive"-era constitutional amendments, none of which did anything to improve the nation but did much to undermine its founding principles.  Until the end of the Civil War, the constitution had only been amended twice since the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791:  the obscure, jurisdictional 11th Amendment, (1795), which had to do with lawsuits involving state and federal courts, and the 12th, (1804), which partially clarified the procedures for presidential elections.  Then, between 1865 and 1870, came the three Reconstruction amendments, abolishing slavery (except as a punishment for a crime, such as a prison chain gang) and giving African-Americans citizenship and voting and other rights.  And then after a 43-year break, came the Progressive Era and its assault on Americans' money and personal freedom, the radical changes in how the Senate is selected, Prohibition of a formerly legal substance, and finally the extension of the franchise to women, in defiance of all historical norms going back to the ancient Greeks, on the theory that it wasn't "fair."  All have been proven disasters.

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Warns of Nuclear War: U.S. Has 'No Plan' in Ukraine, This Is Not a 'Video Game'.  Providing new tanks to Ukraine won't change the reality on the ground of the current conflict with Russia, according to retired Army Lt.  Col. Daniel L. Davis, who claimed the United States has "no plan" or strategy and warned of the real-world danger of invoking NATO's "mutual defense" clause, which would trigger a nuclear war.  In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday, Davis discussed the situation on the ground in Ukraine.

The Real Great Reset.  The year 2023 is shaping up to be the start of long period of destruction and renewal.  The old global world is collapsing under the impact of the war in Ukraine, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, high energy prices, supply chain disruption, and a declining public confidence in authority.  The coming year will see the demolition continue until perhaps the point is reached when it is simply easier to start over again.

Inside the Nazi Whitewash of Ukraine.  On January 1, the world celebrated New Year's Day — a holiday of self-reflection, self-renewal, and hope.  In Ukraine, the focus was different.  There, January 1 marks the birthday of Stepan Bandera, Ukraine's Nazi national hero.  Bandera is the founding father of Ukrainian Nazism and his birthday is a national holiday.  In Ukraine, paying homage to their most famous antisemite and leading Nazi collaborator of World War II, is a very big deal.  Under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the level of Nazi influence and control in Ukraine has been unprecedented.  Zelenskyy outlawed all 11 independent and opposition political parties but left the parties and organizations of his Nazi partners and allies intact and in power.

Weaponization of the DOJ by the Chinese Communist Party.  In a shockingly direct conflict against the interests and security of the U.S., the CCP has weaponized the DOJ to pursue "dissidents, political rivals, and critics" who have trusted our government's laws protecting asylum seekers from hostile foreign governments.  U.S. law firms doing business in and on behalf of China are subject to the malign influence of the CCP through the "unrestricted warfare" tactic of lawfare.  In 1992, the CCP began allowing foreign law firms to establish practices in China, requiring, as FBI Director Wray explained, "the law be interpreted according to the CCP's orders, directives, and interests, and... uphold the leadership of the party."  No one understands CCP lawfare tactics better than Chinese dissident, Miles Guo,because he's been their primary target.  According to The Wall Street Journal, "Some U.S. national security officials view Mr. Guo, who claims to have potentially valuable information on top Chinese officials and business magnates and on North Korea, as a useful bargaining chip to use with Beijing."

We Can Have A Federal Spending Cap.  When We the People get to the point in our personal finances where we are at risk of not even being able to pay the interest on our credit cards and loans, that's a wake-up call at the cliff's edge of bankruptcy.  Most of us never get there.  When we do, it's time to (1) stop spending and (2) get those bills paid down, if not completely paid off.  Such personal responsibility needs to be manifest at our national level too.  It's time to stop funding every seemingly good idea that comes along.  Fiscal restraint is required.  We need a spending cap, one that comes with such strong cables attached that they cannot be sawn through.  The spending cap must contain reductions by a fixed percentage every year for the next ten years.

Parsing an Ungrateful Generation.  [Scroll down] Quitting your job without giving the standard two-week notice (or more if you are in a critical position) is considered by molly-coddled younger workers to be nothing more than leveling the playing field.  The prevailing thinking seems to state that companies are exploiting their workers through the very requirement to show up for work.  Many of those young believe they have better things to do than punch a clock or make money for someone other than themselves and detest the inconvenience of having to work for money.  To them, this is literal proof of White Supremacy. [...] Millions of our young live with a profound distrust for America, its systems, fairness, and perhaps, even a question of how long the America of their parents and grandparents will continue to exist.  These issues constitute the root cause of our current predicament and where we must collectively make our stand.

It's Time To Try A Different Approach To America's Drug Problem.  As deaths from illegal drugs rise, many people recommend more stringent law enforcement.  The basic thrust of this argument is simple.  In the last few years, we have seen overdose deaths rise from sixty-odd thousand to over a hundred thousand per year.  The drugs they die from are brought into the US illegally and typically contain fentanyl.  We need more cops and so on to stop the flow.  Full disclosure: I am a retired anesthesiologist who administered fentanyl extensively throughout most of my thirty-six years in medicine.  I have literally given gallons of the stuff, so I'm intimately familiar with it. [...] If I take you into the manufacturing process, you'll discover that these drugs cost almost nothing to manufacture.  That's right, they are no more expensive to make than aspirin, and you can buy that cheap.  So why are we seeing inexpensive safe drugs killing people and criminals like El Chapo becoming as rich as Croesus?  I'll give you a hint.  It's not the drugs.

Should You Raise Chickens?  Yes.  That's it.  That's the article.  Well, it could be, because IF you have the means and IF you have the space and IF you're physically capable of raising chickens, then you definitely should consider buying and raising them.  I was saying this before eggs became so expensive in the United States that people started smuggling them from Mexican supermarkets.  Now, it's really a no-brainer.

How the world works (for dummies).  Poverty in America is so bad that some people can barely afford their cell phones.  In much of the rest of the world, poor people starve to death, or die of what in America are ordinary, survivable diseases or injuries.  In America, injustice is so bad that many lawyers appointed by the court cannot get their clients acquitted of the crimes they committed, and must settle for a plea bargain.  Elsewhere, to be accused is to be found guilty and imprisoned in hell-hole cellars, innocence being irrelevant to the courts of so-called justice.  In the U.S., police sometimes bruise a resisting felon and get fired for excessive use of force.  In some parts of the world, the main difference between their police and their criminals is a badge.

Are Americans Still Capable of Self-Government?  In a 1789 letter to the British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson observed that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government."  By that standard, it's no longer clear that the American electorate is equipped for the task.  Jefferson was, of course, an ardent advocate of a free press whose primary function would be to provide the voters with enough information about the government's actions to assess the soundness of its policies.  Unfortunately, it's unlikely that he would dignify today's corporate media with the appellation "free press."  Jefferson's definition of the term would not, for example, apply to "news" organizations that collude with government officials to suppress debate on important national issues such as the COVID-19 lockdowns.  Nor would it include the major broadcast networks that collectively refuse to report a major government-censorship scandal like the Twitter Files.  This kind of story is why First Amendment protections for the press exist.

On National Security, Can the Center Hold?  China and Russia are explicit concerns.  The NDAA establishes a defense modernization program for Taiwan.  This includes up to $10 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants over the next five years and up to $2 billion in loans.  It would create a regional contingency stockpile, allowing the U.S. to place weapons in Taiwan for use if a conflict erupts.  To strengthen U.S. capabilities, construction of nine warships and two support ships is to begin this year and $1 billion is directed to improve the shipbuilding industrial base.  The Navy will need to build more warships, faster, if it is to maintain naval superiority against a China that has the world's largest shipyards dedicated to expanding its battle fleet.  The NDAA would extend and modify the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, authorizing $800 million this fiscal year.  The program provides funds to pay the American defense industry to produce weapons to send to Ukraine, rather than drawing from current stockpiles which American forces may need.

Good riddance to Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.  One of the most obnoxious wokester players on the world stage surprised everyone Wednesday by saying she was calling it quits. [...] It couldn't have come soon enough.  She was a wokester fanatic whose gun-grabbing, China-kowtowing, sneeriness at conservatives, softness on crime, and draconian COVID lockdowns ran New Zealand's economy into the ground and it all just caught up to her.  Despite the international plaudits that brought from the international left, the reason she got out was that she was loathed at home, and wouldn't have been able to win re-election in the general election in October.  She didn't want her name attached to the loss to her entire party that was coming.  In the last month, her popularity fell to a stunning 29%, from an initial high of 70%. [...] These leftists have made a hash of things, and New Zealanders finally got tired of it.  Ardern could no longer deny what was going on with that 29% popularity rating that just kept moving lower.  It goes to show that a progressive leader, with dictatorial tendencies, doesn't take long to grow very unpopular, even from an initial base of good will.  Ardern leaves her office as a failure, despite the fakey-fake words of praise even from her (undoubtedly delighted) opponents at her exit.

Comedian Konstantin Kisin's Oxford Debate Speech Was Epic.  At 40, Kisin is an early Millennial (or Xennial, as they are now being categorized).  So, he has lived some life, had a taste of career success, and has a family.  Some of the things that indicate that your views on how life and the economy works is not merely theoretical.  Kisin also was born in Russia and emigrated to Europe, domiciling in Great Britain.  So, he has not always benefited from living in the Western petri dishes where WOKENESS germinates and takes hold.  Which is what makes him, and this debate speech he gave at The Oxford Union Society so compelling.  [Video clip]

The Ultimate Arms Deals: Why Washington is so Eager to Support Ukraine.  I thought the Afghanistan bug-out was the ultimate arms deal.  Biden abandoned billions of dollars of weapons, leaving them behind for the Taliban to enjoy. [...] One of the joys of that — at least to military equipment manufacturers — is that the replacement is not just brand-new, but almost always progressively enhanced in capabilities — and price.  Getting back to Afghanistan, the Government Accountability Office reported that between 2003 and 2016, the U.S. supplied Afghan defense and security forces with an arsenal that included 208 aircraft, 42,000 pickup trucks, 22,000 Humvees, nearly 9,000 MTV cargo and transport trucks, nearly 1,000 mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, nearly 200 armored personnel carriers and hundreds of thousands of rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, rocket propelled weapons and night vision goggles.  More had been provided between 2016 and August of 2021.  If those weapons came out of military stock — vehicles stored in armories waiting for the military to need them to fight our enemies du jour — they will be replaced with newer ones.

Joe Biden and the CIA Worked to Install Current Communist Regime in Brazil — This Was All Planned.  As The Gateway Pundit reported on Saturday — The US began deporting Brazilian opposition leaders back to Brazil this week and the Lula Gulags.  This is taking place at the same time that as evidence was presented that the January 8 riots in Brazilia were staged.  US journalist Glenn Greenwald is now complaining about the Communist takeover he helped support and enable.  Greenwald was an outspoken critic of President Jair Bolsonaro the past several years.  He got what he asked for — criminal Lula is back in charge, the communists are fully in charge and the iron boot of Marxism is taking control of Brazil.

Emerging Regret About Ukraine War in the U.S. and My Interview With Emerald Robinson on Biden's Classified Document Leaks.  America's infatuation with Ukraine and Zelensky (the Cocaine Comedian) is starting to wane, but most politicians and the public continue to believe the lie that Ukraine is an innocent country being bludgeoned by a communist Russia ruled by a dictator.  Oh yeah.  Don't forget.  Russia is suffering massive military and economic losses and just can't live without U.S. investment and Europe's technology.  It is all nonsense, but if you are living in the United States and try to have a reasoned discussion with the fan boys and girls cheering for Ukraine, you would find more success talking to a brick wall.

WATCH: Sheriff Mark Lamb on Upholding the Constitution Instead of the State.  Sheriff Mark Lamb joined the program  [What program?]  to discuss his new children's book titled "The Adventures of Seymour Clues and Mr. Mouse," and why it is important for people with conservative values to create competing alternatives to the progressive ideology being pushed in the school system.  In this episode, Lamb also discussed the proper role of a sheriff and how people in these roles have a duty to uphold the Constitution even when it goes against the wishes of state governing authorities.  Most people are not aware of a sheriff's true role in the community and believe they are only another enforcement arm.  But these officials are also tasked with ensuring that the rights of their communities are not threatened by government and civilians alike.  It was quite an enlightening conversation.  [Video clip]

A Reminder to Doctors about the Meaning of Life.  Many people now know of Damar Hamlin, who suffered a similar event on national television.  After COVID politics, under which the physician's first obligation to provide the best care for his patient has frequently been ignored (e.g., mandated vaccines for patients with immunity), millions of Americans were again reminded what real medicine looks like, as a medical team revived Damar.  Illustrative of a true doctor-patient relationship, the focus was solely on Damar's health.  There were no legal consent forms, no administrators detailing which procedures could be billed, no food from a salesman pushing the "best drug" for a patient in cardiac arrest, and no complex codes required prior to chest compressions.  Patients have the right to expect from their physician a relationship free from the influence of power, money, and anonymous third parties.

The Editor says...
Yes, but surely all NFL players have given written permission for any NFL doctor to do anything necessary to   protect the NFL   save the player's life.

Do We Need a Department of Transportation?  [Scroll down] Government regulators have no real track record at improving anything, let alone system performance.  Regulators typically make things worse.  Let's take a look at the Department of Transportation (DoT).  It's stated mission is "To deliver the world's leading transportation system, serving the American people and economy through the safe, efficient, sustainable, and equitable movement of people and goods."  The DoT was established in 1966 and combines thirteen agencies that cover all aspects of transportation from air, road, and rail travel to the administration of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.  Its FY23 budget is $105 Billion, up from the FY21 budget of $87.6 Billion and it employs over 58,000 personnel.  What has the DoT done for us?  In addition to the failures listed above, there is plenty more where those came from.  First off, the Federal Aviation Administration, one of the DoT agencies, failed miserably in certifying the 737 Max jet, causing two major crashes and the loss of many lives.  While spending over $16.9 billion (FY23) on mass transit the U.S. has failed to modernize its system.  The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 removed much of the price controls and red tape in the railroad industry, resulting in a 159% increase in productivity and a real price decline of 44%.  Now, the Surface Transportation Board is starting to regulate reciprocal switching agreements.  The net effect will be to bog down the rail industry and increase prices.  With the ongoing failures of the Department of Transportation, is it fair to place the blame on one person?  No.  This is a system problem that needs to be dealt with in a different way.  What needs to be done is to start to dismantle the DoT, agency by agency.  Let's start with the FAA.

Trump Era Officials Say Americans 'Should Be Insulted' By Mexican President 'Lecturing' US On Border Wall.  Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who has a history of speaking out against Republicans cracking down on illegal migration, talked to Biden about migration issues on Tuesday at the North American Leaders' Summit, and thanked him for not building "even one meter of wall" despite pleas from Republicans.  López Obrador made the remarks because he does not want to be held "accountable by America for his and Mexico's responsibility for the human and drug trafficking running through his country," former Deputy DHS Secretary and Senior Fellow for Center for Renewing America Ken Cuccinelli told the Caller.  He has historically been against the wall for "political reasons," but Trump "prioritized the safety and well-being of the American people over the opinions and perceptions of Mexican leaders," Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of the DHS and executive director of the America First Policy Institute, said.  "It's clear that President Biden does not share that same view, and the President of Mexico has taken advantage of it."

Investigating the Investigators.  Of course, the very name of the subcommittee — the "Weaponization of the Federal Government" — suggests a wide-ranging inquiry that could look into the actions of a number of federal agencies — the FBI/DOJ, Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and NSA, etc.  It would include efforts by the Biden Administration and FDA/CDC to eliminate unapproved speech about COVID-19 and how the FBI made sure social media companies, including Twitter, took down alleged misinformation about the 2020 election and had a part in the suppression of the Hunter Biden story.  And that's just the more recent history of governmental abuses.  What else is out there, still waiting to be uncovered?  There is sure to be more.  We just haven't heard of it yet.  Then there are the federal abuses of their investigative powers, starting with the Russiagate fiasco.  Yet even with Russiagate there's much we don't know.  It's either hidden under layers of classifications or kept secret as part of federal investigative steps.  Or the evidence remains with the DNC and Crowdstrike, assuming it hasn't been destroyed.

Trump Was Right On Tariffs, And Biden Knows It.  Free traders on the left and the right routinely excoriated Donald Trump for his willingness to implement tariffs on foreign imports.  With the election of Joe Biden in 2020, many hoped the incoming president would reverse the former president's "protectionist" trade policies and return to free trade orthodoxy.  This, however, never happened. [...] President Biden has, time and time again, skirted the issue of tariffs.  Instead, he has opted to quietly continue his predecessor's America-first tariff hikes, despite having forcefully criticized Trump's trade policy with China in 2019:  "President Trump may think he's being tough on China.  All that he's delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers and consumers losing and paying more."  Biden must have conveniently forgotten this previous stance.  By keeping in place the Trump tariffs, he has successfully frustrated economic liberals in both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Elitists' Communications Counterrevolution.  In sum, the communications revolution is an historically unprecedented technological boon for personal empowerment, growth, enrichment, and self-government.  It is this last that alarms the elitists.  The elitists believe they are entitled to wield power for the purpose of governing their inferiors (i.e., the rest of us).  To facilitate this inversion of our free republic's design, the elitists require the complicity of a significant amount of the citizenry who, through acquiescence, apathy, and/or dependency, are more than willing to submit to the elitists' control over their lives, be it wholly or in part.  Thus, for the elitists, the communications revolution is an existential threat.  The empowerment of sovereign citizens to self-govern and, be it singularly or collectively, increase their ability to control and curtail — i.e., to subordinate — the power of public and private sector elitists, had to be blocked through co-option and coercion; through a communications counterrevolution.

Are All Politicians Liars?  It is not for Democrats to pass judgment on Rep. George Santos; they have no standing to do so.  Neither is it the purview of Congressional Republicans to remove Santos, as he was duly elected by his constituents.  But he can be sanctioned in other ways: shunned, humiliated, and otherwise disgraced.  The sanctioning of Santos should be done very publicly, in-house, by Republicans and other conservatives, as an example for all the world to see because there is so much at stake.

Reality bites: We don't currently have a House of Representatives.  As the clown show in the House of Representatives stretches into its fourth day, a disturbing reality has begun to set in.  By any functional definition of the institution, we currently do not actually have a House of Representatives.  Under the long-standing rules of the House, no business can be conducted without a Speaker.  That includes the swearing-in of all the members.  (Not just the newly elected ones.)  The terms of all of the previous members have ended, so until they are sworn in, there technically are no sitting members of the House.  And until all of the non-members can figure out how to put someone in place as the Speaker, there will not be a House.  The Senate is unable to do anything except internal housekeeping chores without the cooperation of the currently non-existent House, so the country currently does not have a legislative branch.

A Little Rebellion in House Speaker's Race Is Good Thing.  Unlike how the Left now defines "democracy" — which vacillates between pure mob rule and rule by a bureaucratic, woke priesthood — the Founders understood that democracy had a limited, but important place in our federal republic.  In the debates over the Constitution, George Mason of Virginia called the House the "grand depository of the democratic principle of government." The Framers created it to more directly represent the interests, temperament, and immediate concerns of the people — certainly by comparison with the Senate.  If democracy was the only element of our government, as with the Greek democracies of old, we would quickly obliterate ourselves.  However, if democracy is entirely shunted aside, we end up with other forms of malignant government, such as oligarchy.  Democracy can be brutal and unthinking, but it can also provide a quick and necessary course correction when conventional wisdom is wrong and "elites" have become corrupted.

What Happens If Some House Members Start Voting 'Present'?  A few months back, the Congressional Research Service prepared a useful report on how the speaker of the House is chosen.  The CRS report, relying on authoritative House practice manuals, explains that the speaker is elected by a majority of members voting "for a person by name."  Translation: 218 votes are not necessary if (a) fewer than 435 members attend the vote, or (b) members who are present opt not to vote for someone by name — i.e., if those latter members vote "present." [...] According to some reports, a number of the dissenters have warned McCarthy that they don't care whether their opposition to him leads to the election of a Democrat.

Taking a Roller Coaster Ride with the Fed.  The monetary policies pursued by the Fed over the past 20 years have contributed to economic instability.  The 0 percent federal funds rate policy, holding interest rates artificially low, motivates malinvestment, i.e., investments that result in unsustainable credit expansion.  These investments cease to be profitable once reasonable interest rates return.  Malinvestment became clear during the Great Recession in 2008, as artificially low interest rates combined with Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities fueled an unprecedented housing boom and bust.  Congress also contributed to this economic instability by financing the purchase of mortgage securities through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  During the Great Recession, the federal government bailed out government lending institutions as well as private corporations and financial institution.  These bailouts created a new generation of "zombie enterprises" that now depend on government subsidies and bailouts to keep them afloat.

10 Scandals To Keep Your Eye On In 2023.  [#2] Intelligence Agencies' 2020 Election Interference:  A related scandal to track in 2023 concerns intelligence agencies' interference in the 2020 election.  Even before Musk took over at Twitter, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed the FBI's role in prompting the censorship of the Hunter Biden story.  As I previously reported, during an August 2020 interview with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg revealed that before the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped, the FBI had warned the Facebook team to "be on high alert."  According to Zuckerberg, the FBI told Facebook, "[W]e thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election" and that "we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump similar to that so just be vigilant."  Based on the FBI's warning, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden story, Facebook treated it as potential misinformation and limited the visibility of the scandal.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

Why Congress Can't Refuse to Seat Santos.  he Democrats and the Fourth Estate have finally found, in congressman-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), a Republican who is genuinely guilty of lying to the voters.  Having thus discovered themselves — for once — in possession of the moral high ground, they have made the welkin ring with cries of outrage and calls for his resignation.  However, if he ignores those calls, it may be difficult to stop him from being seated in the House and even harder to expel him once he takes office.  But surely the Speaker of the House can simply refuse to administer the oath of office to Santos, right?  Wrong.  This was attempted in January of 1967, after Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.) was re-elected despite allegations that he had misappropriated funds as Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.  At the opening of the 90th Congress House Speaker John McCormack (D-Mass.) refused to swear Powell in and the House passed a resolution that denied him his seat while a bipartisan committee investigated the charges.

How To Make Republicans And Others Ditch Ukraine.  The DC establishment has decided that Ukraine policy is beyond debate, and not subject to input or question by the plebes.  They make no argument for why we should support Ukraine — and there are potentially good arguments to be made, once we figure out exactly what America's objective is.  What they do is slander, anyone, not cozy and cuddly with the Official Approved Narrative — get on board or get trashed.  The total, obnoxious refusal of our garbage ruling caste to even address the legitimate concerns of the American public regarding our blank-check, audit-free funding of the Russo-Ukrainian War is the best way to ensure that America will eventually stop supporting the underdogs.

Traitors.  A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words.  But there are only a few profane words to describe the obscene scene as the two women closest in line for the presidency hoisted the Ukrainian flag from the dias of the House of Representatives while swooning over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Congress cheered on December 21.  (This appears to be the first time in history the flag of another nation essentially flew inside the U.S. Capitol building.)  "They asked me to bring this flag to you, to the U.S. Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people," Zelenskyy said before handing the flag to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.  "This flag is a symbol of our victory in this war."  But even more telling — sickening? — was the image in the same photo of a House staffer wearing a black face mask standing silently, eyes cast downward, behind a tri-folded American flag in a shadow box as the celebration ensued.  The unintentional contrast said it all.  Our once-thriving and free country is slowly dying at the hands of frauds, crooks, and cowards — and they're not even trying to hide it from us.  They are flaunting it.

10 Steps to Save America.  In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform."  More commonly remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials.  The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts — along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps.  Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission's blueprint died.  But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion — with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade.  Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse.

Sam Bankman-Fried is not the only fraudster in America.  Sam Bankman-Fried was shuffled off to his new digs in the Bahamas, where it seems likely that he will be spending a great deal of time.  That his "mortal coil" might be shuffled off as well is an open question in the era of Jeffrey Epstein.  Who are the bigger fraudsters, though?  A spoiled kid who bilked his investors for billions or a bureaucracy that prints and spends public money with reckless abandon?  It would take an eternity for SBF to graduate to the level of these government and quasi-government scammers.  At the time of his bankruptcy filing, FTX's liabilities were in the neighborhood of ten to fifty billion dollars.  Compare that to the greater than $31 trillion in debt the U.S. government has rung up.

Deep State Suspicions.  Sixty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the National Archives and Records Administration has finally released over 13,000 records in its possession relevant to that tragic event.  Some 3% of the records are still being hidden from us.  Why?  So many years have passed and so many of the key figures have passed away it seems hard to imagine a benign explanation.  The event was always the subject of theories critical of the official line.  Truth to tell, one need not have been a conspiracist to question it.  To take just a single example, the single-bullet explanation never stood up to analysis in my view.  And that's just one part of the story.  After the record release, Tucker Carlson reported that someone with "direct knowledge" of the still-withheld records states the CIA is connected to the assassination.

A Life Beyond the State.  A free people should live confidently beyond the control of the State, conscious of their own rights and careful to preserve them.  They should exercise their own common sense, not rely on Harvard experts to decide what is best.  Unfortunately, we are now a long way from this ideal of freedom.  Government spending at all levels has risen to $10.3 trillion out of total U.S. GDP of $21 trillion.  Much of that spending is directed toward "educating," shaping, and intimidating individuals so that they become enthusiastic supporters of the State.  There is no reason why the federal government can't exercise its specified powers on 2% of GDP rather than the current 33.4%.  Government spending not only deprives individuals of their earnings, but provides government with the means of controlling them.  Freedom is impossible when the State spends half of the money that should be in the hands of individuals.  An obvious first step would be the elimination of both the individual and corporate income taxes, coincident with the elimination of many government departments.

I admit it: I was fooled by Zelensky and Ukraine.  I was fooled about Volodymyr Zelensky. [...] But today, seeing is believing.  So what has he done wrong?  It's legion.  Zelensky has banned opposition parties.  He's shut down critical media by force.  He's arrested his political opponents.  He has sent soldiers into churches.  Zelensky's secret police have raided monasteries across Ukraine, even a convent full of nuns, and arrested dozens of priests for no justifiable reason whatsoever and in clear violation of the Ukrainian constitution, which apparently no longer matters.  And in the face of this, the Biden administration has said nothing.  Last week, he announced his plan to ban an entire religion, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — more than a thousand years old — and to seize its property, all for being insufficiently loyal to his regime.  A free country does not ban a major religion.  Nor is it permissible in time of war to place soldiers in churches.  It's wrong to arrest dozens of priests.  It's a war crime.  And he's doing it to a Ukrainian church!  Joe Biden remains silent about all this — of course.  So is the Deep State — and the Uni-Party.

The Truth About the War in Ukraine.  As events unfolded in Ukraine, I could not help being reminded of the ten-year Vietnam War (1964-1975), and the war in Iraq (2003-2011).  Both were based on lies.  The Vietnam War saw over 360,000 Americans killed or wounded, while, in Iraq, the total exceeded 36,000.  In the Asian war, the premise was an attack on an American naval vessel that did not occur.  In the Middle East, it was the threat of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.  I have closely followed events in Ukraine since reading an analysis by Swiss Intelligence Officer, Colonel Jacques Baud.  I am convinced that we are embarking on a very dangerous path of military adventurism that will destroy our nation's finances.  It will not stop with Ukraine.  For our elites and their servants, nothing is out of bounds.  They will say and do anything in pursuit of their desires.

Does ESG Violate America's Antitrust Laws?  Over the past few years, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics have become ubiquitous among the biggest Wall Street investment firms and Fortune 500 companies.  From BlackRock to Vanguard, almost all of the nation's largest financial management companies have hopped on the ESG bandwagon, along with the trillions of dollars in assets under their control, which in actuality mostly belongs to everyday Americans in the form of public pension plans and various retirement accounts.  While much has been made over whether or not ESG is a sound investing framework that prioritizes left-wing ideological ends over profits, an even greater case can be made that ESG, as currently practiced, violates America's age-old antitrust laws.  The argument that ESG violates America's antitrust laws is certainly gaining momentum in the House of Representatives, which will soon be controlled by the GOP.

Harden the Electrical Grid, or Suffer the Consequences.  Almost 50,000 Duke Power customers in Moore County, N.C. were left in the dark on Sunday night in what has been called a domestic act of terrorism. [...] While the liberal media immediately started blaming "right-wing militants" because of a nearby gay pride march that afternoon, the broader implications of the attack have been largely ignored:  our power grid is completely vulnerable to anyone with a gun and the knowledge of where to shoot.

The Editor says...
At this point, nobody knows who the shooters were.  The news media presumes that the incident is an act of domestic terrorism, "because of a nearby gay pride march that afternoon," but wouldn't Muslims be (even more) offended by such an event?  One must also consider the possibility of a false flag operation, since the current regime is bent on finding an excuse for "gun control," which ultimately means outlawing guns.

Elon Musk Has No Idea What He Purchased with Jack's Magic Coffee Shop.  According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a "national security risk" to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state.  Now, think about that carefully.  What is it about a social media app that allows short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk? [...] The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

Where's the Antiwar Movement?  I can't recall a truly powerful and effective antiwar movement since the Vietnam War days, when the draft was still in force and American troops were dying in the tens of thousands in a useless and atrocious war in Southeast Asia.  And those are, of course, two key reasons why America lacks a strong antiwar movement today:  there is no military draft, and Americans are not dying in large numbers in a deeply unpopular war. [...] America spends roughly a trillion dollars a year on wars and weaponry and an imperial military presence, so that's what we get.  We're not spending a trillion a year on peace and diplomacy and conflict resolution.  We reap what we sow, and what we sow is almost entirely favorable to more war.

Advice to DeSantis: Wait for '28.  Reports surfaced two weeks ago that Florida Republicans are considering changing the state's "resign-to-run" law so Governor Ron DeSantis could throw his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential nomination without losing his governorship.  It is one sign among many that DeSantis, or those close to him, are thinking about taking on Donald Trump in the primary.  A word of warning and wisdom to DeSantis:  Don't do it.  DeSantis is a promising politician with a real future on the national scene.  He should want to be president.  But not yet.  DeSantis needs to understand his true self-interest.  Running for president in 2024 isn't it.  I can save DeSantis and his team a truckload of money and an embarrassing performance in the primaries by stating the obvious right now:  There is no way to win against Trump in 2024 for the GOP nomination.  Period.

Global Health and the Art of Really Big Lies.  In a former role I had a boss who lied a lot.  The lies were pure fantasy, but massive in scope and delivered with sincerity.  They were very successful.  This success was based on the reluctance of most people to consider that someone in a position of authority in a humanitarian organization would completely ignore any semblance of reality.  People assumed the claims must be true, as fabricating information to that extent in those circumstances seemed to defy logic.  The principle of Really Big Lies is based on their being so divorced from reality that the listener will assume their own perception must be flawed, rather than the claims of the person speaking to them.  Only an insane or ridiculous person would make such outlandish claims, and a credible institution would not employ such a person.  Therefore, given that the institution was apparently credible, the statements must also be credible, and the listener's prior perception of reality therefore flawed.  Lesser lies, by contrast, are likely to be perceived as sufficiently close to known reality to be provably wrong.  Inventing truth can be more effective than bending it.

I'm sick and tired of video-chatting.  I trust my toaster, but I don't take orders from it.  Nor do I let my microwave micromanage my affairs.  My TV's bossy, constantly telling me to vax and mask and I'll be saved, but I ignore it. [...] I bring this up because of the seemingly ever-present tyranny of technology these days.  It's hard even to meet a friend in a different part of town if you don't bring your phone.  And I do not like to carry a phone.  What's the need?  If I get in trouble on the street, they'll capture it on camera and decipher the footage six weeks later.  Out of a concern for safety in a defund-the-cops era, we're constantly being filmed and photographed even walking on the street.  Frankly, that camera on us everywhere is discomfiting.

Parents pay a high price for the privilege of owning their children.  [Scroll down] Any play by the government for rights in the nation's children can only be successful if the government pays for all these real and intangible expenses.  In theory, parents who live comfortably only because welfare payments for their children provide an income will be more compliant.  In fact, though, those parents who do receive welfare payments will still be unhappy with government overreach.  The state is and always has been a poor substitute for the mother or father who is asleep in the next room.  Officialdom will never be there to comfort the crying child.  Let us not take an efficient system of raising physically and mentally healthy children and sour the milk that feeds them by adding politics to their diet.

The Insanity of 'Zero Covid'.  China believes they can "test and interdict" Covid.  False, as now proved by more than two years of them literally welding people into their apartments or forcibly relocating them to "quarantine camps."  The virus hangs out patiently and then infects people; all you've done is change the time to infection and the build of natural recognition of the virus and thus protection, not the outcome.  So why do they keep doing it?  That's predicated in their social-political system.  China's leader, in this case Xi, is seen as being effectively "God" who cannot be wrong.  To admit that he was wrong means he loses his "stick" and thus his claim on the leadership!  This has been a feature of China's social and political system for millennia. [...] In short China can't change its position in this regard as they've gone "all-in" publicly early on and to make said change is to admit they were wrong, which they will not do.  Were Xi to do so he would lose his position and quite possibly his head.  That's why they are even now building more isolation "camps" and quarantine facilities — despite it being known that their policy in this regard is epidemiologically bankrupt and it is physically impossible for it to succeed.

We Are Trapped in a Truman Show Directed by Psychopaths.  Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver. [...] The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth.  As Plato contemplated twenty four centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Rights Here, Rights Now.  Excessive emphasis on individual rights always ends up jeopardizing the political conditions that makes them possible, a lesson brutally retaught by the French Revolution.  As Tocqueville noted, among the three main revolutions of Western modernity, only France's failed to install a sound and durable regime, because it was the only one which refused to make any concessions to premodern principles.  The British attachment to monarchy and traditional jurisprudence, and the American attachment to associative life and religious piety, fostered individualistic ideals revealed through and compatible with human experience, not revolutionary will or conjecture.  To realize how far the French Revolution strayed from human experience into philosophical abstraction, one needs only look at some of the laws passed by the revolutionary regime.

The Diem Option.  [Scroll down] Instead of realizing that they had no idea what they were doing in that part of the world, the Kennedy administration plunged the country into a guerilla war in Asia.  The result was a calamity for both the military and the political class of the United States.  In one of life's great ironies, the people who cut their political teeth in the domestic revolts over the Vietnam War now find themselves in the same situation.  This time they are the people in charge and the client state is Ukraine.  Similar to 60 years ago, the American government has to deal with an erratic and reckless leader who may not be long for this world.  That leader is Volodymyr Zelensky.  Contrary to all of the happy talk in Western media, the proxy war against Russia is not going well for the West.  On the battlefield, the Russians are slowly grinding down the Ukrainian army, which has become a blackhole for Western arms.

Anti-Xi protests should end American left's China envy.  Xi Jinping, just starting a third term as head of China's ruling Communist Party, is having a bad week.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  In his first two terms, Xi cracked down hard on opposition to government policies, cut back on his predecessors' economic liberalization and purged rivals to consolidate power.  But now he faces grassroots protests across China, with large groups of demonstrators even calling for him to step down and Communist Party rule to end.  Protesters aren't just denouncing Xi, the party and the government's heavy-handed COVID policies — they're also objecting to rampant censorship by holding up blank sheets of paper.  The government has tried to keep the public from figuring out what's going on, but it has failed.

Big Trouble in Little China.  The Peoples Republic of China is a slave state boasting a record of military ineptitude unrivaled by any other large nation on earth, and is entirely of a piece of nearly all Chinese governments that have come before it.  It has no affinity with the West, nor does it desire one.  Almost congenitally incapable of creativity, innovation and exploration, it has instead adopted financial colonization as a central instrument of its foreign policy, using its own people as pawns in an international chess game only one side is playing.  Today, having scorned them as an undifferentiated mass of coolies led by a handful of mandarins, we fear them, but for all the wrong reasons.  As I've often observed, based on the historical record, the only people the Chinese can defeat in combat are themselves, as the stupefyingly high body counts of the Taiping Rebellion and Mao's civil war attest.

Joel Osteen and Deceptive Prosperity Preaching.  When one of the most popular Christian leaders in America focuses more on self-improvement, personal finances, and positive thinking than on the essential doctrines of the faith such as repentance from sin, sanctification, and the atoning work of Jesus Christ, there's a problem.  The prosperity gospel preached by men such as Joel Osteen has been described as biblically anemic theology.  And millions have fallen for it.  It's like a caffeine or sugar high with the nutritional value of cotton candy, but make no mistake:  it can be quite lucrative for those preaching it.  A friend of mine visited his church and said there were no crosses and there was no mention of Jesus.  He may be sincere, he may be naive; but he will be held accountable by God for what he preaches.  Lakewood Church in Houston church rakes in about $70 million a year.  For his latest book, Joel Osteen received a $13 million-dollar advance.  One book.  He and his wife have a fortune estimated at $60 million.  His 17,000 square-foot mansion is listed at $10.7 million and has six bathrooms, five fireplaces, three elevators, a swimming pool, guest house, and parking for 20 cars — including his $230,000 Ferrari.

It Was Never About Ukraine.  Events in Ukraine in 2014 marked the end of the unipolar world of American hegemony.  Russia drew the line and asserted itself as a new pole in a multipolar world order.  That is why the war is "bigger than Ukraine," in the words of the State Department.  It is bigger than Ukraine because, in the eyes of Washington, it is the battle for US hegemony.  That is why US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on November 13 that some of the sanctions on Russia could remain in place even after any eventual peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.  The war has never just been about Ukraine: it is about US foreign policy aspirations that are bigger than Ukraine.  Yellen said, "I suppose in the context of some peace agreement, adjustment of sanctions is possible and could be appropriate."  Sanctions could be adjusted when negotiations end the war, but, Yellen added, "We would probably feel, given what's happened, that probably some sanctions should stay in place."

A High Noon Showdown for America.  We may well be living in some of the most interesting times in the history of America.  After President Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024, Merrick Garland announced late last week the appointment of a special counsel to continue, in yet another form, the same Democrat/RINO witch hunt that has wrongfully hounded the former president in different mutations for the last six years. [...] [We] should take as an advance warning the events the world is now witnessing in Brazil as its unlawfully elected dictator is now tightening the noose he has placed around the necks of those protesting his fraudulent election.  Just this last weekend, that beneficiary of election fraud informed his adversaries that if they don't stop protesting, go home, and stay quiet — i.e., elect to become submissive and obedient to his tyranny — the government will seize their children.  For how long will the children be detained?  Who knows?  One might guess that will be decided later by the tyranny that ordered them to be taken hostage in the first place — much like those J6 hostages our present government is holding indefinitely without due process for petty offenses.  Such are examples of a government's weaponization of law enforcement at its finest.  Except for those who willingly choose to remain blind to reality, the parallels between these events in Brazil and what appears to be evolving in America is becoming frighteningly uncanny.

Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities.  As a treatise on constitutional government, The Federalist is and will always be a classic work of political science, with many enduring insights.  But in terms of supplying a guide to how our federal government works, The Federalist has become the owner's manual to a car that no longer runs, or was stolen long ago.  What Publius describes about the functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches — as well as the countervailing powers of the states — has almost no connection with current reality.  Congress doesn't write, the executive does not enforce, and the judiciary does not interpret the laws.  Power and wealth have become massively centralized in Washington, D.C. Federalism, judicial review, executive authority, the legislative process, appropriations — none of this remains operational in a way James Madison would recognize.  And now, the country's most powerful corporations are in active collusion with the federal security apparatus to enforce the regime's authority.  That's practically the definition of fascism.

The White House can end the energy crisis by next year if it wants to.  Power the Future is an American energy advocacy and research organization that promotes solutions to energy-related crises currently facing the United States.  In a report simply titled Energy Policy Roadmap, the group sets forth ten basic steps that President Joe Biden and/or Congress could begin taking immediately before we run out of diesel, experience more rolling blackouts, and all the rest of the very real threats America is facing because of the current destructive energy policies that are now in place. [...] Here is the bullet list, and every item on here could be put into motion tomorrow if Joe Biden has the will to take action or if the new Congress is willing to stand up to him and put corrective measures in place.
  •   Repealing Joe Biden's Natural Gas Tax
  •   Ending Biden's Oil and Gas Leasing Moratorium/Return Power to States
  •   Approving the Keystone XL Pipeline
  •   Blocking Biden's ESG Regulations
  •   Repealing the California Waiver
  •   Ending Activist-led "Sue and Settle" and "Citizen Lawsuits"
  •   Banning Use of the "Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases"
  •   Issuing Automatic Approvals for LNG Export Terminals
  •   Overturning Massachusetts v. EPA
  •   Stopping Biden's War on Coal

The US economy is at the mercy of Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen.  While Americans struggle to pay their bills amid soaring inflation, the institutions we rely on to wrestle the economy back to stability are engaged in a secret power struggle which only worsens the impending crisis.  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are engaged in a tug of war over interest rates, sources say.  On Yellen's side are liberal members of the Fed, including the ambitious, climate-obsessed Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard, who spearheaded the stealth takeover of the board by progressives over the past year.  While Powell is determined to bring down inflation by hiking interest rates, as central bankers around the world traditionally have done, sources say Yellen has been counteracting his efforts with the assistance of progressive "doves" of the Federal Reserve, who background journalists that there might be a slowdown in rate hikes, leading to roller-coaster market rallies.

The Upside-Down World of Currency.  [Scroll down] It is no accident that the biggest and most widespread global bull market in history has coincided with interest rate suppression to zero and even lower over the last four decades.  Equally, a trend of rising interest rates will have the opposite effect.  Unlike bull markets, bear markets are often sudden and shocking, especially where undue speculation has been previously involved.  There is no better example than that of the cryptocurrency phenomenon, which has already seen bitcoin fall from a high of $68,000 to $16,000 in twelve months.  And in recent days, the collapse of one of the largest crypto-exchanges, FTX, has exposed both hubris and alleged fraud, handmaidens to extreme public speculation, on an unimaginable scale.  For any student of the madness of crowds, it would be surprising if the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies actually survives.

The Digital Revolution Has Destroyed the Usefulness of Telephones.  I remember when telephones were useful as telephones.  Today they are used to surf the Internet and for text messages.  Most people don't answer the ring unless they recognize the number.  Many never set up their email or message functions on their cell phones.  I keep my cell phone off and only turn it on when I have to use it in order to report Internet or power outage or to receive a security code so I can sign on and connect with an Internet financial or payment site.  I have ceased answering the house phone unless I am expecting a call.  95% of calls are intrusive scams or robo calls.  The digital revolution has made it possible for your privacy to be invaded by scum from every country who assume they have a right to invade your space and use your time in an attempt to take advantage of you.  Despite the destruction of privacy, a Constitutional right, people are being forced to have a cell phone and endless apps just in order to function.  Telephones are useless in other ways.  Businesses are no longer set up to answer phones or to let you speak to a person.  You get a robot that gives you a menu unrelated to the reason for your call.

Congressional Hearings — Do Them Right or Not at All.  At the Federalist, Jordan Boyd offers up a proposed agenda for the new House of Representatives.  Boyd's agenda is the following, not necessarily in the order he ranked them:
  •   Impeach Joe Biden
  •   Impeach Merrick Garland.  Impeachment is something McCarthy said earlier he would not want to start with.  I hope he will change his mind, because I think it essential.
  •   Defund the FBI
  •   Disband the J6 Committee
  •   Probe the Biden family business
  •   Subpoena COVID Tyrants — Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, former CDC Director Robert Redfield "who lied about the origins, research, effects and mitigation of COVID-19."  (In this regard we have learned that the odious FTX crowdfunded studies "through TOGETHER Trial falsely claiming hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin weren't effective Covid treatments.")
  •   Impeach Myorkas and others over failures to secure the border.
I'd add to his list an investigation of FTX and how the regulators and investment houses and media (which apparently also got FTX funds as they were acting as touts for this Ponzi scheme) enabled this hustle which cost investors billions of dollars.

It's Time to Speak the Truth About Ukraine.  Joe Biden, the military-industrial-congressional complex, State Department neocons, the War Party comprised of all Democrats and many corporate Republicans, and Western globalist elites have the United States and NATO in a Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.  The warmongers are obsessed with destroying Russia.  To achieve it, they are determined to fight to the last Ukrainian.  In eight months, Congress has wasted $69 billion of American taxpayer money to fund their proxy war.  That's about $8 billion more than Russia's entire annual military budget.  And to the delight of the American arms industry, there is no end in sight.  Biden is soon expected to request another $50 billion.  Meanwhile, Biden and Congress have betrayed the American people — doing next to nothing to solve the crises of inflation, self-inflicted shortages of fuel and food, an invasion of five-and-a-half million illegal aliens, out-of-control violent crime, and a fentanyl epidemic imported from China and Mexico that is killing 100,000 Americans every year.

Lazy Voters Enable Democratic Fraud.  The Democrats, buttressed as always by their liberal media allies, recognize that today's lazy voter will never press the matter of voter fraud.  So, the fraud continues and Democrats will forevermore "win" every close election.  The anti-Americanism of Obama's 3rd Term continues.  The fecklessness and the corrupt, willing complicity of the McConnell-McCarthy Rino/Deep State wing continues.  Unless real pro-American conservatives step up in a meaningful and intelligent way, the country is doomed.

Counting on Votes.  As we adjust to the results of this charade of an election, we must face the depths to which this nation has fallen.  We are no longer in a place where simply voting can change things.  Something terrible is at the bottom of this pit we've fallen into, something that must be dealt with before we can count on our votes meaning anything.

20,000 Vehicles Under the Sea: Inside the Felicity Ace Disaster.  During the pandemic, as cargo ships backlogged outside ports, the phrase "supply chain issues" became occasional shorthand for "lost at sea."  For all of air freight's efficacy, it costs around five times as much to move a product through the air as it does by sea, according to the logistics firm Freightos.  Water remains the chief transport artery for global trade, with around 90 percent of traded goods carried via ship.  And all it takes is one clog to trigger a global panic attack.  That much became clear in March 2021, when the 1,300-foot, 200,000-ton container ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, jamming one of the world's busiest trade routes for six days.  The accident, initially blamed on stiff winds, is estimated to have blocked $9.6 billion in trade per day and marooned more than 300 ships outside the Suez's northern and southern entrances, and those ships carried everything from oil to cattle to cars.  While Egyptian crews worked to dislodge the Ever Given, the vessel gained internet infamy as a metaphor for the pandemic age.  You'd think that a ship the size of the Empire State Building would be able to withstand the stresses of a gusty day.  But in the shipping business, margins matter.  For decades, cargo ships have been steadily growing in size in order to carry more freight on each voyage.  The German insurance company Allianz estimates that capacity for 20-foot shipping containers alone has spiked by 1,500 percent over the past 50 years.  In 1990, the largest ships could hold 5,000 containers.  The Ever Given carries four times that.

Biden and Trudeau Beclown Themselves by Parading Around Asia in Commie Mao Jackets.  Joe Biden and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, North America's one-two punch of Marxism, were filmed happily flouncing around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in matching Mao starter kit jackets.  [Video clip] [...] Biden will meet Jinping for the first time on Monday to discuss, among other things, the tension between China and Taiwan.  What better way for Trudeau and Biden to stand up to the pinkos than by dressing like their exalted, draconian leader?  It reminds me of Jen Psaki wearing a Soviet hat in Russia.

Unreal midterm elections and the search for sanity in America.  The election last week defied reality.  For example, John Fetterman, the Democrat who won the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, promised more inflationary spending, more lenient treatment of felons amid a violent crime wave and more of the left's radical, parent-dissing sexual agenda.  Yet he won.  Do you really believe that a majority of Pennsylvanians voted for a stroke-damaged, hard-core leftist who comes across as a professional wrestling villain?  I don't.  Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz was not the strongest Republican candidate and was perceived by many as a RINO.  But he should have prevailed in an election in which Democrats had to defend the Biden train wreck.

Lauren Boebert Wins Colorado CD-03, Also Arizona and Nevada Solid GOP Wins - Delays Are Media Anti-Trump Narrative Engineering Efforts.  The Boebert lead will continue widening until they "officially" call the race.  The delay is strictly because Lauren Boebert was an identified media/maga target, similar in construct to Marjorie Taylor Green, who won by too wide a margin to be useful for this intention.  The delays in Arizona are for the exact same reason.  All GOP wins.  Kari Lake easily won the Governor contest and Abraham Hamadeh has easily won the Arizona AG position.  Slightly lesser probability, but still likely, both Blake Masters (AZ Senate) and Mark Finchem (AZ Secretary of State) will stand victorious at the end of this narrative engineering delay.  The same applies for Nevada where Republican Adam Laxalt has easily won the Senate Race and Joe Lombardo is the new Republican governor.

ESG Boomerangs on BlackRock.  On January 15, 2020, BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink sent a letter to CEOs saying that he will use its power to ensure "every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change."  The plight of these targeted companies is made worse by investment managers at index funds like BlackRock, who control vast numbers of shares.  They can use the ESG ratings against corporate boards by promoting shareholder resolutions to force management to advance liberal social causes, eco-climate standards, and diversity employment goals.  ESG eco-activists especially target fossil-fuel companies that are slated ideologically for extinction.  BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with index funds worth $10 trillion.  With Vanguard and State Street — all under "woke" management — Blackrock has been using its massive financial muscle to steer Wall Street down disastrous ideological paths.  Wall Street and investors are pushing back.

The Time of the Jesters Honoring Themselves Comes to an End.  [Scroll down] Yesterday's bomb-vest wearing terrorist on TV screaming "Allahu Akbar" may have morphed into middle-class suburban American parents at your local school board meeting opposed to gender dysphoria and CRT propaganda.  They may not know that their names may be part of an FBI file.  But Joe Biden's Justice Department knows who they are.  And now the Jesters take the stage, spinning their magical tales of a dystopian future if the Democrats don't win on Tuesday, and Democrats are in absolute hysterics, with President Biden shrieking threats that Americans who don't vote to keep Democrats in power are destroying democracy in America.

John Fetterman's health and heart condition still unaddressed.  Despite numerous editorials from local newspapers across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well as the Washington Post, Lt.  Gov. John Fetterman's campaign still refuses to release updates on his medical condition.  That includes not just the aftereffects from his stroke earlier this year but also an update on the heart condition that caused it. [...] The evidence of the stroke's impact is now manifest.  Fetterman struggles to speak at his campaign rallies.  He relies on tropes, such as talking about New Jersey, crudites, and banning the filibuster, rather than speaking extemporaneously on current issues.  His symptoms have never been addressed by the medical experts who are treating him.  No doctor has spoken publicly about his condition outside of the letter released by his cardiologist in June.  No doctor has taken questions about him from the media.

The New Collectivism of Big Government Elites.  The sorry record of wealth generation in the Soviet empire and its client states, and the subsequent repudiation of central planning in favor of market-based economic arrangements by the People's Republic of China, mean that no serious observer today believes that economic collectivism "delivers the goods" in a manner superior to that of free-market capitalism.  Similarly, the joy observed in the wake of the Berlin Wall's collapse offered ample evidence of the moral bankruptcy of centralized economic organization as a means of cultivating just and fair living conditions for a nation's citizens.  Since then, the playing field has shifted.  In modern democratic societies (in contrast to high-tech despotisms like China under the Chinese Communist Party's rule), a compelling case must be put forward for any proposed policy or form of economic organization.  As the record of centralized economic decision-making in creating and distributing material wealth is a poor one, those still in favor of big government are largely left with tired, worn-out tropes about "trickle-down" economics and with empty slogans about building an economy "from the bottom up and middle out," along with other non sequiturs.  Language designed to stoke class envy may excite committed class warriors, but it means little to regular people simply trying to make ends meet.

Ben Franklin, the Middle Class, Socialism, and Global Warming.  We forget that in Europe, before and during colonial times, there was an upper class and commoners.  The upper class was made of owners who made the rules, the commoners were workers who obeyed the rules.  If there was a need to be fulfilled the ruling class made that decision.  Commoners stayed desperately poor.  The wilderness of America changed this hierarchy.  Settlers, mostly commoners, learned that if they wanted something done they had better do it themselves.  Mere farmers became masters of many trades.  They didn't wait for anyone's permission.  As the population of the colonies grew, the marketplace grew.  Small businesses began to pop up offering goods and services.  [Ben] Franklin printed a newspaper.  He also formed "The Leather Apron Club," later called the "Junto."  Its purpose was to encourage entrepreneurship and improve society.  People with dirt under their fingernails were proposing libraries, fire departments, hospitals, and even universities.  It was the beginning of the middle class.

Who has really been running our country?  On the day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, he signed dozens of extensively radical executive orders.  Then the Biden administration began populating the federal government and the federal Judiciary — including the new Supreme Court vacancy — with hundreds (probably thousands) of the most extreme anti-American people imaginable. [...] This has all the fingerprints of the Soros organization.  The people there are extremely intelligent and proficient, they passionately hate America, they've been leading up to this for several decades, and they have access to untold wealth and influence.  Everything mentioned above is something they are more than capable of organizing and carrying out.  But most of this couldn't have been accomplished during Biden's first two years without the cooperation of the 50 Democrat U.S. senators and the Democrat majority in the House.  And then there are the cowardly Republicans in both houses, including the leadership, who consistently put up a "gentlemanly" fight that is destined to lose.  Right now, job number one is openly exposing the "shadow government" that is really running America, and doing everything possible to drive them completely out.

John Fetterman Is Getting Worse.  Since John Fetterman rolled to victory in Pennsylvania's Democrat primary for the US Senate, the story surrounding his massive stroke has changed multiple times.  Following his disastrous debate performance against Republican Mehmet Oz, a series of recent media appearances are starting to paint a clearer picture, though.  In short, John Fetterman is getting worse.  Early on, his caretakers (including his wife) insisted that Fetterman was fine and was suffering no ill effects.  Eventually, written reports of his inability to communicate started to leak out, but it was rejoining of the campaign trail that really lifted the veil.  Fetterman made numerous, extremely short speeches in public where he appeared to stumble over his words in ways that weren't normal.  He'd repeat words, forget words, and make up words.  When he started to do media interviews sometime in September, it was impossible to hide his condition any longer.

A proposed MAGA manifesto.  [O]n September 1, Joe Biden gave a bizarre speech outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, whose style and content could have been from the 1930s, in another country.  Its purpose was to denounce a vaguely defined group — "MAGA extremists" — for vaguely defined anti-social activities.  Substitute "Jews" for "MAGA extremists," and you know where Joe is going with this.  Then, [...] on October 21, Joe's writers, finding they hadn't gotten the traction with "MAGA extremists" they had expected, turned the knob up to 11 and had Joe come out with "mega-MAGA" (a million times MAGA — a lot of MAGA).  What is Joe's revulsion of MAGA based on?  What is it in MAGA that Joe hates so much that he wants all America to know it, and to join him in it?  Below is what we are calling the MAGA Manifesto, the list of what policies we MAGAs support, and by extension, what Joe finds so unbearable that the policies on this list must be eliminated from public discourse.  This is a condition we call Democrat Governance.  It is what you get when you elect Democrats, and which Joe has been doing since he took office.

Pelosi Got Hammered.  [Scroll down] Maybe as more details come dribbling out, the events of that night will make more sense.  However, when a gay rights and BLM activist who looks like a New-Age-y vegetarian disciple of the left's murderous hero Che Guevara comes knocking on Paul Pelosi's back door in the middle of the night and Pretend President Biden and his Democrat Propaganda Machine immediately jump into action by blaming Trump-supporters, the whole spin operation reeks of the same odor still choking doubters of Jeffrey Epstein's declared suicide.  Maybe Epstein — the key witness to a child prostitution ring involving unknown perverts and rapists purportedly from the highest ranks of the world's business and political classes — killed himself in a New York jail cell while guards and cameras were conveniently absent, and maybe Paul Pelosi's alleged commie Castro nudist attacker was leading a secret double-life as a MAGA enthusiast.  Maybe the same FBI agents who still can't find the alleged culprit responsible for leaving failed explosive devices near Republican and Democrat party headquarters around January 6, 2021 will miraculously find footage of the San Fran hammerer wearing a bright red cap and suspiciously waving an American flag.

Talk we must about Fetterman's burning yard sign.  As we will be reminded by the mainstream media on an hourly basis (if not more often) every day until the election, dangerous hate crimes, often in the form of "speech," are being perpetrated by the "MAGA Republicans" constantly. [...] Let's just call this what it was.  It was a staged event.  It was a hoax designed to try to profit off of the liberal wave of accusations about violent attacks by "MAGA extremists."  But it wasn't even a good hoax.  Take a close look at the picture.  Most of us are familiar with campaign yard signs.  Having worked on multiple campaigns, I've not only had them in my yard but I've distributed them and picked them up after election day.  They tend to be composed of cheap wire frames with mass-produced plastic (and generally fire-resistant) banners promoting the candidate.  The one pictured here appears to be a sizable wooden structure placed out in a field near a road.  Note that the wooden frame is ablaze, as well as the sign.  And the sign is burning in a conveniently neat fashion from left to right, with the majority of the candidate's logo still visible in the firelight.  Wouldn't a true arsonist have doused the entire sign with some sort of accelerant before tossing a match and speeding off into the night?

What Are the Odds?  Burned Fetterman Sign Was on Farm of DNC Speaker.  Saturday morning Senate candidate John Fetterman tweeted a photo of one of his campaign signs that had been set ablaze, characterizing it as "violence and intimidation in politics" and that his campaign "is about bringing people together and rejecting hate + extremism."  [Tweet]  Of course, Fetterman followed that up with a plea for money.  [Tweet]  The woman who took the photo, Jane Switzer, is a self-described Fetterman donor who lives next door to the farm where this took place. [...] A few things were immediately curious.  How does one happen to snap a close-up photo of the sign mid-burn, in which it's burned almost exactly to the point where the burning stopped (as evidenced in the next day's photo), at 1:30 a.m., and how was the sign not completely engulfed by the time two firetrucks arrived to a rural area?  How is it that only a few blades of grass were singed?  How is it that the fire department put the fire out at the same time in the burn that Switzer's photo was snapped — and if they were busy putting the fire out, how was Switzer ALSO there?  If the verbiage with Switzer's post didn't give it away, she's a Fetterman supporter and a hyper-partisan.

Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman should be held accountable.  My friend Teri Christoph at Smart Girls Politics describes Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman as "enableists."  It's a term she made up and it perfectly captures the abusive behavior of political wives who are overcome by their own desire for power at the expense of the health of their husbands.  It's a play on a favorite word used by the left these days — "ableism."  The definition of enableists is:  "Democrat political wives who willingly subject their ill husbands to public ridicule with the sole purpose of amassing political power.  See: Jill Biden and Gisele Fetterman."  Teri says "The Toxicity Twins" have a lot to answer for.

CNN Embarrasses Itself with Documentary Series Slamming Rupert Murdoch.  Fox News first appeared on the scene in October 1996.  In 2001, Fox News first beat CNN and MSNBC (which also launched in 1996) in the ratings.  If you can't beat 'em, then attack them has been the MO of CNN since then.  For most of the next two decades, Fox News has been far and away the ratings leader in the highly competitive, and highly remunerative, cable television news landscape.  CNN's series on the Murdochs premiered last month.  It's a sweeping, technically state-of-the-art examination into the lives of Rupert Murdoch, born in Australia and now a U.S. citizen, and three of his children, unsubtly subtitled "Empire of Influence."  Long-gone Yellow Journalism mogul William Randolph Hearst step aside:  It's the Murdochs, according to CNN, who are the most influential — and the most problematic — media barons in world history.

John Fetterman is physically incapable of being a senator.  I've never seen anything like the Pennsylvania Senate debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz on Tuesday night, and I hope never to have to see anything like it ever again.  It was horrible.  I didn't think I would ever experience a moment as painful in the midst of a political campaign as the Perry moment, but that was like watching Pavarotti sing "Nessun Dorma" compared to this.  The stroke that Fetterman himself said "knocked" him down at the debate's outset has impaired him.  Full stop.  Don't believe anyone who even tries to tell you different, and you should probably not trust any such person to tell you whether you need an umbrella because you don't know whether it's raining.  Seeing Fetterman struggle to answer simple questions and form simple sentences was nothing less than an agony.  There's no sense even in trying to characterize how he did in expressing himself on issues, or how Mehmet Oz did talking about matters ranging from abortion to fracking to Social Security.

Well, That Was Weird.  John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz are contesting for the Pennsylvania Senate seat to be vacated by Republican Pat Toomey.  It's a marquee matchup that has taken on horror-movie elements as Democrats and their media adjunct seek to push Fetterman over the finish line.  Hobbled by the aftereffects of a severe stroke, Fetterman is obviously unfit for high office.  He is fit for the doctor's office.  They met last night for their one and only debate preceding the election.  I watched it live on NewsNation. [...] As expected, Dr. Oz turned in a professional performance.  He makes the appearance of a mainstream politician of generally conservative disposition and reassuring demeanor.  He was a little too ardent in arguing Fetterman's radicalism in response to almost every question, but I thought he made a good appearance.  Fetterman looked like he had wandered in off the set of Night of the Living Dead.

The lunacy of climate activism in Florida.  It would be better for all concerned to pause for a moment and contemplate the reality of Florida.  Whether or not the climate is changing, whether or not any of that change has anything to do with human activity, the truth is that Florida was never a place where God intended man to live.  The first Americans to visit Florida, back in the 1830s, were soldiers who were deployed to harass the Seminole Indians.  The men were appalled by the conditions they found in Florida.  A typical opinion of Florida can be found in the writings of an Army surgeon who recorded, "Florida is certainly the poorest country that ever two people quarreled for.... It was the most dreary and pandemonium-like region I ever visited, nothing but barren wastes." If the soldiers had had their way, they would have left Florida to the mosquitoes. [...] Florida is a paradise today because more than half of the Everglades were destroyed to create a rather dubious living space for humans.  Environmental activists either don't know this fact, or they choose to ignore it.

After the Jan. 6 Committee finishes, maybe a GOP Congress can probe some actual 'threats to democracy'.  How the United States went from an energy-exporting nation with a booming economy, low gas prices and no new foreign wars to an energy-short nation with a stagnating economy, soaring prices for gas (and everything else) facing a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia deserves some looking into.  America has a president who's not all there mentally, a doddering figure controlled by those around him.  He was elected despite hiding out in his basement during a close election season.  Scandals involving his son Hunter — and him — were banned from the media and from tech platforms in the leadup to the election.  Problems with his mental capacity were known to the press and to Democratic Party officials but were hushed up.  Time magazine even ran a triumphant story, post-election, about how a "cabal" — Time's word — of tech companies, political officials and media folks "saved" the election from Trump by ensuring Biden's victory.  We need to find out more about that.  How involved were government officials in this "cabal?"

Government 2.0.  In our lifetimes we have seen productivity improvements that are nearly unimaginable in many public sectors except one, and that would be government.  In fact, a case could be made that whatever advances have been made in the economy, they have been negated if not worse by government.  It's not just that government steals the fruits of the working class' labor, it is now headlong stealing whatever freedoms we have left.  When you have to take a self-threatening but claimed to be a self-protecting 'vaccine' under the argument that you must do it to protect others, you are pretty much at the end of your freedom road.  For some reason, we tell ourselves that our 250-year-old form of government is the best there is and the best we can do.  But that is just old people talking.  There is probably a good reason God designed our world where old people are constantly replaced by new people.  I suspect that it, in its infinite wisdom knew that if that wasn't the case, nothing would ever change or improve.  Accordingly, I direct this article to anyone still able to dream and is willing to consider how it might in fact be possible to upgrade our current form of government to a 2.0 version.

The Midterms.  Look, I know it's tough bordering on impossible to govern from Congress, but the least we can expect from the GOP is no-nonsense and quick investigations into major Democratic scandals which are just hanging out there: e.g., Biden laptop, Biden relations with Ukraine and China, the politicization of the FBI, ATF, IRS, CIA, etc., failure to enforce our immigration laws, "defund" the police disaster, and, of course, holding accountable the hoaxers who perpetuated the damaging Trump-Putin collusion story, and the COVID shutdown of the economy.

The Civilization That Knew Too Much.  [Scroll down] A generation ago, public perception of the interior of institutions was low-resolution, almost pixellated.  The average person could not know the details of what went on inside religious, law-enforcement, educational, corporate, or scientific organizations, he simply saw them through the lens of reputation.  Reputation can be thought of as a kind of data compression process that reduces a vast and complex reality into what in some cases is a single number.  People relying on indexes like the US News ranking of the Top Ten universities often need know nothing about an organization other than that it is Number X in a particular category.  But it was enough for many.  In that old world, people thought law enforcement mostly upright, churches mostly holy, educators largely trustworthy, journalists largely truthful and Washington occasionally honest, not because they knew the details, but because they accepted the Number.

Is Cyborg John Fetterman Really Fit For The Senate?  After suffering a severe stroke in May, Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman now relies on speech-to-text software to understand the spoken word.  The digital interface has become a part of him.  In a recent NBC interview, Fetterman can be seen gazing at his desktop screen, struggling to comprehend the questions asked.  The Democratic nominee will even be allowed to use this software in the Oct. 25 debate with his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.  In a healthy society, Fetterman's own party would urge him to resign for the common good.  This situation is beyond the polarized arguments over immigration, crime, or nuclear war.  Cognitive fitness is crucial for political leaders.  Their job is to engage the public, project competency abroad, and go toe-to-toe with rivals.  But we do not live in a healthy society.  Rather than acknowledge the danger of electing a U.S. senator who, tragically, has been forced to merge with a machine, Fetterman's supporters are framing this as an "equity" issue.  The normal desire to have leaders of sound mind and body is being denounced as "ableism" — i.e., the expectation that people are able to do their jobs.  In a culture that rewards virtue-signaling, even compromised cognition is exalted as a virtue.

Europe's self-inflicted depression.  EU ambassadors held their annual conference last week, and some surprisingly frank things were said for a meeting of diplomats.  Josep Borrell, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, quite openly excoriated the assembled ambassadors.  The European model is no longer working, he said:  'The United States [takes] care of our security.  China and Russia provided the basis of our prosperity.  This is a world that is no longer there.' [...] This marks a clear change in tone from the complacent end-of-history mindset which persisted in the EU even into the late 2000s.  Yet Borrell still remains in a minority.  Too many in the EU are clinging to the idea that the current global turmoil is just a phase, and that a return to the world of the 1990s is just around the corner.  It isn't just diplomats in Europe who suffer from this delusion.  Mainstream economists still seem to believe that the economic crisis we are going through today is just a phase in the business cycle, albeit one exacerbated by the external shocks of Covid and the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine And The Fed.  It's pretty much a truism for those who have been paying attention to events since the beginning of the Covid hoax that events are being driven by the Globalist agenda for world domination. [...] The strategy for subjugating Russia never relied on a military defeat for Russia in Ukraine.  The strategy was to use Ukraine to provoke Russia and thus to provide the collective West — with the US as the military backup — with an excuse for launching an all out economic war on Russia, to collapse the Russian economy and oust the Globalists' bête noire, Vladimir Putin.  Giddy with the prospect of world domination, the collective West assumed this could be accomplished in short order, and thus with little harm to Western economies.  Instead, farsighted Russian preparations for exactly this scenario — preparations that have been economic, financial, military, and diplomatic — have placed the economies of the collective West, and especially of Europe, already weakened by the Covid shutdown, on the edge of a precipice.  The Russian economy is surviving and, in important respects, thriving.

Pope Francis Uniting Roman Catholics and Muslims Forming World Church!  There are about 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, and faith groups in the world, and Pope Francis is trying to get everyone together; however, each group makes its own pitch for their "way."  Obviously, Francis has to convince everyone to consider their own teaching as non-essential in order to merge with the other groups that are in error.  To leftists, unity is far more important than truth.  The Pope is trying to unite the predominant religions in the world — Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism totaling over 5 billion people.  He also wants to include pagan followers, and all those who worship Satan, snakes, snails, and the sun.  At a religious conflab consisting of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists, he warned against "the temptation to fundamentalism" or the tendency for each group to be true to their foundational truths. [...] Francis thinks he is doing God's work in bringing everyone together; however, the Pope has no heavenly mandate to accomplish this gargantuan task.  He does have religious gravitas that goes with his position, but it will take supernatural help to get the job done.  His help is not coming from above but from below!

What happens if the pope is a heretic?  Church history professor explains.  On today's episode of The John-Henry Westen Show, Dr. Edmund Mazza helps us sift through the confusion and insanity paralyzing the Catholic Church throughout Francis' pontificate and explains what happens if a pope teaches heresy.  [Video clip]

About that genocide of Indians.  A reader in Mexico whose wife and children are descendants of Aztecs wrote to me about my Columbus Day piece.  He wrote, "Not many know it, but I think it was 1569, a new disease killed half (50%) of the surviving indigenous people in the entire nation.  Spanish and Indians often lived in the same houses, and indigenous died while the whites, who often cared for them, were untouched.  "There were many doctors and scientists there, and there was extensive documentation of the illness, and it was NOT anything known in Europe.  Among other differences, the dying person's blood turned green before death.  "There is a doctor in Mexico City, who is worried that it is a disease like the plague that went into remission among humans but is still existing below ground, and only comes out in certain climate conditions."  So I checked it out.  He is right.

Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?  On September 26, 2022, seismologists in Denmark and Sweden recorded underwater seismic activity in the Baltic Sea between 2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale, equivalent to an explosion of several hundred pounds of TNT.  After investigations, authorities in both countries determined that there had been apparent efforts to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.  Both lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and one line of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, yet to be commissioned, were impacted. [...] As every fan of detective stories knows, determining the means and motive of suspects is the key to solving a mystery.  Given the geopolitical nature of this issue, it seems that there are four likely suspects: Russia, the European Union (E.U.), the United States (U.S.), and China.  Let's examine each one separately in an effort to determine if they had the means and motive to sabotage the pipelines.

Forget the blame game, Nordstream Sabotage is about the Great Reset & nothing else.  Last night it was reported that "blasts" had damaged both Nordstream pipelines that carry gas exported from Russia to Germany and other nations across northern Europe.  As a result, large amounts of natural gas were leaking into the Baltic sea, and supplies through the pipeline were completely shut off.  The alleged incident has caused a furious round of blame tennis, with accusations flying back and forth across what — for the sake of simplicity — we'll call Iron Curtain 2.0.  The European Union has claimed the pipes were "sabotaged", but doesn't directly blame anyone in their statement.  The Telegraph is already blaming actively the Russians, specifically Western Bogeyman President Vladimir Putin. [...] On the flip side, the Russians have said the idea they would sabotage their own pipeline is "stupid."  Some Western alternate media have pointed to Joe Biden's vow to totally shut down Nordstream 2 back in February as a sign the US was behind the alleged attack.  The former Polish defence minister has come right out and said that NATO forces blew up the pipeline, according to Forbes.  The question — one it seems I keep asking the last two years — is "does it really matter?"

Denmark, Sweden view Nord Stream pipeline leaks as 'deliberate actions'.  [Scroll down] Mikhail Krutikhin, an energy analyst from the RusEnergy consultancy, told DW that initial evidence clearly pointed to sabotage, and said that a key question going forward would be whether the damage originated inside or outside the pipe.  He said the shape of the damaged segments of pipe should indicate this.  If the explosion came from without, "then it was an explosion from outside made by some sabotage group or some underwater equipment," he said.  If the explosion originated inside the pipe, "then it was Gazprom," adding the Russian energy giant "could easily send something technicians call a pig — a robot that goes inside the pipeline."  Krutikhin said it is "very easy to send it in the pipe to a specific point and then have it explode."

How Different Would America Be Today if Trump was Still President?  This is the easiest column I've ever written.  It's so simple to imagine what America would be like today if Trump was still President.  What a tragedy that we allowed a brain-dead, feeble, confused, old man with dementia and diapers, and his radical, anti-American, globalist, communist handlers to destroy the greatest country in world history — in only 22 months.  Let's start with the obvious.  How did this happen?  The 2020 election was stolen.  That's how they removed Trump from office and installed a man who doesn't know who he is, where he is, or what he's doing.  A man who can't put 2 sentences together, and who can't attract more than 20 people in concentric circles to his speeches, yet they want us to suspend reality and believe he got 81 million votes — the most in history.  Bizarre.

It's the Far Left Who Are the Fascists.  Do anti-liberty leftists ever look in the mirror or have a moment of self-reflection that maybe they're the threat to our constitutional republic?  Do they ever consider the possibility that they are the "baddies"?  Do they understand that we of the pro-freedom right really don't have a choice in being inundated with leftist propaganda 24/7?  Even the radio stations that carry our favorite pro-freedom programming tend to lean toward the collectivist side of the spectrum.  Don't even mention National Propaganda Radio, funded by our tax dollars taken at gunpoint, where their idea of "balance" is a gaggle of leftists with an oh, so slightly different viewpoint on the definition of socialism.

Why The Right Should Choose Trump Over DeSantis.  Donald Trump is the kingmaker of the Republican Party, and for that reason alone, he remains the best choice for 2024 despite the firestorm of negative media coverage, censorship, and the looming threat of indictment, which have haunted him since being forced out of office in January 2021.  In the time since Trump has been gone, Americans have watched their economy tank, their freedoms attacked, and we are now disconcertingly close to an out-and-out ground war with nuclear Russia.  Meanwhile, Democrats plan to do irreparable damage to institutions (like the Supreme Court) that have checked the worst excesses of liberal hegemony.  The military industrial complex, having been subdued in the Trump years, is now back with a vengeance not seen since the Bush-Cheney years.  For their part, the Republicans have reverted to their preferred disposition:  that of lovable losers.  The concerted efforts of many Republican establishment types to elevate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump is in keeping with that disposition.  It would be a grave mistake for many reasons.

Army of the Woke.  The Army fell approximately 15,000 (25%) people short of meeting their recruiting goals this year, and some Pentagon officials focused on the tight job market as the culprit.  Though access to civilian jobs and higher pay is a factor, the truth is broader and ignored at our peril.  Rather than confront the reality of what is occurring in the military and the consequences of these actions, these same officials have decided to make blaming anything but the truth an Olympic level sport and our nation's readiness to defeat our adversaries is running in last place.  I served in the military for 28 years, both as an enlisted member of the Army's Infantry, and as an officer in Aviation.  As a former junior enlisted Solider I know what it takes to keep good Soldiers in the military, and because I commanded up to the brigade level as an officer, I know that retention of quality servicemembers is a critical component and signal of successful command.  I never failed to exceed retention goals in my seven years of command, today I don't think I'd sign up to serve at all.

Is The Fed About To Destroy America?  Today The Fed is holding an emergency meeting under "expedited procedures."  The actions to be considered are the discount and advance rate — in other words, interest rates.  The rumored reason is that Credit Suisse may be in trouble — specifically due to writing interest rate swaps, along with a number of other institutions which happens to include pension funds both in the UK and US, none of whom should ever be playing with levered instruments for the simple reason that leverage is everywhere and always speculative.  But of course they are because nobody has ever gone to prison for using leverage as a means to evade requiring the underlying organization to fund pensions adequately with actual money.  Why that would cause both firms and governments to have to behave responsibly and we can't have that.  This sort of act is a ridiculous violation of anything approaching fiduciary responsibility — which is a legal obligation for pension managers, not a suggestion.  After all its not their money — its the pensioners' money and they are charged with prudent management of same, which the use of leverage, especially leverage on a trend 40 years old that cannot reasonably go below zero, is the exact opposite of "prudent."  Of course the same is true for banks; they have fiduciary responsibilities too, including to the nation as a whole since they have a backstop through the government for depositors.  Nobody went to prison last time in 2008 for this [stuff] either, did they?

Blinken: Whodunnit, Who Cares?  It's A Tremendous Opportunity!  Remember Blinken's initial, reflexive, response to the US sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines?  It was to gaslight: Nobody benefits from this.  Get it?  It was all a big mystery, so don't bother asking, Cui bono?  There's no point.  Of course, as economist Michael Hudson pointed out, that bit of gaslighting wasn't going to have much of a shelf life — If nobody benefited from the sabotage, how do you explain the incontrovertible fact that somebody did do it?  This wasn't some teen prank.  This was the sort of state sponsored terrorism that only a handful of countries had the technical means to pull off, and state actors don't do drastic deeds of this sort unless they see a clear benefit.  All an inquiring mind needs to do is to take that short list of capable countries and ask, Which country on the list benefits?  Not Russia, for sure.

The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization.  Civilization is fragile.  It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.  To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home — only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.  Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.  So, the great achievement of Western civilization — consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit — was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.

Analysis: Nord Stream Pipelines Sabotaged, and Only One Country Benefits.  Three deep-water explosions destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea on Monday.  While the MSM and governments reported "leaks" in the pipelines following sudden pressure drops to zero, Swedish seismologists knew better. [...] First, the US became the number one exporter of liquified natural gas to Europe once Russia cut off the flow.  German dependence on US LNG is a carrot to keep German in the sanction alliance.  With winter approaching and German unrest on the rise, the State Department would have been concerned the Germans would go wobbly, reduce sanctions, cut off arms to Ukraine, and beg Putin for energy.  The loss of the Nord Stream pipelines eliminates that path to renewed gas imports to Germany.  Second, the Biden family has long been tangled up in natural gas and Ukraine.  Hunter Biden was on the board of Ukraine's largest natural gas company — a position that provided Ukrainian oligarchs with access to Joe Biden.  Hunter, who has no experience in energy, made millions from the deal, and Ukraine got a bought-and-paid-for President of the United States.  Third, the Democrat Biden needs to stanch the popularity bleeding that threatens to kill Democrat control of Congress come November.  So, only the United States has a compelling reason to destroy Europe's energy lifeline from Russia.  Only the United States has both the means and the motive.

Did the US (or its agents) blow up the Nordstream pipelines?  Thanks to an open threat issued by President Biden, the question must be asked: Is the United States behind the two explosions that caused a massive natural gas leak into the Baltic Sea?  The incident has cut off Russia's ability to deliver methane gas to Germany and other European nations.  The release of methane into the water and atmosphere is killing marine life and delivering a greenhouse gas pollutant into the atmosphere that would be gravely feared by believers in man-made global warming.  The word "eco-terrorism" comes to mind the describe the act of sabotage, if that's what the explosions were. [...] What raises intense suspicion on the United States is the very specific threat that President Biden issued against Nordstream last February 7: [...]

Donald Trump and the Future of Western Civilization.  The West, in particular the United States, is currently populated with patronizing, oblivious, and callous leaders more concerned about themselves and globalism than the people and the future of their respective countries.  Nor do they acknowledge that Western Civilization, because of its roots in Christianity, has increased freedom, wealth, health, comfort and life expectancy to unprecedented levels throughout the world.  When virtually all Western nations pursue the same ruinous policies, and their ruling classes have the same self-absorbed characteristics, decline and collapse from self-immolation is inevitable.  In the debauched current state of Western Civilization, the sole path of reversing this decline and collapse is for a tenacious and intrepid egalitarian leader from one of the major Western nations to assume the mantle of leadership.  The only experienced and successful current or past leader with these attributes in the West today is Donald Trump, who temporarily stanched and exposed the factors behind the downfall during his four years as president.  With the specter of China/Russia hegemony and the accelerating deterioration of the West looming over the United States and Europe, Trump must seriously consider running for president again in 2024.

Obama Led Germany Into Putin's Energy Trap.  Vladimir Putin's energy war is real but undeclared.  The West's counter energy war is declared but not real.  Doubtful is whether the latest convoluted U.S. plan to cap Mr. Putin's oil receipts will be any different (though it's certain to spawn a lot of future Marc Riches).  But notice that Mr. Putin remains careful to say Russia desires to keep meeting its gas contracts with Western Europe.  It's Europe's fault that exports through the Nord Stream pipeline are halted for safety reasons, because sanctions prevent repairing a faulty compressor.  Mr. Putin's Gazprom cronies cheerfully pipe up to say the second Nord Stream pipeline could quickly fill the gap if Germany's government, by its own action, had not refused to allow it to operate.  Less famous pipelines, including the Yamal that runs through Ukraine, continue to carry Russian gas to Europe with the tolerance of Ukraine's leadership.

A man of accomplishment: Ron DeSantis' pitch for president.  Ron DeSantis is running for president.  He has as much as admitted it, although he hasn't done the obligatory visits to Iowa and New Hampshire.  2024 should be his time and it would be a waste if he didn't run.  Governor DeSantis doesn't have to announce yet.  The contenders for the nominations are former president Trump or DeSantis.  Everybody else is an also-ran.  Trump, should he decide to run, can count on residual loyalty.  DeSantis can appeal to voters as a younger, more vital, less controversial, and arguably more politically savvy alternative.  Trump commands attention, but that attention tends to draw focus to himself.  DeSantis commands attention, but he draws focus to an issue.  He can force the news media to cover anything he chooses, even when they would rather do just about anything else.

Are you better off than you were two years ago?  When the Democrat Party assumed office in January 2020, we were a nation that was essentially energy independent and a net exporter of energy, we had one of the lowest unemployment rates in recent history to include many minorities groups, our borders were secure, inflation was negligible.  President Biden was ostensibly elected to office to "unify" the county and tone down the rhetoric.  In other words, many Americans looked to him to return the nation to "normal" and be the father figure to heal our differences.  If anything, allowing the Democrat Party to assume control of our lives has caused the opposite.  Our borders are porous, causing a mass influx of fentanyl which has killed thousands of our youth, violent crime in our inner cities is at an all-time high, inflation is rampant, and the country is hardly unified — and this happened in just a short two years and yet the Democrat Party is asking you as a voter to give them two more years to try to get it right!  So, when you cast your vote, I would urge you to ask your self are we better off than we were two years ago.  From my perspective the answer is NO, so please make an informed decision based on facts and logic.

Trump or DeSantis?  Why not both?  Gov. Ron DeSantis shattered the elites' virtue with the Martha's Vineyard ploy.  It was delectable, but busing illegal aliens to blue states was originally Texas governor Greg Abbott's idea.  DeSantis took it to another level.  Is DeSantis as creative and clever as he seems to be?  I hope so, but DeSantis's life has not been bombed the way Trump's has.  The way I believe voters are beginning to frame their choice for the "who can save America" presidential candidate boils down to whether candidate Trump or candidate DeSantis is the indispensable choice to overcome the Deep State and the absolutely massive cheating to come.  I do not think Trump is in any way a loose cannon problem that a "tempering" DeSantis would solve.  To allow the media to be arbiters of what is cringe-worthy is old-school fretting that will not be helpful next time around.  Donald Trump understands the battlefield as no one else.  He would help mature DeSantis to be an even greater force for his own eight years.  I think having both in the White House at the same time is the indispensable choice.

This thread explaining why nobody is joining the military is a must-read.  The military is in trouble and its leadership has no clue.  So what's the problem, exactly?  You are about to read a lot of common sense packed into a few short paragraphs.  It's a rare thing to see. [...]

Are Democrats Deliberately Choosing Impaired Candidates?  Once could be excused.  Twice is suspicious.  Three times seems like a strategy.  Are Democrats choosing infirm, intellectually challenged, feeble people to run for office so that they can be easily manipulated? [...] George Soros, the Obamas, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, and many other wealthy, elite, no-borders, one-world Marxist climate zealots have an iron grip on the Democrat Party from bottom to top.  Are the elites deliberately choosing weak people so as to control them from behind the curtain?  We know they have done that with Biden, Kamala, and Fetterman.  Is this their new modus operandi; choose the weak who will bow to the strong because the weak are more palatable to voters than the strong?  After all, why run candidates with minds of their own when you can run a candidate who has a mind that can easily be hijacked for radical leftist causes?

Can the GOP Accommodate Two Rock Stars?  Fresh from his deft Martha's Vineyard gambit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew into Kansas on Sunday to rally support for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, now running for governor against incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly.  Saul Alinsky, the acknowledged master of forcing poseurs to honor their own policies, could not have done better than DeSantis.  No political stroke in memory has succeeded in exposing liberal hypocrisy quite so effortlessly and effectively.  Had the Islanders taken the 50 illegal aliens in, they might have checked DeSantis's move and saved a little face, but they didn't.  They lived up to their most ludicrous stereotypes, calling in the National Guard and deporting the hapless Venezuelans to some sterile Army base on the mainland.  It will be years before "Martha's Vineyard" is anything but a template for a meme or a punch line to a joke.  Both Schmidt and U.S. Senator Roger Marshall had fun with Martha's Vineyard in the speeches they gave preceding DeSantis's.  The SRO crowd at the Olathe (O-lay-the) Civics Center ate it up.  When DeSantis took center stage, the thousands in attendance were primed.  They surged to their feet and roared their appreciation.  If it wasn't clear before this past week, it was clear to everyone in Olathe.  Ron DeSantis has arrived.

Idolatry:
Michael Jordan's '98 finals jersey sells for $10.1 million at auction.  Michael Jordan's jersey from the 1998 NBA finals smashed records when it sold for $10.1 million at auction Thursday [9/15/2022].  The red away-game jersey that Jordan wore in Game 1 of the Chicago Bulls' series against the Utah Jazz was the feature of the Sotheby's auction.  It is now the highest-priced item in sports memorabilia history, according to a report.

Is the media honeymoon running out for John Fetterman?  Let's not mince words: Pennsylvania Lt.  Gov. John Fetterman (D) may not be capable of performing the duties required of him if he wins his race for U.S. Senate against Republican Mehmet Oz.  This perspective comes after Fetterman, who suffered a stroke nearly four months ago, seems to be avoiding a debate with Oz before early voting begins on Sept. 19.  Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV had offered to host a debate between the two on Sept. 6, but Fetterman declined.  "As I recover from this stroke and improve my auditory processing and speech, I look forward to continuing to meet with the people of Pennsylvania," Fetterman said in a statement after the Oz campaign offered to debate in September.  "They'll always know where I stand."  Actually, voters won't know where Fetterman stands if he continues to do T-ball interviews with handpicked media members and avoids being challenged directly by Oz in a debate setting.

Germany Plays Blame Games after '16 Years of Energy Policy Failure'.  Germany's economy and climate minister has angrily lashed out at Angela Merkel's party, accusing it of being responsible for "16 years of energy policy failure".  While the ongoing gas crisis across Europe gets steadily worse, political tensions in Germany appear to be growing, with the country's economic and climate minister, Robert Habeck, angrily lashing out at his political rivals in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former chancellor Angela Merkel.  Despite having been warned by then-President Donald Trump that relying on Russia for energy was endangering the security of both Germany and her allies, Merkel's government presided over a green agenda-fueled shift away from domestic fossil fuel production that made the country ever more reliant on gas exports supplied by Moscow.

America Delira.  Travel abroad and or talk to pro-American foreigners here, and you will be surprised at what they say.  It is not boilerplate anti-Americanism of the usual cheap Euro style.  And their keen criticism is not just that we are $30 trillion in debt, dependent on China, with a corrupt elite, or have gone insane inventing the most lurid crimes to put away the supposedly predetermined guilty Donald Trump.  Instead, they express disbelief, worry, lamentation even, that the one solid referent in the world has gone, well, completely rabid.  They are terrified after the Afghanistan debacle that their old ally or new homeland, the once constant America, is delirious, incompetent, and self-loathing, and now there is no plausible alternative to the old American deterrence.  So, they wonder who will resist China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea — and are silently petrified to go it alone without the United States.

Is cheaper titanium worth prolonging the Ukraine war?  Last month, Fortune reported good news: 1,000 companies had followed through on their divestiture of business in Russia.  Combined with the West's government sanctions, these companies' courage to do the right thing is having "a crushing impact on Russia's wilting economy," according to Fortune.  But a few companies haven't followed their conglomerate brothers and sisters.  Each of them is putting short-term gain over long-term loss — earning dollars now with Russia but losing the trust of dozens of other nations in the process.  This short-sighted approach may cost no company more than Airbus.  The world's largest aerospace company is primarily a government contractor, heavily reliant on good relations with businesses, government officials, and politicians around the world.  This means keeping everyone happy — not putting one country over the rest.

What Drives Government Action?  It is understandable that folks are baffled and dismayed by the news that confronts us each day.  The Babylon Bee can barely keep a step ahead of the nitwittery we see playing out in real time.  For example, California politicians decided to take money from taxpayers in order to buy medical insurance for illegal aliens.  The federal government tossed bundles of COVID relief cash every which way, with over a billion dollars of it raining down on incarcerated convicts, including Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  And we witnessed government spend billions to fight the prospect of climate change, only to create the reality of crushing inflation.  Why are these things happening?  Who benefits?  Which politicians ran on a platform of doing any of this?  And, if we claim to be a government by consent, who is it that consented?

The Great Upheaval Is Almost Here.  [Scroll down] Manufacturers are hustling to engage scarce labor and increase production — but that's to fill backed-up orders.  New demand is stalled, which means when the old orders are filled everything stops.  It stops because when it costs so much to make new things, the resulting price is beyond what the market will bear.  And so comes the crash.  But it could get worse than that.  Look at Europe, where it's less a question of how much it costs to make new things and more whether making them is possible at all.  The lights are literally going out all over Europe.  Two-thirds of the pubs and restaurants in the U.K. could close because utility bills are pricing them out of business.  Natural gas and coal are sky-high.  The energy markets are so roiled by the lack of fossil fuels from Russia that governments are faced with bailing out the energy firms, else a "Lehman Brothers event" wipe out the sector.

A Massive Economic Storm Is Already Overhead And Nobody Seems To Notice.  The biggest recessionary factor that should have alarm bells ringing is new orders for business, especially manufacturing, which are plummeting.  Manufacturing surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Richmond show new orders for business falling fast, in some cases at the fastest pace on record.  The corresponding service sector surveys show similar trends with deteriorating business conditions and declining new orders.  In the New York survey, current business conditions are rated worse than any time besides the depths of the 2009 crash and the pandemic.  In July, future business conditions were worse than at any point besides September 2001, when the survey was taken right after 9/11.  In other words, the coming economic storm is more worrisome to manufacturers than anything besides a terrorist attack.

Can the United States Stop the March to Self-Destruction?  Since the founding of the nation there has been a consensus that the demise of the United States would not come about by being conquered from without but rather by destroying itself from within.  That consensus about the first-of-a-kind constitutional republic with no history of either monarchical or dictatorial authoritarianism is rapidly becoming a reality.  How did this evolutionary process come to pass, and can it be stopped?

November's Choice: The New Aristocracy Or Our Traditional Liberties.  The 2022 election should not simply be a referendum on individual Republican or Democrat candidates; optimally, it should lead to indicting and convicting entrenched politicians and operatives in both political parties who relentlessly rush to surrender America's sovereignty to hostile and corrupt schemers at the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and other odious globalist organizations and profit personally in the process.

Beneath campaign nastiness, [there are] legitimate concerns about Fetterman's health.  Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has not fully recovered from the serious stroke he suffered in May.  His campaign has acknowledged his obvious struggles with "auditory processing" and speech, but the persistence of those struggles has contrasted with the campaign's rosier predictions of a return to the rigors of campaigning, including debating his opponent, Mehmet Oz.  If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator.

Our corrupt elites reveal that what Jefferson feared has come to pass.  If ever there was a time when constructive criticism was urgently required, it is now, in the summer of America's deepening discontent.  One thing to criticize is that we are fast becoming an oligarchy, something hidden behind ostensible political battles that distract us, something Jefferson warned of 240 years ago.  Currently, the shiny object we are being funneled to focus upon is the Mar-a-Lago raid.  We cannot take our eyes off it, even as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI director Christopher Wray tell us to stop criticizing our betters in government even as they shred the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. [...] Rivals on many issues — progressives and conservatives — likely agree that tyranny under a surveillance state is not an American ideal.  That's why, the more we learn about the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the more all of us should be terrified as tyranny seemingly has come to infect the American body politic.  The assault upon a popular, mega-rich former president was likely another step in the plot to destroy those who reject ruinous unregulated globalism and to stifle a reckoning, through the courts and at the polls, that is long overdue.  What the Biden-Harris administration did at Mar-a-Lago may only be a taste of what it ultimately does to us all, whether we are Trump-supporters or simply proud to be free and independent Americans rather than serfs to the international and fake Illuminati.

In Protecting the KGB, Gorbachev Laid the Foundation for Putin's Gangster-State.  The notorious KGB chairman Yuri Andropov recruited Mikhail Gorbachev, cultivated him, and placed him in the Kremlin leadership to ultimately take power.  Once he led the Soviet Communist Party, Andropov's recruit protected and rewarded the Soviet secret police by making it off-limits to any truth-telling, accountability, or reform.  Gorbachev has died, but the KGB that he nurtured and protected lives on under an ungrateful Vladimir Putin.  Until the day he passed away at age 91, Gorbachev got an international pass for saving the core of Soviet power: the ever-watching secret police and its global spy and active measures networks.

MAGA and the Memory of America.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis [...] is intelligent and articulate, but what makes him probably the most popular Republican governor in the country — and why he brought star appeal to the Keystone State — is that he fights, and wins, political battles for conservative principles.  Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company — one of the largest employers in Florida, and one of the most influential corporations in the world — opposed legislation sponsored by DeSantis that prohibited public school teachers from discussing sexual topics in kindergarten through the third grade.  It was a strange position to take for a business that caters to parents with young children, and an indication of how ideologically deranged corporate America has become.  Not long after, DeSantis demonstrated a rare willingness to inflict pain on his political opponents by signing a bill revoking Disney's special regulatory and tax exemptions.  It was a major showdown, and DeSantis is rightly proud of himself for not backing off.  If only more Republicans in other states, and in Washington, D.C., followed his lead.  DeSantis is proof that political power, like muscle power, grows when it is used.

The O'Keefe Project: Footsteps Getting Closer.  It has been evident that the Biden Justice Department is out to get James O'Keefe and Project Veritas since O'Keefe et al. were raided last year under federal search warrants procured by the FBI.  Although O'Keefe was instructed to remain mum, the authorities promptly leaked news of the raid to the New York Times.  All this in the matter of Ashley Biden's diary. [...] The national security establishment has treated Ashley Biden's diary as a federal case.  They have leaked confidential information to Times reporters including Adam Goldman and Michael Schmidt, both of whom promoted Russia hoax stories that won Pulitzer Prizes.  Ashley Biden's diary is now subject to the Russia hoax treatment, both within the Biden Department of Justice and at its Times public relations arm.  In the latest development yesterday, Florida residents Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.

The Trump Campaign Turned Down the Ashley Biden Diary.  Just the News has the story of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, who entered guilty pleas to stealing Ashley Biden's diary and selling it to James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.  Before they did that, Harris and Kurlander decided to try for a big payday and attempted to sell the diary to a party that they thought would be very interested in it and certainly had the cash on hand to meet a hefty price tag:  namely, the Trump campaign.  But the plan hit a snag.  Not only did the Trump camp reject the offer, but they also recommended that Harris and Kurlander turn it and other stolen items over to the FBI.  Yes, that FBI.

More on the Ashley Biden diary story.  Yesterday I wrote about the two people from Florida who pleaded guilty to stealing Ashley Biden's diary.  As I pointed out in that post, the reason this is being treated as a federal case is that both of them pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property across state lines.  They qualified for those charges because a) the knew the material was stolen, b) they transported it across state lines and c) the material had a value of more than $5,000.  But in order for Project Veritas to be guilty of receiving stolen property, the would have had to know the material was stolen.  And by all accounts, the thieves who brought them the diary claimed it wasn't stolen but had been abandoned in a house where they found it.  But here's where things get a bit more tricky.  Project Veritas, in an effort to verify the diary was real, asked the two thieves to return to the house and gather more material belonging to Ashley Biden.

Ordinarily, The American People Benefit From Viewing Presidential Records.  While the DOJ's and FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago is suspect, and currently seems to be more about protecting the Deep State than about benefitting the American people, we shouldn't forget that, under ordinary circumstances, the American people benefit from gaining access to presidential records.  Since 1992, America has gone from sole superpower to bumbling fool and stupid-power, even more so in the still unfolding horror show that scares most everyone thinking clearly about Biden-Harris priorities and policies.  The downward trajectory of America is undeniable and likely involves grifters in both political parties.  Adjusted for rampant inflation, we are poorer, we are already drowning in debt, and we are less safe at home and abroad.  Along the way, we also seem to have surrendered our "inalienable rights" and constitutionally protected freedoms to unaccountable, unelected, and arrogant bureaucrats.

Why Aren't Our Generals Learning?  A third of the way into his article, "Afghanistan Did Not Have to Turn Out This Way", David Petraeus, former head of Central Command, who led forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and then headed the CIA, admits the war was never going to end.  "Some senior officials, including me, had cautioned that we would not be able to do in Afghanistan what we had done in Iraq — that though we might be able to drive violence down, we would not be able to 'flip' the country, as we had during the surge in Iraq, and provide it a whole new beginning," he writes.  "When we recognized that we couldn't 'win' the war, we did not even seriously consider that we might just 'manage' it," Petraeus complains.  Managing the war would mean a permanent military presence in Afghanistan.  There was never any serious plan to withdraw from Afghanistan.  Nation building, Petraeus argues, "was not just unavoidable; it was essential".

The Point of No Return.  This is an election year.  But the issues this year are not about Democrats and Republicans.  The big issue is whether this nation has degenerated to a point of no return — a point where we risk destroying ourselves, before our enemies can destroy us.  If there is one moment that symbolized our degeneration, it was when an enraged mob gathered in front of the Supreme Court and a leader of the United States Senate shouted threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying "You won't know what hit you!"  There have always been irresponsible demagogues.  But there was once a time when anyone who shouted threats to a Supreme Court Justice would see the end of his own political career, and could not show his face in decent society again.  You either believe in laws or you believe in mob rule.  It doesn't matter whether you agree with the law or agree with the mob on some particular issue.  If threats of violence against judges — and publishing where a judge's children go to school — is the way to settle issues, then there is not much point in having elections or laws.

Is Kamala Harris 'Inevitable' as the Next Democrat Nominee?  Larry Elder Thinks So.  We all watch the painful clips of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking publicly.  It is so memeable that Blaze TV host Stu Burguiere has an entire series called "Veep Thoughts."  In addition to her public speaking gaffes, Harris is a horrible retail politician and has not been able to claim a win on the border, Ukraine, or the voting rights legislation that President Biden gave her to lead.  Yet radio host Larry Elder is confident that she will be the Democrats' nominee in 2024 if Joe Biden does not or cannot run.  Failing that, it will be "her turn" in 2028.

The Editor says...
It's not necessarily "'her turn' in 2028."  If that were true, it would be Mike Pence's "turn" if Trump decides not to run in 2024.  Nobody's interested in "Smarty" Pence.  On the other hand, nobody was excited about Romney or McCain or Dole, either, and they got the nomination.  It's almost as if the decision isn't really left to the voters.

The Church of the Federal Reserve is Here to Save Us.  The Federal Reserve is a fraud and has been from its inception.  Its creation was via dubious means in 1913.  That year was arguably the worst in U.S. history for freedom lovers — 1913 was during the "Progressive Era" and also saw the passage of a permanent income tax.  Oversight of the banking industry is necessary, particularly in a world of fractional-reserve banking.  Banking committees and oversight functions exist inside the Federal Government.  Why was this one created as some contrived hybrid?  G. Edward Griffin addressed this abnormality in his The Creature from Jekyll Island.  To assess the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve, an economic review of general economic performance before and after its creation is useful.  The Fed began operations in 1914.  Shortly after its creation, a boom, the "Roaring 20s," occurred.  That quickly ended with the greatest stock market crash in history in 1929, which preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Final Months of a Bad Employee.  If you work in the business world long enough, you will notice that an employee reveals the most about his own personal work ethic, not when he starts out, not when he's angling for a bonus or promotion, but at the end, when he gets a new job and gives his two weeks' notice, or when he starts training his successor as he reaches retirement. [...] The same goes for political leadership when it has had its walking papers served on Election Day, or even when that eventuality becomes evident, months in advance. [...] In this context, we ask:  how are today's Congressional leadership adjusting their behavior in light of polls that show they are on their way out?  Are the Pelosi and Schumer majorities trying to win back public support by reacting to recognition that the nation desperately needs a course correction in so many ways?  Or are they doubling down on the destruction causing our current problems?  Sadly, there is no indication that they are interested in the concept of working for the public good until the last moment, as the Trump administration did.

Is Anyone Tracking China's Land Grabs in America?  China is doling out hordes of cash to buy American real estate.  Over $6 billion was spent gobbling up American land last year.  One purchase raised eyebrows since the plot of land is near a US Air Force base with military drone capabilities. [...] Chinese land grabs near US military bases are unconscionable.  We all know Beijing's spy network is vast and efficient.  They've infiltrated Congress, cultural institutions, and higher education.  We need to keep an eye on these purchases.  With China smelling the weakness from this administration, they're bound to get more aggressive.  They're already trying to stop an arms sale to Taiwan.  They shared our information about the Russian military buildup in Ukraine with Moscow before the invasion.  They know Joe won't do anything.

Actor Russell Brand calls green energy movement a scam to bankrupt farmers and grab their land globally via the Great Reset.  Actor/comedian Russell Brand tore into the green energy movement, calling it a scam and alleging that it is part of the Great Reset with a goal to bankrupt farmers and grab land across the globe.  Brand hosts a popular podcast where he has been exposing the Great Reset and the plight of farmers.  Especially when it comes to the fertilizer shortage and predators like Bill Gates buying up farmland.  Brand discussed Dutch farmers who have been protesting over climate laws being forced on them that are bankrupting their livelihoods.  That includes being unable to get the fertilizer needed to grow the crops in the first place.  [Video clip]

Who Gains from Ukraine?  The recent meeting of the G-7 demonstrated a triumph of zeal over the members' self-interest.  The seven were overwhelmed with a host of crises; inflation, energy, climate change, impending food shortage, and Ukraine offered no solution to any of the problems.  Speaking of Ukraine, they agreed to impose the 7th round of sanctions and promised to keep the war going as long as it takes. [...] Despite their differences, Zelensky and Putin converge on one crucial aspect:  neither wants to end this war.  Ukraine earned the title of the most corrupt country in Europe for a reason.  Since winning independence, corruption has been the predominant pursuit of Ukraine.  Zelensky and his cabinet are not motivated by the stability and integrity of Ukraine.  Instead, they are motivated by billions in financial aid.  Between 2014 and 2020, Ukraine received more than $22.4 billion in and economic aid.  Much of this enormous financial assistance was simply stolen by the commercial, military, and political elites.

Globalism and the Georgia Stones.  On July 6, in an act of vandalism for which the culprits are still at large, one of the four "Georgia Guidestones" was blown apart.  The damage was so severe that the entire monument was rendered too unstable to leave standing.  For safety reasons, state officials almost immediately demolished the rest of the monument.  While the Georgia Guidestones are not as well known as, say, Stonehenge, among critics of globalism they had acquired a certain infamy because of the inscriptions on the stones.  Carved into four massive blocks of granite, and rendered in eight languages, this is what was on the stones:  [Text omitted for brevity, among other things.] [...] But what was it about the Georgia Guidestones that made them a target?  To answer this, you first have to wonder — who is more paranoid, those anti-globalists who believe an international elite is determined to erase nationalities and reduce the population of humans to "sustainable" levels, or the Malthusian-environmentalist faction of the globalists themselves, who believe the planet is on the brink of total ecosystem collapse because of too many people consuming too many resources, and this must be corrected by any means necessary?

How To Recognize Civilization When You See It.  What do we mean, as individuals, when we say that someone, not a certain society, is "civilized"?  Can that assertion point to anything solid beyond vague approval?  This idea has proven notoriously resistant to capture.

The Hunger Weapon.  Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale, describes what he sees as the Kremlin's plan to drive the Third World poor into Western countries to break European support for Ukraine.  "Russia has a hunger plan.  Vladimir Putin is preparing to starve much of the developing world as the next stage in his war in Europe.  In normal times, Ukraine is a leading exporter of foodstuffs.  A Russian naval blockade now prevents Ukraine from exporting grain.If the Russian blockade continues, tens of millions of tons of food will rot in silos, and tens of millions of people in Africa and Asia will starve.

Brace Yourself for the Biden Housing Bust.  During the final two years of [Jimmy] Carter's term, sales of existing and new homes collapsed because the Fed was forced to raise interest rates sharply to get double-digit inflation under control.  This, in turn, produced double-digit mortgage rates that priced millions of potential buyers out of the market.  Like our current chief executive, Carter was delusional about the threat inflation posed to the economy. [...] If you're too young to remember the Carter era, it may be difficult to imagine double-digit mortgage rates.  If so, consider what you would have said to anyone who predicted two years ago that you would now be paying $5.00 a gallon for gasoline.  Likewise, the possibility of committing to a double-digit mortgage rate to buy a house may seem absurd.  In 1980, however, many had to choose between doing just that and not buying at all.  For some potential buyers, there was no choice.  They couldn't afford the mortgage payments.

Our Founding Fathers weren't the patriarchy, they were heroes.  In our country today, there are people who dismiss the Founding Fathers through the prism of 2022.  If these people had their way, they would remove every plaque, statue or word that celebrates the genius and courageous acts of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.  For example, on July 3, 2019, a journalist from Vox put out this little gem:  "The main benefit of the revolution to colonists was that it gave more political power to America's white male minority."  I suspect that when the 56 men signed the declaration in Philadelphia in 1776 — a literal death warrant for each — "identity politics" was the furthest thing from their minds.  Especially for those who were imprisoned, had their homes burned to the ground, their livestock slaughtered and their wives arrested, simply for daring to add their name to the most inspiring document known to humanity.  Each of the 56 men who put that quill pen to parchment knew they were very possibly signing their own death warrants.  John Hancock not only knew that but purposely increased the risk to himself.  Why?  Legend tells us he upped the ante so King George III "can read my name without spectacles and may double his reward on my head."

The CIA is running Ukraine's fight against Russia.  A report published earlier this week provides fresh evidence that the U.S. Deep State is heavily invested in Ukraine and is going all-out to prevent the country from falling into Russian hands.  Readers likely recall that despite the fact that the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) knew months in advance that Russia was building up its forces around Ukraine in preparation for an invasion, Washington and Brussels appeared to do little to shore up Kyiv's defenses.  Once Russia sent its forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, most outside observers figured that the Red Army would make quick work of the lesser-armed and overmatched Ukrainian army.

To Avoid Civil War, Learn To Tolerate Different Laws In Different States.  Most commentary on the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — which overturns Roe v Wade — has focused on the decision's effect on the legality of abortion in various states.  That's an important issue.  It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision's effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal.  After all, the ruling isn't so much about abortion as it is about the federal government's role in abortion.  State governments are free to make abortion 100 percent legal within their own borders.  Some states have already done so.  The court's ruling limits only the federal government's prerogatives over abortion law, and this has the potential to lead to many other limitations on federal power as well.  In this way, Dobbs is a victory for those seeking to limit federal power.

America Is More Fragile Than the Left Understands.  Our elites assume that all our nation's past violent protests, all its would-be revolutions, all its cultural upheavals, all its institutionalized lawlessness were predicated on one central truth — America's central core is so strong, so rich, and so resilient that it can withstand almost any assault.  So, we can afford 120 days in 2020 of mass rioting, $2 billion in damage, some 35 killed, and 1,500 police injured.  We can easily survive an Afghanistan, and our utter and complete military humiliation.  There was no problem in abandoning some $70-80 billion in military loot to terrorists.  Who cares that we tossed off a billion-dollar new embassy, and jettisoned a $300-million refitted air base, as long as our pride flags were waving in Kabul?

The Strange Sequence Of Events Happening Now Are Not Random.  Bear with me here, and get out your tin foil hat, because I have a tale to tell you.  One where I take a step back, or a thousand, and look at the strangest events over the course of the past few years, and "see" dots connecting from one to other, how one event intertwines with another, until we get here.  Here being a moment in time where the man who occupies the White House, supposedly the "decision-maker" needs cheat cards to tell him when to sit, when to leave, and when to talk.  Here being a time when gas prices are at a record high, with no end to the continued increases in sight.  Here being a time where Americans just went through a year of being controlled, threatened and harassed because of a "pandemic," where states were locked down, businesses deem "non-essential" by state leaders and closed, and Americans forced to be masked or banned from everyday events, such as shopping for food.  Here being a time when on the heels of one "pandemic" we are warned of another, and where diseases such as Polio, are supposedly making a comeback.  Here being a time when things look so bad for democrats politically heading into the midterms, and BOOM, "coincidentally" there are a rapid series of "mass shootings," so democrats and republicans in name only (RINOS), take yet another step towards violating the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Great news:  Merrick Garland [is] ready to enforce the law ... in Ukraine.  Here in the US, we have ongoing violations of federal law in a coordinated campaign of intimidation targeting Supreme Court justices.  A domestic terrorist group has already conducted attacks on pro-life centers and promises even more of them.  The Department of Justice and the Attorney General have remained on the sidelines as those crimes have unfolded.  Instead of dealing with federal matters within his jurisdiction, Merrick Garland has decided to spend some time in Ukraine to mull over US action on war crimes instead.  Maybe Garland should have visited the neighborhoods of the justices first, eh?

View of Cleveland Fed Reserve Bank President Shows Massive Economic Disconnect in Causation.  Loretta Mester is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and appeared on CBS Face the Nation to give her opinion/analysis of the US. economic condition.  The disconnect in her viewpoint is alarming and should signal to everyone how the Federal Reserve Board, just like every institution of government, has become a political agency.  In her mind Ms. Mester appears to believe what she is saying, but the disconnect between her view of our status and the reality on Main Street is alarming.  In this interview Mester says emphatically that current inflation is being driven by consumer demand that is outpacing supply.  Not only is this view of inflation origination wrong, and has been wrong for well over a year, it is dangerous.

To Fight Marxist Education, We Need a New Kind of School.  What is the antidote to "wokeism"?  Knowledge.  How do ordinary people resist the growing tyranny of State power?  By questioning everything they're told.  How can people being controlled fight back?  By remembering that they alone control their thoughts.  You knew these answers without my help.  Variations of them are entwined with our cherished cultural beliefs.  Knowledge is power.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  The truth will set you free.  In the past, perhaps, these idioms were too often seen as nothing more than inspirational bromides one might find embroidered on a decorative bookmark.  Now their gospel truths are strikingly clear.  Stupidity breeds weakness.  Obedience kills critical thinking.  Ignorance invites enslavement.  Wisdom ameliorates suffering.  Imagine how much stronger America would be today if America's children understood these vital lessons.

Andrew Sullivan:  The scolds are in retreat.  Sullivan's latest piece on Substack is titled "The Vibes They Are A-Shiftin'" and that actually undersells the case he makes that the woke left (or whatever you prefer to call them) appear to be in retreat.  He opens by noting that it was only 2 years ago that the world was figuratively and sometimes literally on fire.  Activists were demanding police be defunded and Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo were seemingly anointed as our foremost public intellectuals.  Jump forward two years and things look very different.

Sorry, Democrats:  Other Opinions Exist.  This week, my company, The Daily Wire, premiered a blockbuster new documentary starring Matt Walsh.  Titled "What Is A Woman?", the documentary investigates radical gender theory and its peculiar hold on the elites in our society — and how the insane proposition that men can become women and vice versa has become so well-accepted that even normal Americans now live in fear of questioning it.  The film has been the single largest success in the history of The Daily Wire; hundreds of thousands of Americans have subscribed to view it.  Yet Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator for film and television, has not a single traditional review of the film.  That's because, according to the legacy and entertainment media, the film doesn't exist.  When the Daily Wire press team sent out invitations to reviewers to watch the film — knowing, of course, that the vast majority of reviewers are left-leaning and would undoubtedly pan the film — reviewers began responding with insults and declarations of preemptive hatred.

Biden's America resembles a Soviet era hellhole.  I'm old enough to remember watching news reports about the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states describing electricity blackouts, showing stores with empty shelves and people standing in long lines at shops to purchase scarce necessities.  Commentators explained how only government officials had access to nice homes or cars and how only government employees and Communist Party members were exempt from the rules they established for the populace.  I saw it for myself in the early 1960s when I visited East Germany, crossing through Check Point Charlie, into East Berlin.  I visited again 20 years later in the early 1980s before the "Wall" came down.  Nothing had changed in that 20-year interval.  The city was still drab, people on the street dour and scruffily dressed, and store shelves still empty.

The dystopian state of our nation.  The signs of decline are everywhere:  violent crimes, corruption, riots, all with little or no consequences for the perpetrators, election fraud, and medical mandates for vaccines that do not work. [...] All of this is part of the left's grand plan to "transform" American society from the free nation of our founding into something resembling communist China.  The one thing they did not plan on was the presidency of Donald Trump.  His four-year term in the White House was unexpected because the Democrats were certain that they had that election in the bag.  Hillary was on board with their globalist/Marxist plan, and they just knew that all their plans were a go.  But they underestimated the America First movement and were gobsmacked by Trump's thoroughly unpredictable victory.  That is how blinkered they are.

What is a woman?  I worried that the just-released Daily Wire documentary on the topic, What Is a Woman?, produced and directed by Justin Folk and starring Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh, wouldn't offer anything new.  In a sense I was right.  My mind wasn't changed.  I went in knowing that transgenderism is deranged and dangerous, and the film confirmed my point of view.  But what confirmation!  Folk, Walsh, and company have put together a serious and definitive piece of work — at once a comprehensive survey, a chilling indictment, and, strange though it may sound, an often laugh-out-loud piece of entertainment.

Guns Are Not the Problem.  Americans have owned guns since the founding, but it wasn't until comparatively recently that mass shootings became a concern.  Guns are not the problem.  Our culture is.  Broken cultures produce broken human beings.  For every school shooter, there are thousands of other weak, confused, mentally disturbed men who are drifting away from society.  They aren't dating, aren't working, and they spend most of their time in their bedrooms playing video games, smoking weed, watching pornography, and stewing in social media echo chambers.  None of this is healthy or normal, but we have been desensitized to dysfunction. [...] Your average school shooter spends months writing the script of his own little action movie that he wants to force society to watch.  They are living out a fantasy of glory.  The childish, sadistic theatrics of these spectacles bear the imprint of a childish and sadistic popular culture.  It is absurd to suggest that the man who dresses up like a "Call of Duty" character to go kill children has not been influenced in some way by gratuitous violence in mass media.

'It Became Necessary to Destroy the Country to Save It'.  Peter Arnett's celebrated quote — "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it" — was a fabrication during the Vietnam War but has a macabre application to Ukraine.  American fecklessness and Russian rapacity together will leave a grease spot where Ukraine used to be.  It was all tragically, idiotically unnecessary. [...] The obvious course of action in Ukraine was to permit its people to vote for a divorce, as the Czechs and Slovaks did.  Instead we elected to keep the NATO option open for Ukraine, knowing that this was a red line for Russia.  Never mind that Putin is a wicked fellow; he is a predictably wicked fellow with a well-defined understanding of Russian national interest, and his response to Ukraine's prospective NATO membership was entirely predictable.

What about packing the House of Representatives?  In the first U.S. Congress, the members who represented the largest number of people were the Senators from the most populous state, Virginia, who represented about 750,000 people.  For the current Congress, the median district of the House of Representatives includes about 750,000 people. [...] The reason congressional districts have grown to have such a large population now compared to the early Congresses is that the number of members of Congress was frozen at 435 by statute in the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.  In 1929 the U.S. population was about 120 million.  Today, the U.S. population is around 330 million, meaning that with a fixed 435 House members, district population has grown and will continue to grow until the number of House members is increased or, better yet, linked to population. [...] Having congressional districts the size of the largest state at the founding and growing means that members of Congress are more and more removed from the people they are supposed to represent.  A not too surprising result of this is that members of Congress now think and act more like senators.

Uvalde and the Problem of Evil.  What do people who don't believe in evil do?  They blame inanimate objects.  Guns.  19 years ago, a middle-aged unemployed taxi driver carrying two milk cartons full of gasoline walked onto a South Korean subway and started a fire that killed 192 people.  That was not a milk carton problem.  Nor was it a gasoline problem.  6 years ago, a Muslim terrorist drove a truck into a Bastille Day event in Nice, France killing 86 and wounding over 400 other people.  Body parts were being pried out of his wheel wells.  That was not a truck problem.  Across the long stretch of human history, millions of people were killed long before the invention of firearms, in often cruder and far more brutal ways.

'Top Gun' Is Much Better Recruitment Than That Lesbian Wedding Cartoon Ad The Army Made.  When "Top Gun" came out in 1986, it helped drive a surge of interest in flying for the U.S. military, including a 10 percent spike in service academy applications. [...] The Pentagon collaborated with producers on the movie, as it has with myriad other military flicks.  Now, from ads lined up to accompany the movie to recruitment tables set up outside theaters, the Navy and Air Force are making no secret of using "Top Gun:  Maverick" as a recruiting tool, as well they should.  It's a far better promotion for the U.S. military than the embarrassing, woke garbage that equity consultants have been churning out. [...] It's painfully obvious that the point of the ad was to check boxes in the Army's department of showing how much the Pentagon loves lesbian weddings.  The animation is reminiscent of a B-list kids TV show, and so is the sugary tone of the voiceover.  There is zero in the video to inspire any kind of bravery, sacrifice, duty, honor, integrity, excellence, teamwork, or respect.  Like the short-lived "Army of One" slogan of 20 years ago, this ad is all about being your best self and fulfilling your personal needs and desires.

The real replacement.  Nigerian immigrants replacing white natives are not a problem.  Welcome aboard, I say.  The real problem is replacing God with government.  The country's values have changed mainly for the worst over the last 70 years.  That coincides with a nation that has gone from being 90% white to one that is 76%.  But don't blame non-whites because the change in race is casual, not causal.  America is not changing color.  America is changing values.  We are replacing God with communism.  The little old ladies in tennis shoes were right.  There was a plan to defeat the nation from within.

There is a way to stop school shootings.  Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money was.  Shooters target schools because that's where the easy targets are.  If we truly want to stop school shootings, it's past time we hardened our schools so that our children are no longer easy targets.  We could learn a lot from Israel, a country that takes the protection of children so seriously that there have been only six attacks on schools since 1974.  While Israeli law focuses more on repelling terrorist attacks than school shooters, their security measures work well on both threats.  There are armed guards in Israeli schools.  There are limited points of entry to schools.  There are shelters and fences at schools and reinforced school buses.  Armed guards might even accompany students on field trips.  Nor do the Israelis rely on security at the school site.  They also engage in behavior profiling, including monitoring the social media of potential shooters.  Such measures are controversial and would no doubt encounter resistance in the United States.  However, there have been 2,052 school shootings in America since 1970 (although only the smallest percentage are mass shootings of the type pioneered at Columbine; most are extensions of or the same type of violence seen in urban neighborhoods).

I Wish Our Government Understood Memorial Day.  I wish we had leaders who unflinchingly defended the Bill of Rights.  I wish we had a Congress that respected the constitutional limits of its enumerated powers.  I wish we weren't saddled with a century of errant Supreme Court jurisprudence that has habitually refashioned the plain meaning of the Constitution's words in service to the partisan bents of its members.  I wish the 16th Amendment hadn't made it permissible for the federal government to tax the fruits of Americans' labor.  I wish the 17th Amendment hadn't transformed the Senate from a legislative body representing the individual states' interests into a national House of Lords representing the national security state's interests.  I wish our fifty state governments fought ferociously against the federal government to protect their inherent sovereign powers.  I wish the American people understood more broadly that the federal government has slowly but surely stolen from them rights and liberties that were once strictly protected from government infringement.  I wish we were not represented by presidents who disloyally insist on ceding American self-determination to international governing bodies stocked with unelected bureaucrats who believe their "expertise" outweighs Americans' priorities.

The word no one mentions when discussing school shootings.  [Scroll down]  No one asks the central question; why are kids shooting up schools?  Schools are the target.  Schools are the objective.  Schools are the focal point.  What are schools doing that makes them so hated?  You can go to any website and see the open and growing craziness within the teaching profession.  There are too many cotton-candy haired narcissists who only preach a cause to their captive audience.  They might preach about homosexuality.  They might preach about Critical Race Theory.  But it's all about their personal cause.  These spokesmen for the Cause are creepy because the Cause trumps all other knowledge.  Look for reading scores on the bottom shelf, just below basic math.  Narcissists' teaching budding narcissists' is not a healthy diet for the soul of our country.  Even the books students read are self-centered, crafted so that the reader "can relate" to the subject.  So they learn not to relate to others.

Cannabis causes psychosis.  Psychosis causes violence.  Yep, there it is, the first reference to cannabis use by Salvador Ramos, the Texas elementary school killer.  In the New York Times.  Took 24 hours, give or take.  ["]And Ms. Rodriguez recalled he would often talk about how much he despised his mother and grandmother, whom he told her did not let him smoke weed or do what he wanted.["]  [Source]  This is only one case.  Except it's not.  Nikolas Cruz, the Florida high school shooter, was a heavy user and told the police detective who interviewed him that he heard voices.  Devin Patrick Kelley — who shot up a Texas church and killed 26 people in 2017 before blowing his head off — had THC in his system when he died.  (Kelley had anti-anxiety drugs too; a lot of heavy cannabis users wind up using Xanax or Klonopin to try to tamp down their paranoia.)  Darrell Brooks Jr., last seen allegedly racing through the Waukesha Christmas Parade, is a self-described stoner.  Meanwhile, cities like Portland, Oregon have suffered an explosion in violence following the legalization of cannabis.  Portland had 16 murders in 2013, the year before voters in Oregon approved full legalization.  Last year it had 90.  It's on pace to have even more in 2022.  It has gone from being one of the safest medium-sized cities in the United States to one of the most dangerous.  Denver has seen a similar trend.

4 Steps Every School Can Take to Help Prevent Shootings.  [Scroll down]  In almost every one of these shootings, and now apparently in this one as well, there have been signals that the shooter has given, mostly on social media, sometimes to friends, family members.  And the problem is people see these things like pictures of him with guns saying he's going to go do a shooting.  Apparently, this young man had some friends that he used to cruise around the neighborhood [with] and shoot BB guns at people's cars or at people walking on the street.  Behavior like that is a signal.  It doesn't mean always that there's going to be a big tragedy like this, but it's the kind of signal that somebody needs to respond to.  And you cannot pass [it] off ... "Oh, well, that's just Johnny blowing off steam.  He really doesn't mean that."  We can't say that anymore.  We have to respond.  We have to get authorities involved.  There has to be an intervention.

Bush Dynasty, Its Influence Fading, Pins Hopes on One Last Stand in Texas.  His famous name shadows George P. Bush, the only member of the dynastic political clan now in public office, as he enters the final days of an uphill campaign to unseat Texas' attorney general.  To some Texans, the Bush family name is a badge of integrity, harking back to a bygone era of rectitude and respectful political debate.  To others, it is the disqualifying mark of a Republican old guard that failed the party and betrayed its last president, Donald Trump.

GOP voters and Attorney General Ken Paxton.  On Tuesday, GOP voters will choose AG Ken Paxton over George P. Bush, the challenger serving as the commissioner of the Texas General Land Office since 2015.  The Bush campaign has focused on the stories and allegations regarding AG Paxton's ethics. [...] So why are GOP voters looking the other way?  I see two reasons:  First, AG Paxton has done a good job.  He has been a tough advocate for Texas and on attacking the Biden administration over the border chaos; and, Second, I think that a lot of GOP voters are very skeptical of the media.  They see all these anti-Paxton stories and wonder if it means anything.

The Editor says...
Maybe Ken Paxton is guilty of something, maybe he's not.  If you have courtroom-quality evidence against him, bring it. 

What the Blue-State Left-Coasters Don't Understand about Culture.  Yesterday, I met a man from Mumbai.  He happened to mention that he was new to Idaho, so I asked how new, and it turned out he'd been here for only a month and a half.  He spoke good English, and I learned he'd gone to an English-speaking school, which made his getting a job here in Idaho possible.  I asked him what he thought about Boise, and he said he loved it here better than Mumbai.  People don't care about you in a big city, he said.  Whether you live or die makes no difference to them.  But here in a little-big city like Boise, he said he could stand outside a store with a large purchase, and people would ask if he needed help.  He'd already done this the day before and been asked by eight people.  He'd never seen anything like it in his life.

The Editor says...
Very obviously, the man has never lived among Christians before.  The people who are commanded to love their neighbors are a whole lot more neighborly than the people who think random animals in their city might be their reincarnated relatives.

Goodbye Jen Psaki — no one condescends quite like you.  So long Jen Psaki!  As White House press secretary, you were indeed very informative:  every day you provided an example of how today's Democratic Party turns normie soccer moms from Greenwich into reality-denying attack machines sputtering insults and cheering on lawbreakers because they can't face up to the unpopularity of the far-left agenda.  As blathering Joe Biden retreated into the background and suggested to the world that America was in the hands of a man who should be shuffling around Sunset Acres in a bathrobe, Psaki became the face of an administration that is determined to head into the midterms like Thelma and Louise.

The return of Vindman, clamoring to start World War III.  Among the most fervent war hawks in America today is Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former member of the NSC, who now works at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute.  His previous claim to fame was as a witness who testified about former president Donald Trump's call to Ukrainian officials in the second impeachment trial of Trump.  He became an instant hero to the crowd at MSNBC and other anti-Trump major media (is there any other kind?).  Vindman also reportedly claimed that Trump "bears an enormous burden of responsibility" for the Russia-Ukraine war, even though Russia's aggression against Ukraine has occurred during the Obama and Biden administrations.  There was no Russian aggression against Ukraine on Trump's watch.

Party like it's 18-94!  Democrats are in deep trouble 6 months away from the midterm election.  How bad will it be?  2010 Tea Party bad?  1994 Gingrich Revolution bad?  Try 1894.  In 1894, West Virginia had 4 congressmen.  All were Democrats.  All lost re-election.  It was part of a sweep in which Republicans gained 130 seats in a 357-seat House of Representatives.  Democrats lost more than half their seats as Republicans re-gained the House — and would control it for the next 16 years.  West Virginia was not alone in wiping themselves clean of Democrats.  Illinois went from an 11-11 split to a 22-0 shutout by Republicans.  Indiana went from an 11-2 advantage by Democrats to a 13-0 shutout by Republicans.  Michigan went 12-0, Minnesota 7-0, Nebraska 6-0, New Jersey 8-0, and Wisconsin 10-0.

A Mexican cave disgorged a massive pre-Columbian crime scene.  One of the left's useful narratives is that Native Americans lived in idyllic, pastoral harmony, only to have this paradise brutally destroyed by the invading Europeans and their Christian God.  There's some truth (some Native American tribes were peaceful and some Europeans brutal) but that's not important for the left.  Angelic indigenous people and evil Whites are the core story for them.  That's why it's intriguing to learn about the fate of 150 people whose skeletons were found in a cave in Mexico.  The skeletons were actually found a decade ago.  Now, though, Guatemala's Institute of Anthropology and History has determined when and how these people had died.  It turns out that they were victims of human sacrifice around 1000 years ago.

The World Does Not Run on Magic.  At a recent hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, the CEO of Colonial Pipeline made an admission which illustrates quite well our negligence and improvidence.  The company paid out nearly $5 million in blackmail money to an unknown hacker when the pipeline was shut down for several days.  That, of course, was bad enough, and most of the man's testimony had to do with the technicalities of which government agency was notified and when, and what the company's computer experts did to remedy the situation.  But there was another piece of his testimony, one that you had to look hard to find in the news reports.  He testified that most of the men who could operate the controls on the pipeline have died or retired, so that the 5,500-mile line must rely almost wholly upon computerized systems for its operation.

5 Ways Democrat Policies Work To Destroy Children's Lives.  Americans who would sacrifice anything to protect their children may be surprised to learn that their inclination is a rather modern phenomenon.  For most of human history, the most dangerous period of any person's life was childhood.  Only if a newborn survived the first decade of disease, warfare, hunger, and all the other mundane threats to ordinary human existence would the survivor gain any type of social recognition.  O.M. Bakke explores this reality in his book, "When Children Became People:  The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity."  Before the spread of Christianity transformed prevailing cultural beliefs, children had no legal standing in the pagan societies of the Roman Empire and elsewhere.  In human history, it has been normal for unwanted babies to be aborted, smothered, or abandoned to wildlife.  Parents could beat or kill their children at will.  Children were routinely sold into slavery.  And it was quite ordinary for adults to use low-class or enslaved children as sexual playthings.

They Can Print Money, But They Can't Print Food.  Whenever there is some sort of a major crisis, our politicians normally attempt to solve it by spending money.  But in this case, that isn't going to work.  Our leaders can try to throw billions or even trillions of dollars at the global food crisis, and they may even convince themselves that they are making a difference.  However, the truth is that they simply cannot create food out of thin air.  As I discussed last week, we are facing a worldwide nightmare of epic proportions.  Fertilizer prices have spiked to absurd levels, extremely bizarre weather patterns are playing havoc with crop production all over the planet, and the war in Ukraine has caused a growing supply crunch that will not be resolved any time soon.  There simply is no "magic wand" that our politicians can wave that will make this problem go away.

What To Do About China.  1937 was the year in which if you were in Europe or America, you could sense the trouble.  If you were in Asia in 1937, you would be even more worried, because that year saw Japan's second invasion of China that decade.  No matter where you lived, however, you could not be sure that the worst would happen, that great armies and navies around the world would clash.  There was still hope that the situation could be managed.  As we now know, the worst did happen.  In fact, what happened was worse than what anyone thought at the time.  We are now, thanks to China, back to 1937.

Revocation of Disney's Special Privilege Does Not Violate the First Amendment.  In 1967, when the Florida legislature gave The Walt Disney Company a special district, it did so to help Disney create a family friendly entertainment mecca.  Walt Disney put it this way:  "Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child.  So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that may be the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall."  Disney intended to avoid programming that would embarrass.  He meant to preserve youthful innocence — to inspire wholesome interests, imaging, and values, indeed to celebrate them — and to thereby support and uplift families.  "The important thing is the family," he said.

Mounting U.S. Debt and Misguided Foreign Policy Risk a Dollar Doomsday.  The U.S. dollar is getting perilously close to losing its status as the world's reserve currency, and there is less room than ever for error on the international stage.  Blunders in U.S. foreign policy are likely to have more harmful effects on both our allies and our enemies than in the past given the sorry record of the Biden administration.  Should the U.S. dollar be knocked out of its position as the reserve currency, hell would break lose across global markets.  With recent memories of Biden's humiliating and bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, there is less confidence in the reliability of the United States from our allies, and far less respect and fear of the United States from our enemies.  It's self-evident that the powers behind Biden favor prolonging the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than promoting an expedient end to hostilities, because the ongoing conflict dominates U.S. media and diverts Americans' attention away from disastrous domestic policies and breaking high-stakes scandals and prosecutions of Democrats and their deep state operatives.

Hypocritical Disney makes money in countries that ban homosexuality.  Florida lawmakers voted to end the Walt Disney Company's special, self-government privileges, which it never should have received.  Since 1967, Disney has operated its own mini-state, surrounded by Florida — much as the Vatican is encircled by Rome.  The Reedy Creek Improvement District exempts Disney from certain taxes and regulations that burden other companies.  This arrangement also empowers the Magic Kingdom to establish its own levies, ordinances and emergency services in and around its Disney World theme parks.  Let's hope Disney enjoyed this cushy 55-year ride.  Too bad its rotten corporate citizenship cost it these precious goodies.

A Fix For The Regulatory State.  [Scroll down]  Congress has decided that it doesn't need to take the time to read multi-thousand-page bills before passing them, so its members cannot claim lack of time as an excuse not to take up multi-thousand-page proposed regulations for ratification.  To that end, a very simple statute should be put in place as soon as possible.  Every new regulation by any executive agency should be ratified by a (super-?) majority of both houses of Congress and signed by the President before becoming effective.  Don't complain that Congress doesn't have enough time.  All that means is that they have their fingers in too many pots. [...] The Constitution was designed to limit government.  Over time it has become a behemoth that swallows up everything.  Every step to take a bit back is a good one.

American Churches are Killing Christianity.  [Scroll down]  [Matt] Walsh asks us to imagine that a "heathen horde" comes to America from a foreign land, looking to vanquish Christians and Christianity, so they look for a church where they can slaughter some Christians.  A man directs them to one but the heathen are confused because the church looks more like a post office or a medical clinic.  They go inside and find what looks like a "rehab center for wealthy drug abusers."  The heathens enter and find people in casual clothing sipping coffee:  ["]They had pictured an America filled with pious, modest, prayerful believers, but instead they find silly, shallow, oversexed nihilistic zombies who live vicariously through their phones which they have stocked with photographs of their own faces...  They hear a band performing a pop song.  Nobody is demonstrating anything approaching reverence.  There is no sign that anything sacred is happening here, or that anyone believes it is.["]

This War is a Propaganda Campaign Wrapped in a Psyop.  The country with the worst elections in the western world, whose government intervenes in foreign elections more than any other government on earth, is waging a dangerous proxy war to save democracy in Ukraine, a nation which is not a democracy by any reasonable definition.  Anyone who trusts any government is a fool.  Anyone who trusts the world's most powerful government is a damn fool.  Anyone who trusts the world's most powerful government while it runs massive propaganda ops for a dangerous proxy war should be forbidden to use the grown-up scissors.  It's impossible to overstate how completely blanketed by propaganda distortion the Ukraine war is.

Is it Compassion Or Kickbacks Driving Joe Biden's 'Stand for Ukraine'?  This April 17 ABC News photo of a man petting a frightened dog with its paws wrapped around his leg beside the ruins of a home damaged by strikes amid Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, speaks ever so loudly of the tragedy of war.  Wars — no matter where they happen — always claim the lives of innocent victims on both warring sides.  Yet we have countless arm chair critics from thousands of miles away virtue signalling in claiming to "stand with Ukraine" and purveyors of propaganda dominating the headlines in the Fake News of our day.

Trickle-Down Racist Antiracism.  Elected governments were rare in the past.  They did not appear until over four millennia after civilization first emerged in the Near East.  Constitutional systems were fragile at birth.  And they are on the wane today.  Nation after nation seems to be devolving into autocracy.  Multiethnic, multiracial consensual governments have been even more brittle and sporadic in history.  The Roman, Ottoman, and Soviet empires were multiracial.  But they were not consensual.  Instead, they required a degree of force to ensure calm among rival tribes and warring peoples — violence that we would find incompatible with our notions of modern democracy.  Today, India and Brazil are large multicultural and multiethnic democracies.  But neither, so far, has guaranteed their citizens either prosperity or security.  So present-day multiracial America is a great experiment in the unknown.

Prisoners of Our Own Device.  World leaders are acting like trapped men.  Vladimir Putin, having begun what many would consider an ill-conceived invasion of neighboring Ukraine, is speeding down a road he probably realizes ends in disaster.  Yet he cannot stop or exit on terms consistent with the basis of his power because any deals with Kyiv, except accepting its surrender, would be a sign of weakness.  Since Russia lacks the material strength to compel submission, the only alternatives are to keep pulling the same ineffective levers harder, whatever the cost.  The casualties mount even at the center.  Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, already rumored to be in disgrace, has allegedly suffered a heart attack.  Up to 150 senior Chekists are reputed to be under arrest or in disgrace.  Twenty general officers are reputedly under investigation, including some close to Putin himself.  While these reports may be exaggerated, the Kremlin has clearly chained itself to a runaway train.

Confessions of a Disney writer.  [Scroll down]  Disney's recent commitment to "add queerness" wherever possible can't be explained as just trying to teach tolerance and inclusivity.  The executives know that by showing "queerness," they are modeling queerness and encouraging kids to imitate that behavior.  In fact, Disney has had issues with sexualizing children for a long time.  Cole Sprouse, a former Disney Channel star, recently noted that he and his co-star brother both suffered trauma from their acting career.  He added, "The young women on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from an earlier age than my brother and I that there's absolutely no way we could compare our experiences."  You only need to witness the spectacular flameouts of Disney child stars Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan to wonder what traumas changed them from adorable ingenues into hypersexual vixens.  Tracking the endless legal troubles, destructive addictions, and mental breakdowns of former Disney stars has become almost a parlor game, as in this depressing article, "20 Child Stars Ruined By Disney."

If You Want to Punish Disney, Take Away Mickey Mouse.  In 1998, Congress passed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.  In a classic case of bipartisan corruption, the bill brought together Republicans, along with Barney Frank and John Conyers, to do a special favor for Disney and for other entertainment industry companies.  The Mickey Mouse Act (formally the Copyright Term Extension Act) was one of a series of measures that took the original copyright system, meant to protect an author's rights, and instead turned it into a permanent monopoly cash cow for Hollywood studios.  Mickey Mouse, a character created in the 20s, will only become public domain in 2024.  That is if Republicans don't once again decide to do a special favor for Disney, Warner Bros, and a number of other massively woke and wealthy entertainment industry monsters.  In response to Disney's support for pushing sexual indoctrination on kindergarteners, Rep. Jim Banks has sent a letter warning that the free ride was over.

The Editor says...
Good.  And while you're at it, eliminate the subsidies for Sesame Street.

What Really Happened in Ukraine in 2014 and Since Then.  Pundits skeptical of or even hostile to Ukraine's cause in its defensive war against Russia have different reasons, or rationalizations, for their views and hail from different points on the political spectrum.  But there is one belief that unites nearly all of them: the conviction that Ukraine is not a democracy fighting for its survival but an American "Deep State" project, with a regime installed by a 2014 coup that was led by Ukrainian far-right extremists and backed or even engineered by the U.S. State Department.

Is the Federal Reserve lying about our country's fiscal health?  The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States that is supposed to promote actions that benefit the U.S. economy and serve the public's interests.  Yet, some are suggesting that the System is failing the U.S. and its citizens, and others go further and say it is purposely lying about our country's financial health.

Thank Pence for Biden's Trainwreck.  There can be little doubt that former Vice President Mike Pence thought he was doing the right thing.  There are certainly many pragmatic reasons for his decision to not intervene in the electoral processes during those fateful days in January 2020.  We're a year and a half into the geriatric Biden regime and those pragmatic reasons are quickly losing their luster.  The nation is suffering — not from the constitutional crisis feared by the establishment but a systemic, methodical, sadistic infliction of pain and loss resulting from disasters of policy that are breathtaking in scope and frequency.  It's almost as if Biden and his administration hate Americans, our Constitution, and want to extract a pound of flesh from anyone they think supported President Trump.

The Editor says...
Yes, it's "almost as if" that's the case.  The time to figure out what the Vice President can and can't do in the event of a stolen election is before the election is stolen.  Even if Mr. Pence had grounds to invalidate the election, he probably wouldn't have, because the country was unstable enough already, and the news media was not on his side.

The Debasement of our Professional and Political Classes.  Will Republican magnanimity suffice to shame the Democrats to be more professional in the future?  Or will tit-for-tat deterrent reciprocity alone ensure a return to norms?  Specifically, will Biden be impeached Trump-style, after losing the House in November?  Say, to give just one possible example, for deliberately not enforcing and, indeed, undermining U.S. immigration law?  Will Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in Pelosi-fashion, start yanking troublesome radical Democrats off House committees?  Will a conservative Robert Mueller-like "wise man" head a $40 million, 22 month-long special counsel investigation of the Biden-family influence-selling syndicate — arrayed with a "dream-team," "all-star," and "hunter-killer" right-wing lawyers to ferret out "Big Guy" and "Mr. Ten Percent" quid pro quo profiteering?  Would a Republican-led House set up a special committee to investigate the racketeering and "conspiracies" across state lines that led to a near "coup" and "insurrection" marked by "the riots of 2020?"

The Editor says...
Don't count on any of that happening.

Russia is a fake power.  Numerous analysts have focused on Moscow's campaign of disinformation to undermine the West, but they have barely noticed that the most important subject of disinformation is Russia itself.  Moscow has a long record of deceiving Westerners and depicting its empire as invincible.  In a previous imperial incarnation, Soviet communism and socialist internationalism were supposed to ensure salvation for all humanity.  Until, that is, they were exposed as a fraud.  Today's Russia has created an image of great power status, economic strength, and military power that is rapidly unraveling in Ukraine.  This is revealing that the Russian state structure itself stands on rotting foundations.

Garland Feels the Heat.  Attorney General Merrick Garland's swan song, we can presume, isn't exactly turning out how he had hoped. [...] According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn't yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.  "[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.," the Times reported over the weekend.  Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue.  By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed.  His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn't exactly been a secret.

Convention of States gaining ground.  America's Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention knew any form of government they created would become corrupt.  They had already seen it happen in numerous states.  That and other failings were what led to the need for a new form of government to replace the confederacy.  Those known abuses that would arise were the reason for the Amendment process being able to take two distinct routes.  One through Congress, before proposed Amendments reached the states.  The other was strictly through the states, giving Congress no role other than calling for a Convention of the States.  The Founders, in essence, gave a third option they did not have when rebelling against Britain:  The power of the states to curtail governmental abuse.

Opposing viewpoint:
Against the Convention of States.  Many folks calling for a Convention of States (COS) to solve our country's current political problems are making a fatal assumption about the purpose of COS.  They see this as a powerful mechanism for undoing political corruption at the federal level.  Unfortunately, a COS is not the tool to handle this particular problem and, under current conditions, could easily lead to a very different US Constitution that actually supports rather than prohibits common government activities.  First, what we want changed is typically not clearly defined.  Are COS supporters hoping for term limits (congressional and judicial), the abolition of federal agencies, changing the interstate commerce clause, or altering the 2nd Amendment?  Let's assume these are just some examples they would cite.  I won't go into them here, but each of these and many other issues were thoroughly considered and documented by the Founders who had very clear explanations for why they chose to write the Constitution the way they did.  Second, the several states have not surrendered these powers to the federal government.  This is a very important point.

Walt Disney Company is infested with perverts — is this why the company opposes Florida's anti-grooming legislation?  It is becoming clearer than ever that the Walt Disney Company, at least in its current iteration, is infested with perverts.  Disney has a serious pedophile problem (among other things), it turns out, with more than 35 employees at Disney World alone having been arrested for child sex crimes since 2006.  Back in 2014, CNN, of all sources, highlighted the issue.  At the time, a total of 32 pedophile perverts at Disney had been convicted, and the remaining cases were pending.  "Disney ... has been plagued by employees arrested for a variety of sex crimes against children, including trying to meet minors for sex and possessing child pornography," reported the National Pulse in a recent article, shedding light on why the company today is vehemently opposed to Florida's new anti-grooming legislation.

FWIW at Least Someone Said It Out Loud.  While the jackboot on our neck doesn't seem to be getting any lighter, at least someone says what's going on out loud.  House GOP representative Jim Jordan delivered a speech on the floor today [4/6/2022] that essentially encapsulates most of the current issues that have become the collective weight from the jackboot.  Insofar as congressional speeches have value, this summary from Jordan is quite succinct.  [Video clip]

The 'Don't Say Gay' Contagion Is Killing the Left - Good.  I've never seen the left so completely misread the room.  This issue isn't about compassion or saying "gay."  Everyone feels compassion for children.  I do hold visceral revulsion for adults who want to sexualize children.  Thankfully my position seems to be the dominant view.  But the left won't let go.  Now the City of New York has produced a digital ad campaign to entice Floridians to move to New York City. [...] "Come to the City where you can say whatever you want."  What?  Say whatever you want, as long as you're children are still wearing masks.  You can say whatever you want — unless you say what you want and use the wrong pronouns of a nonbinary-two bear dude dressed like a poodle — then you can't say what you want.  Or if you complain about men in women's restrooms — in that case, you can't say what you want.  Or if you're offended by people who want to sexualize children — keep your mouth shut.

The Fed Is Going to Trigger a Recession Within Six Months.  The bond market is telling us that the Fed is in very serious trouble. [...] The Fed ended its Quantitative Easing (QE) program through which it prints new money and used it to buy assets from Wall Street in early March.  Since that time, the Fed has also begun raising interest rates, implementing its first rate hike of 0.25% on March 17th.  Historically, when the Fed begins raising interest rates, it looks to the 2-Year U.S. Treasury for guidance: the Fed tracks the yield on this bond as a proxy for where rates need to go.  With that in mind, the yield on the 2-year Treasury, is exploding higher.

Biden's Lack Of Any Strategy For Ukraine Shows He's Got None For U.S. National Security Either.  The White House said this week it plans to release up to 180 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves, a million barrels a day for 180 days, to help bring down near-record gas prices that were climbing before Russia's invasion of Ukraine but have since spiked.  It will be the largest release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve since it was established in the early 1970s, and it probably won't work.  The specific reasons it probably won't work — congestion on the Gulf Coast, a possible reduction in supply from Saudi Arabia and other oil producers, the fact that 180 million barrels over the next six months isn't enough to offset the loss of Russian oil exports — are not as important as what the announcement tells us about the Biden administration's plan for Ukraine and how it fits into an overarching national security strategy for the United States.

The New Financial World Order — The Intent of the Digital ID That Follows the Vaccination Passport.  The World Government Summit 2022 took place on March 29 and 30 in Dubai, hosting more than 4,000 individuals from 190 countries including senior government officials, heads of international organizations, and global "experts."  The invited participants presented ideas and worldviews from within their various fields of specialty.  One presentation that needs to be highlighted was from Dr. Pippa Malmgren, an American economist who served as special advisor on Economic Policy to President George W. Bush.  Her father, Harald Malmgren, served as a senior aide to US Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford.  In this segment, Mrs. Malmgren says the quiet part out loud.  Yes, they are no longer hiding the construct; indeed, as you will hear they are saying quite openly what the future will look like.  [Video clip]

Were You Better Off with Trump?  [President Trump] won over ten million more voters than in his previous 2016 victory, won almost every traditional bellwether county in the country by double digits, and expanded his share of the electorate with women and minorities.  But for Biden being declared the winner by the press after four days of counting in a handful of battleground states, Trump's impressive gains in 2020 would have been heralded as a resounding endorsement from the American people.  That is the part of the 2020 election story that has always bothered me most.  If it were stolen, and I obviously believe it was (sorry, thought police), then the theft not only denied the American people their say in their own governance and saddled the country with a dangerous, corrupt, and cognitively declining stooge, but also unfairly recast widely successful Trump policies as having been rejected by the people.  That rewriting of history is as dangerous and consequential as the election fraud itself.  In tort law, there's a doctrine known as res ipsa loquitur — "the thing speaks for itself" — which permits the inference of a negligent act even without direct evidence because no other plausible explanation exists.  The thing speaks for itself is how I've felt about the 2020 election.

The Unexpectedly Long War.  It was a tale of two blunders.  Both Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin made the mistake of believing that the Russian army could conquer Ukraine in two days.  The New York Times wrote in perplexity, "In Afghanistan, intelligence agencies had predicted the government and its forces could hold on for at least six months after the U.S. withdrawal.  In Ukraine, intelligence officials thought the Russian army would take Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, in two days.  Both estimates proved wrong." [...] Had Ukraine fallen quickly as predicted, the world food supply would not have been disrupted to the extent it was, and neither Putin nor Biden would find themselves in their unexpected predicament.  But alas!  The billion-dollar intelligence agencies of both men proved fallible and left everyone adrift on a sea of uncertainty over what happens next when the other second-order effects kick in.  The great powers bought a ticket to ride but still don't know where it goes.

The Six Best Conservative Governors In America.  [#2] I don't think I'm overstating the situation when I say Ron DeSantis has quickly become a political superstar.  Not only is DeSantis redefining what it means to be a Republican governor, he's redefining what it means to be a conservative.  On his current trajectory, Ron DeSantis could well be the most important conservative voice of this generation.  And keep in mind, at 43-years-old he's the youngest governor in the country, Democrat or Republican.  Pick an issue and DeSantis is not only conservative, he takes an in-your-face stance on it.  DeSantis didn't just call out the absurdity of the recent Lia Thompson, transgender swimmer issue, he accurately called the second place swimmer the rightful winner.

Why all of a sudden did Ukraine become the center of the Universe?  The United States Congress recently offered a standing ovation to Ukrainian President Zelensky.  Without a doubt, his country is virtually treated as the 51st state of the United States.  Yet, the United States government deals with Ukrainian borders exponentially better than America's southern border. [...] [D]uring Obama's presidency, Ukrainians got an offer they could not refuse, and a well-oiled conveyer belt to transfer money from the West to Ukraine and back had begun.  Everybody benefited from the scheme; it was so well known and accepted that even children of many swamp-dwellers in Washington were introduced to it.  Nevertheless, nobody on the receiving and sending ends of the monetary conveyor dared to ask the simple question of who was the brain behind the scenes who orchestrated it.  One possible answer — which could also explain why Ukraine suddenly became so valuable — is that the Russian KGB planned, implemented, and maintained the "Ukrainian" financial conveyor.

Beware of Those Indiscriminately Cheering for Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  To be clear, I'm not questioning American support of the Ukrainian people.  What I'm uneasy with is the blind support of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as if he's some kind of democracy-loving modern-day "George Washington," as FoxNews' Tucker Carlson called him on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight.  With just a small amount of research, it's clear Zelenskyy is anything but a democratic leader.  In a true democracy, people are free to express any opinion at any time in public and in private.  They can also speak out against their political leaders and work to remove them from office if they disapprove of the job they're doing.  The "democracy" in Ukraine is not at all free like that.

Tom Cotton Destroys Brown Jackson Over Support Of Suspected Terrorists.  Tom Cotton would already have earned an A+ for his digging into Joe Biden's affirmative action nominee Ketanjio Brown Jackson and her disgusting leniency toward and support for consumers of child pornography.  She is vile.  As if Cotton hadn't done enough already, now he's going after the judge and Supreme Court hopeful for her almost-as-bad representation of suspected terrorists and detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  Kudos to Cotton for having the stones to do what few GOP seem willing to anymore.  Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, John Kennedy, and Marsha Blackburn have been impressive throughout the hearings as well.

The chaos that is about to be unleashed is unlike anything that the world has ever seen before.  [Threat reader]  The technocrats that had an incremental change in store for all of us but... The Canadian Trucker protests and the massive protests all over the world against mandates frightened those who have planned this disrupting and dismantling of our world.  Not to mention, it became common knowledge who was behind this attack on humanity: @wef  Personally, I have been relieved that many now understand what @wef and @OpenSociety have been doing for the last 30 years.  But this frightened them:  for the first time, @wef was commonly understood as the enemy of humanity.  So what was going to be incremental is now going to be a blitzkrieg. [...] There is no way — even with all of the cheating and scheming — that the DNC and RINO Republicans can hold on to the House and Senate in 2022.  And there is no way that they can hold on to the Presidency in 2024.  So it is now that they must begin to introduce
    A New World Order
    A New World Religion
And to live in this order of the world a new version of humanity is necessary:  a new obedient humanity that will live in their hyperreal simulacra that will be governed by their AI God[.]

Anyone Else Starting to Get a Bad Feeling About All This Ukraine Worship?  Two things can be true at the same time:  Ukraine is being mauled by vicious invaders, and globalists are laying the foundation to leverage this crisis that they've been building up for months.  The alacrity with which the establishment has thrown its full weight behind the plucky Ukrainian rebels is setting off all my alarm bells. [...] I know a stampede when I see one.  We're still in the death throes of the last one, COVID-19.  Before that, it was Black Lives Matter.  There was also the dreaded Jan. 6 "Insurrection" and Russian Collusion in there somewhere.  The ruined lives, fraud, wealth transfers, and costly infrastructure from those pushes are still stacked up all around us, but Big Global has such an effective machine in operation at this point that they can keep hitting us with ginned-up crises before we have a chance to clean up the mess from the last ones.

Turn On The Spigots.  President Trump quickly and radically reversed the focus and direction of America's standing on the international stage.  Yet even more quickly *President Biden has tanked America's position, drained her of her leverage, and seems content to literally have no say in events that the entire world will be shaped by.  None of this to mention that in cutting off our energy production Biden's administration personally funded Putin's war machine.  The solution to all of this is pretty simple, but the American people need to express the collective will that we tell Washington what to do — not the other way around.  Turn on the spigots.  Sell our energy to Europe and watch the price drop here at home.  We can bankrupt Russia and Iran in the process.  We can reduce the financial pain for every American who drives a vehicle almost overnight.  We can re-employ all the pipeline workers, and leased drilling operators immediately.  And we can alert the world that America is not diminished but potentially stronger than ever.

DuckDuckGone?  To some users, it feels like another Big Tech bait and switch.  To others, it's a case of getting half a loaf.  But to many, it's a betrayal of a principled promise.  The search engine DuckDuckGo will now begin making judgments about the accuracy of the information produced by its search algorithms.  As Breitbart reports in "Diet Google:  DuckDuckGo Will 'Down-Rank' What It Decides Is 'Disinformation,'", the company's CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, posted a Twitter thread announcing that, as part of standing with Ukraine, the search engine had been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.  In addition to down-ranking sites associated with disinformation, we also often place news modules and information boxes at the top of DuckDuckGo search results (where they are seen and clicked the most) to highlight quality information for rapidly unfolding topics.  In justifying his company's decision to wade into determining which information is "disinformation" and "misinformation" — a.k.a., censorship — Weinberg carefully reiterated his company's promise to users (and plugged his search engine): [...]

10 Realities of Ukraine.  [#10] It is not "un-American" to point out that prior American appeasement under the Obama and the Biden Administrations explains not why Putin wished to go into Ukraine, but why he felt he could.  It is not "treasonous" to say Ukraine and the United States previously should have stayed out of each other's domestic affairs and politics — but still do not excuse Putin's savage aggression.  It is not traitorous to admit that Russia for centuries relied on buffer states between Europe — lost when its Warsaw Pact satellite members joined NATO after its defeat in the Cold War.  But that reality also does not justify Putin's savage attack.

The Fed Has One Job To Do, And Blew It.  Along with President Joe Biden and Congress, the Federal Reserve has a responsibility to manage inflation, a job it was established to do.  And just like Biden and Congress, the Fed has failed at its job.  At the Fed's own website, it states clearly what its primary job is, by law:  "Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices."  Well, today, we have neither "full employment" nor "stable prices."  On Tuesday, the government reported that wholesale prices, that is prices just a step before retail, surged 10% in February.  As bad as that number was, it didn't include the huge jump in energy prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  Consumer prices rose "only" 7.9% in February.  So expect them to go even higher next month.  This inflation came thanks mostly to absurd policies — paying people to stay home while spending trillions of dollars of "stimulus" on federal programs not related to COVID — pursued by the Democrats who control both Congress and the White House.

Why Russia Invaded Ukraine.  [Scroll down]  The war in Ukraine is putting this non-secret plan into effect.  It forces Russia to unite with China, which is the only power big enough to resist the pressure of Western sanctions against Russia.  The burning of the economic bridges with the West makes China the only nation that can absorb the massive amounts of raw materials and grains that Russia produces.  The two countries combined can scramble the post-Cold war economic and political order and create new tensions and shortages.  Some speculate that the forced marriage between China and Russia will lead to a parallel financial system with the yuan as the reserve currency.  The desired realignment will pit the decadent West against the post-communist East.  Two distinct political blocs are forming, which will present the world with two false alternatives:  crumbling liberal democracy or autocratic national socialism.

Biden and Obama Must Answer for Russiagate.  What did Barack Obama and Joe Biden know about the Russiagate collusion hoax their fellow Democrats ginned up to kneecap Donald Trump — and when did they know it?  How much did their chicanery contribute to Vladimir Putin's decision to invade the Ukraine?  Those questions are coming into sharp relief following a definitive report by my RealClearInvestigations colleague Paul Sperry last week that places the worst political scandal in our nation's history and Putin's brutal war directly inside the White House.  Drawing on a wide range of documents, many never previously reported, Sperry details how the Obama administration worked closely with the Clinton campaign and a foreign government — Ukraine — in a "sweeping and systematic effort" to interfere in the 2016 election.  It turns out Democrats were guilty of every false charge they lodged against Trump.

What If Everyone Is Wrong About The Russian Military?  It's tough to say if they're targeting civilians or simply launching wildly because they can't target anything — Putin being a monster doesn't help with this.  But logistically, they are absolutely a joke.  A competent military doesn't get a 40 mile long convey, on which most of their alleged strategy depends, stuck in the mud and out of gas for 3 weeks.  What I think might be at play is pretty simple: the military leadership in Russia is just as corrupt as the political leadership, because why wouldn't it be?  When the people giving you orders are dipping their hands into the pie, why wouldn't you when whatever is left gets to you?  That leads to corners being cut, to laziness. [...] ake a look at any of the pictures of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.  Do they look ripped or do they look pregnant and ready to retire?

NATO's Emerging Ukraine Strategy.  For NATO, the calculus is changing.  Russian military might has been exposed as far weaker than thought, and the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be fierce and committed fighters.  This has emboldened western powers to provide a laundry list of armaments and other support to Kyiv.  Even more importantly, the European and American public has now seen two weeks of fighting, suffering, and dying in Ukraine.  While Ukraine was perceived as a far away, dispensable country before the war, it has now become the staple of the nightly news.  The public is growing familiar with the country and, in particular, with the bravery and determination of Ukrainian forces and the suffering of its civilians.

The Real War.  I continue to be somewhat dumbfounded that some conservatives seem to believe that Vladimir Putin is their enemy.  Tucker Carlson last night explained masterfully that the real enemy of the America we grew up in — with its vibrant middle class — is coming from our ruling class.  While the roots of this war on the American middle class run deep, the pace of the rape and pillage of America — morally as well as financially — accelerated in virtually exponential fashion in 2008.

Perhaps Tucker Carlson's most profound monologue ever.  I won't lie:  I'm a Tucker Carlson fan.  He is willing to speak honestly about topics others ignore, sugarcoat, or lie about.  Even when I don't agree with him, I find him worthwhile, and never more so than his Friday-night [3/11/2022] monologue about Biden's latest, terrifying power-grab and how our government is destroying the American economy.  It was a tour de force, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Tucker opened with something I'd meant to write about and now don't need to: without a single pause, the Biden administration slipped effortlessly from COVID emergency powers (which are now passé thanks to polling) and is, instead, assuming war powers, even though we're not at war: [...] If Tucker had stopped there, he still would have said something incredibly important that should cause all Americans to question the power Biden has seized for himself and how, once seized, it will be kept and used in the future.  But Tucker didn't stop there.  He segued smoothly to the vast, unimaginable power the tech monopolies have over American minds and how they are steering us inexorably to accept treating Russia as a nation to be destroyed just because we don't like it.

Questioning Potential Jurors Undermines the Very Basis of the Jury System.  [The jury] system supposes that the average citizen, chosen at random, is capable of judging the guilt or innocence of an accused solely on the basis of the evidence presented in court.  To do so is the purest example of attempted cognitive rationality.  Indeed, the judge tells the jury that they're to consider only what they see and hear in court, that they're to put all other information, rumor, or prejudice from their minds.  If it were not possible for them to do so, then the whole system would fall to the ground.  My experience, as a witness in murder trials in England, suggests to me that most people are capable, when it's demanded of them, of judging solely on the evidence put before them.  As with any system that involves human beings, there must be exceptions and failures:  Perfection is not to be expected.  But in none of the trials in which I was involved did the jury come to a perverse verdict that flew in the face of the evidence put before them.  Relevant evidence may sometimes have been missing or withheld from them, affecting their verdict, but that was not the fault of the jury.

The Great (Destructive) Reset of Capitalism.  The World Economic Forum (WEF) is promoting a dystopian vision, and it is closer than you think.  By 2030, it says, "You will own nothing and you'll be happy."  Ownership and control will be vested in a handful of government leaders and a cabal of the wealthiest individuals in the world.  You will lose more than just your possessions.  Under the WEF's "Great Reset," individual freedom, personal responsibility, and opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment will be eroded away.  Democracy, the free market and national sovereignty will be replaced by a new world order, stakeholder capitalism and centralized control by some NGOs, globalist corporations and the elite.  Klaus Schwab, the WEF's founder and executive chairman, gloated over the pandemic: to him, it was a "window of opportunity" for this reset.

Blinken and Biden Fold, Pentagon Rejects Poland Offer for United States to Start World War III.  Oh, the Biden administration is not happy with Poland.  Not happy at all.  Earlier this afternoon [3/8/2022], Poland called Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's bluff, over the U.S. claims that Poland was going to send fighter jets into Ukraine.  This followed Sunday's announcement where Poland said the U.S. State Dept was lying.  Earlier today, Poland said they would give the U.S. the planes if Blinken and Biden wanted to start World War III, but Poland wasn't going to help the U.S. create a war with Russia.  This put the U.S. in a 'put up or shut up' position.

Biden's Russia-Ukraine diplomacy is a debacle.  Far from rallying the free world as its leader in reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Biden's diplomatic team has been publicly snubbed and humiliated by even putative allies.  Rather than "restoring respect" for the US, as Biden promised to do, his administration has severely damaged America's standing as a country to be heeded.  You would not know it from the saturation-level media coverage of the ongoing crisis, focused as it is on demonizing Putin for the crime of invading a sovereign neighbor.  But without even so much as defending our own border, much less invading another country, the Biden administration has managed to alienate a large share of the world.  Two serious public rebukes from allies Tuesday are signaling to the world community that America's views and initiatives don't matter as much as they used to barely over a year ago.

AWOL: Where Is the Russian Air Force?  The Russian Air Force (VKS) has procured 350 modern combat aircraft in the last ten years and the question that must be on every Russian's mind in the second week of the Ukraine War is:  What did we get for our money?  Because by all accounts, the Russian Air Force is nearly AWOL from Russia's biggest battles since 1945.  Military researcher Justin Bronk noted on Friday that "the Russian Air Force has yet to commence large-scale operations."  "The continued absence of major air operations," he says, "now raises serious capability questions."  It's also a safe bet that it isn't the Ukraine Air Force preventing the VKS from establishing air superiority over Ukraine.

The End of the Old Normal.  The catastrophe in Ukraine was the outcome of the combined miscalculations of Vladimir Putin and Western politicians.  The Russian leader embarked on a quest to restore his country's historical greatness, while the West endeavored to preserve the Global World as it was.  Both sides were firmly committed to the past, one to the re-establishment of the Soviet Union, the other to the pursuit of an environmentalist fantasy that effectively made Western Europe energy dependent on the Kremlin.  The outbreak of war in Europe showed that living in the past was no longer possible.

Statement On Russian-Ukrainian Crisis by Archbishop Vigano.  If we look at what is happening in Ukraine, without being misled by the gross falsifications of the mainstream media, we realize that respect for each other's rights has been completely ignored; indeed, we have the impression that the Biden Administration, NATO and the European Union deliberately want to maintain a situation of obvious imbalance, precisely to make impossible any attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, provoking the Russian Federation to trigger a conflict.  Herein lies the seriousness of the problem.  This is the trap set for both Russia and Ukraine, using both of them to enable the globalist elite to carry out its criminal plan.

Why Should Deplorables Fight for Those Who Hate Them?  What happens when a self-anointed "ruling class" spends years demonizing its own citizens as racist, white supremacist, deplorable, insurrectionist Neanderthals bitterly clinging to their guns and their Bibles?  What happens when the fools in charge censor dissent and throw their political enemies in prison?  What happens when the political Establishment floods the country with illegal aliens while publicly wishing for the quick "extinction" of those proud to wave the red, white, and blue?  Maybe when those same elitist snob-goblins start beating the drums of war, declare patriotic love of country acceptable once again, and call for deep sacrifices to be made in the interest of preserving freedom, the people most needed to pick up a rifle, fight, and sacrifice life and limb instead turn their backs on those who have relentlessly tormented them.  Maybe America's real protectors just walk away.

VISA Suspends All Operations in Russia, We Are One Step Closer to Losing the Dollar As Global Trade Currency.  Canada was the beta test when the government targeted the financial networks of the truckers and political opposition.  Now, the global governing system replaces Trudeau and uses the private financial industry to target Russians instead of truckers.  When I previously said to pay attention, because we are not going to like the world on the other side of a Biden, NATO, EU, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Word Economic Forum and multinational corporate victory, I was not joking.  This public-private merge of government with private financial institutions will never be reversed... ever again.

A Negotiated Peace — and a Strengthened West — Might Emerge From Ukraine's Ordeal.  Over the past week or so, earth-shaking events appeared to be occurring every day:  the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the dramatic and almost instantaneous determination of Germany to rearm, the imposition of relatively serious sanctions upon Russia and the international condemnation of that country, and the extraordinary bravery of the Ukrainian people and the eloquence, and charismatic leadership qualities, of their president, the formerly somewhat whimsically regarded ex-comedian Volodymyr Zelensky.  There are essentially three possible outcomes to this war: [...]

Here's Your 'Red Pill' Moment for the Russia-Ukraine War.  President Joe Biden and the media desperately want you to believe Russia is the bad guy and Ukraine is a little angel. [...] To get your support, they need the media to sell you a bill of goods.  But it just doesn't add up.  First, Biden is the one who funded Russia's invasion.  Biden killed our pipelines, killed coal and banned drilling, which made us dependent on Russian oil — which made Russia filthy rich and arrogant.  Biden paid for this war.  Second, if Russian President Vladimir Putin is the "bad guy," if Russia is evil, why is Biden continuing to buy billions of dollars of oil from Russia every day?  Does this make sense?  Unless it's pure "commie theatre."  Connect the dots.  Biden is a feeble, feckless old puppet with dementia.  George Soros pulls Biden's strings.  Soros is on the side of Ukraine.  Soros recently said the whole world must support Ukraine.  It's been reported Soros funded Volodymyr Zelenskyy and then installed him as president of Ukraine — one of the most corrupt nations on the earth.

Tedros Introduces the Globalist Plan to Take Over the World's Health Systems.  As many governments are gradually being forced to pull back from covid restrictions, we have been searching for the direction of the next global assault on individual freedom and the sovereign constitutional republics of the world, including the U.S.A.  We have discovered the next move of the global predators — already in progress — in their escalating assaults against individual and political freedom.  The next big assault on human freedom involves a legalized takeover of national healthcare systems by the World Health Organization.  This stealth attack — with its initial plans already backed by many nations — will begin full implementation in 2024 if it is not quickly recognized and fought!

About Those 'Neo-Nazis' in Ukraine...  Russian propaganda efforts have redoubled since Putin launched its aggression against Ukraine a week ago.  Suddenly, a host of stories has appeared in conservative media that try to rally support for Vladimir Putin because he is allegedly fighting Nazis and the New Word Order in Ukraine. [...] We could respond by advising Russia and its advocates to worry about their own neo-Nazi infestation, but since this smear has now become widespread, it is prudent to address it.  The Nazi smear is a twisted but effective technique used by Russian propaganda and our left-wing media in equal abundance.  Russia has been doing it since Stalin made it "a thing."  This smear is effective because its victims try to distance themselves from one another and sometimes join in accusations, hoping others won't think of them as Nazis.  It's also effective because it's extremely dirty.  Trying to debunk it makes one dive deep into repulsive dirt.

Cleanly Washed Russian Brains.  After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the country fell to a state of distress, industry collapsed, people became impoverished and desperate, as lawlessness and chaos ensued in the country.  In the early 2000s, when Putin came to power, he criminalized the government and, with the help of the West, turned Russia into a giant "gas station," that is, into a source of petrodollars.  Using efficient Western technology, oil and gas were pumped out of the ground, while billions of dollars lined the pockets of oligarchs that were close to Putin and other corrupt officials.  Imported food, household appliances, clothes, cars and other goods appeared in stores and life of the Russian population, especially in large cities, improved.  For the two following decades, the country was thriving on petrodollars, manufactured almost nothing but weapons.  Like megalomanic Hitler's obsession with conquering lebensraum for Aryans to populate, megalomaniac Putin was obsessed with the idea of restoring Russia to the borders of the USSR.

Did We Provoke Putin's War in Ukraine?  Whatever we may think of Putin, he is no Stalin.  He has not murdered millions or created a gulag archipelago.  Nor is he "irrational," as some pundits rail.  He does not want a war with us, which would be worse than ruinous to us both.  Putin is a Russian nationalist, patriot, traditionalist and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as the great and respected power it once was and he believes it can be again.  But it cannot be that if NATO expansion does not stop or if its sister state of Ukraine becomes part of a military alliance whose proudest boast is that it won the Cold War against the nation Putin has served all his life.  President Joe Biden almost hourly promises, "We are not going to war in Ukraine."  Why would he then not readily rule out NATO membership for Ukraine, which would require us to do something Biden himself says we Americans, for our own survival, should never do:  go to war with Russia?

The West's Green Energy Delusions Empowered Putin.  How has Vladimir Putin — a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of France — managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?  There is a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that question:  He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it to be free.  He is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and treasure to get it.  There are serious limits to how much the U.S. and Europe are willing to do militarily.  And Putin knows it. [...] Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day.  Putin knows that Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters.  He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that.

The most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war.  [Thread Reader] ... is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.  No one listened to them and here we are.

The Americans itching for war.  The foreign policy experts promised us that President Biden would restore our standing in the world and "stand up to tyranny."  Retired Admiral William McRaven said Biden would make America lead again.  They were wrong, of course.  The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster.  The reliance on intelligence and security from the Taliban got Americans killed.  If they were right about anything, it was about the return to American "normalcy."  This was one of our biggest concerns with Biden.  Normalcy in the U.S. is incompetence.  It got us the war in Iraq and a ~20 year war in Afghanistan.  It gave us Libya and the emergency of ISIS.  This same class of experts — the ones who were wrong on Biden, wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan — are now salivating at the prospects of war with Russia.

'Madman Putin': The Globalists' Misinformation Play.  Ever since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the western public has been carpet bombed with the claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is some sort of unhinged madman.  This notion is being feverishly spread by the establishment and those in its pay: the political class, the media and the commentariat, career diplomats and technocrats as well as those connected to the security and intelligence communities.  The most remarkable thing about the Mad Vlad claim is that it is obviously false.  Whatever Vladimir Putin may be, he is certainly no irrational madman.  This much should be obvious to everyone with the eyes to see.

Ukraine Crushes Three Great Myths About Russia.  The world has been fundamentally changed by Ukraine.  This is true, although nearly all Western coverage has been scaredy-cat and daft.  Russia expected to waltz in to Ukraine.  It didn't.  Russian forces have failed in all their objectives.  A thousand Russian soldiers die each day of the assault.  In the four days prior to this writing, 4,000 have died.  This is twice the number of American deaths in Afghanistan over twenty years.  (And no, Kyiv was never surrounded, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lives.  Indeed, the airport near Kyiv was retaken by local Ukrainian forces; in essence state-level reservists, who retook the airport from Russian elite troops.)  What this means is that the myth of Russian might has been broken for all time.  It doesn't matter if the war isn't over.  This is evident from the last four days.  And there really are no reserves to be thrown in.  They would have been thrown in already.

Are Covid And Ukraine Unrelated?  Don't Look Now, The Truth Might Come Out.  Ukraine is a manageable localized problem in a distant part of the world and Russia is going to manage it.  The American crisis of confidence in its own operating system is something else.  Did "Joe Biden's" handlers actually want to start World War Three?  They are the same posse who contrived the Russian Collusion hysteria of 2016-19, then launched Covid-19 — and the even more deadly mass "vaccination" response to it — and have now successfully goaded Russia into cleaning up the international hub of grift and mischief known as Ukraine.  One thing established for sure as fact: the "Joe Biden" family received plenty of cash off that grift wagon, and those "handlers" have neatly ring-fenced it from official scrutiny.  Where does that leave the so-called president of the US in the current crisis?

Russia has Forgotten the Hard Lessons it Learned Invading Finland.  Russia learned some hard lessons when it invaded Finland in November 1939.  Today in Ukraine, it's become clear that those lessons didn't "stick," at least not among Russia's decision-makers.  In the winter of 1939, Russia — having just conquered half of Poland after Germany had already knocked that country out of the war — decided that war was good business.  So they invaded Finland.  In Poland, the Soviets re-took land that had been under the control of Czarist Russia for two centuries before it was divided away from Russia at the treaty of Versailles.  Repeating that strategy, on November 30, 1939, Russia attacked Finland, intending to recover land that had also been part of Czarist Russia before Versailles.

Sunday Talks, Psaki Gives Away the Ukraine Game — Russia Is Needed As Fall Guy for Biden Energy Policy and Economic Damage.  During an ABC interview today [2/27/2022], White House Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki gave away the game for the Biden Administration's intent on exploiting the Russia-Ukraine crisis.  Keep in mind, as the Biden team were getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double, the White House worked to create an urgent defense by manufacturing the crisis.  While Joe Biden ate his pudding, the people behind the scenes told Zelenskyy and Putin that Ukraine was about to enter NATO (December 2021).  The White House then seeded details through China knowing the intel would get back to Putin.  Russia took the bait and intervened.  The collective left (far more western leader beneficiaries on a global scale) now have a quick and strategic pivot point to go from COVID-19 as the excuse for all the economic ills, to Russia.

The American Trucker Convoy Is a Really Bad Idea.  I was a strong supporter of the Freedom Convoy in Canada.  I felt their cause was just and that the crackdown by PM Justin Trudeau was truly authoritarian and disturbing.  The thing about that protest movement, though, was that it had a clear goal:  To get rid of the federal vaccine mandate affecting truckers.  While the ideological boundaries were stretched at times, it was never a question that the Freedom Convoy was fighting for something tangible and just.  On that note, what is this American trucker convoy protesting?  There is no federal vaccine mandate for truckers (or private employees in general) in the United States.  COVID-19 mandates at the state level have also been nearly universally lifted.  Further, the fact that the U.S. is a republic has always presented a far different dynamic compared to Canada's top-down, federal control of the populace.  In short, you cannot have a successful political movement if it isn't focused, and if the point is just to bait law enforcement in hopes of getting attention on CNN, that doesn't seem like a very good reason for its existence.

Before We Go To War, Let's Take A Look At The Current State Of The U.S. Military.  If we are going to have a war with Russia, perhaps we should determine if our military is actually prepared to fight such a war first.  Unfortunately, as I will detail below, the answer is very clear.  At one time, the U.S. possessed the greatest fighting machine ever assembled, but decades of neglect, incompetence and cultural deterioration have taken a devastating toll.  Just look at what happened in Afghanistan.  After nearly two decades of fighting, we couldn't even defeat a ragged bunch of drug dealers and goat herders known as the Taliban.  In fact, the Taliban appears to be even stronger today than when we first invaded.  And now we think that we can take on the Russian military?  Sadly, the truth is that we aren't ready for any sort of a major conflict at this stage.

High Fossil Fuel Prices From Russian Invasion Conveniently Support Globalists' Climate Change Dreams.  There are no such things as coincidences in the world of politics.  Did Covid and BLM anarchy just happen to coincide with Trump's reelection year?  Did JFK and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen just happen to die after running afoul with the mob?  Add this next question to the list:  Did Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is leading to catastrophic gas and oil prices, just happen to make desired climate change policies a sudden reality?  While the rest of the world is devolving into a left-right political debate over who supports whom, my initial response was the frightening reality that driving cars, heating homes, and growing crops was about to get a lot more expensive.

Russian invasion exposes US weakness, green lights Red China.  As Russia rolls over Ukraine with the only Western response being increased sanctions, the question arises:  Is this the beginning of a new world order, where nations may invade with impunity?  More specifically:  Will Washington and its allies react any differently if the next aggressor is China, and the next target Taiwan?  Like Ukraine, Taiwan is a US security partner not protected by any formal treaty.  The Taiwan Relations Act requires the Pentagon to support Taiwan's efforts to protect itself but does not mandate the US military defend Taiwan if it comes under attack.

The Collapsing Covid Narrative is Being Replaced with Putin and Ukraine.  The Covid-19 crisis was a government-imposed disaster from beginning to the end.  The virus — which was created by the Chinese state in cooperation with Dr Fauci and his friends — either escaped or was released from the biolab in Wuhan.  The Ukrainian crisis is likewise a government induced disaster.  The feckless Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and their globalist cronies provoked Putin by pushing the idea of NATO at the doorstep of Russia.  This was as unacceptable to the Russians in the same way that Mexico entering the Warsaw Pact would be unacceptable to the United States.  Putin asked for assurances that there will be no more NATO's countries on the Russian border.  This was not an unreasonable request, but they told him to go home and pound sand.  We should not be surprised at Putin's anger.  If he overreacts, the ensuing catastrophe will have been sparked by the provocateurs who were needlessly poking the Russian bear in the eye.  Both Covid and Russia are false narratives.

'Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible Will Make Violent Revolution Inevitable'.  I will be supporting Donald Trump in 2024.  The Durham revelation that the Clinton campaign spied on candidate Trump before the election and President Trump after should be enough to see that virtually everything Trump claimed was happening... was actually happening.  So what does this have to do with 2024?  Everything, including the election fraud of 2020.  Every single American with a functioning brain knows that Donald Trump won the election in 2020 and that everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to the mainstream media to the Democrat party to Never Trumper "conservatives" conspired to steal it.  And they did.

Putin may have overplayed his hand by invading Ukraine, experts say: 'Massive miscalculation'.  President Vladimir Putin may have overplayed his hand by invading Ukraine as opposition to the war grows in Russia, experts told Fox News Digital.  "This is a massive miscalculation," said University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Yoshiko Herrera, who is an expert on U.S-Russian relations.  "This action yesterday was just another level of crazy.  It's a ruination of Russia for decades, so damaging for Ukraine and so costly all around."

Slow Boiling the Western Alliance Like a Frog.  Fears over over Vladimir Putin's threatened invasion of Ukraine continue to grow despite the fact that the effort would burst both Russia's military and economy, not to mention ruining its foreign relations. [...] Yet it is not only the Kremlin's behavior that has a bizarre feel to it.  Despite decrying the seriousness of the situation, Western governments aren't obviously readying for a European conflict.  Instead they are focusing on masks, mandates and invoking war powers to force truckers to comply with soon to be abolished Covid vaccine requirements.  One would think the southern border would be secured, oil stockpiled, and STEM not CRT taught in reopened schools.  But none of this is happening.

Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada should start worrying.  Given the green light from Biden, Russia is unilaterally annexing only a portion of Ukraine.  There's its "minor incursion."  Biden is trying to talk and act tough but, of course, it's too late. [...] The "minor incursion" greenlight that Biden (Obama) and Co. just flashed dictators worldwide will reap a very grisly harvest.  Why can't Venezuela grab tiny Guyana?  It's minor after all.  Why can't Putin enlarge his access to the Baltic at Lithuanian or Polish expense?  Why can't Trudeau take back a chunk of Maine?  And why, oh why can't Xi Jinping get his hands on Taiwan Semiconductor?  Reflect that Putin took Crimea on Obama's watch, then takes the Donets Basin on Biden's watch.  Notice a pattern here, America?  We will never know what is treason and what is rank stupidity and weakness but, clearly, the Left (i.e. the Democrat masterminds and overlords) just rolled out the welcome mat for thugs the world over.

Putin is Playing Biden like a Fiddle.  Vlad Putin, the evil though very calculating chief oligarch of the shriveled nation of Russia (when stacked against its predecessor, the Soviet Union), is playing chess over the fate of Ukraine, while our figurehead president and his gaggle of administration mediocrities (here being charitable) and Pentagon toadies play checkers.  I'll venture this wager — though with modest reservations:  Putin will bring Ukraine into his orbit without sending his troops en masse into said country.  On Monday, Putin recognized Russian-dominated regions of Ukraine, followed by a minor incursion of "peacekeepers," traveling by bus, not APC.  Putin doesn't need a full-scale invasion, I believe, because his approach is strategic.  His eye is on the prize:  take Ukraine in some shape or form (as he took parts on Monday).  He's open to the means, no doubt, and if an invasion — likely surgical in nature — is his only route to achieve his ends, he'll take the gamble.  The U.S. declared that it won't send troops to defend Ukraine.

An Open Letter to Justin Trudeau and the Federal Government.  We are writing to you as representative pastors of Christian congregations from across the nation and as law-abiding citizens who respect the God-defined role of civil government and uphold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the highest law of our land, which recognizes the supremacy of God over all human legislation.  For the past two years, we have sought to respectfully and peaceably make known to all levels of government our profound concern about the indefinite suspension of civil liberties, coercive mandates and perpetual state interference in the life, freedom and worship of the church — freedoms guaranteed by both our inherited Common Law tradition and Charter.  We have also prayed earnestly for our governing authorities, met with them, written letters and petitions, peacefully gathered for protest with other concerned citizens and in some cases filed lawsuits.  We have used every lawful means at our disposal to be heard and taken seriously.  Yet at every turn, we have been largely ignored, brushed aside, insulted and even told we in no way represent Canadians.

Canada Tightens the Screw.  Canada's trucker protest has been inspiring.  Americans, though imagining themselves a freedom-loving people, have been quiet compared to Europeans, Australians, and now Canadians standing up against draconian Covid restrictions.  The truckers' protest has a combination of good optics, big numbers, a clear message, and it is causing substantial distress to the centers of power.  The truckers' protest is designed to make a mess of things.  By tying up critical roadways in Canada's capital and blocking ports of entry, it imposes economic pain across the country and brings attention to the cause.  But it is a peaceful protest, the kind of civil disobedience about which authorities used to wax poetic, when they agreed with the message and when the conflict was located in the distant past.  Real protests challenge the powerful.  You can tell the truckers' protest has some teeth, because Canada's rulers have responded without mercy.

Forensic linguists say they now know the origin of the Q texts on the message board that began the QAnon movement.  One of the enduring mysteries of the Trump era — 'who is Q' — appears to be solved, sort of.  Two sets of forensic linguists have published two separate papers using two different techniques to conclude that Q appears to be two people:  South African tech journalist Paul Furber, 55, and 4chan internet message board moderator and computer entrepreneur Ron Watkins, 34, according to the studies.  'While relying on two completely different technologies, both stylometric [quantitative study of literary style] analyses could establish that QAnon's early period on the 4chan forum, from October to December 2017, was likely the result of a collaboration between Paul Furber and Ron Watkins,' according to Claude-Alain Roten, the CEO of OrphAnalytics.

Going for Coffee Is Now a Crime in Ottawa; Police May Attack and Threaten You.  One of the things that has been ironic about the police action against the Freedom Convoy in the city of Ottawa has been that the government's complaint that people were blocked from going about their daily business in the city.  While areas of the city might have taken longer to get through and there was a lot of honking, no one was blocked from going anywhere.  That is, until now.  The city has installed checkpoints and fences, just like a police state, to prevent people from peacefully protesting.  They also shut down what had been the "hottest club" in the city — the protester dance party area right in front of Parliament.

Washington and Lincoln Call the American People to Reclaim their Rights from Government.  With the shock and awakening of Americans that the freedoms, rights and opportunities they had taken for granted for generations have been brazenly stripped away in the last few years, this President's Day 2022 may well be one of our most significant holidays.  Presidents Day is unique among American holidays in providing the opportunity to appreciate why George Washington and Abraham Lincoln — whose birthdays fall in February — were the two greatest U.S. presidents.  While Washington was the founding father of the United States, becoming the first President in 1789 after final success in the War of Independence, Lincoln would save the nation from division and collapse — bringing an end to the Civil War and the scourge of slavery as the sixteenth President in 1865.  In short, Lincoln saved the republic that Washington made possible.  And two remarkable men they were, whose wisdom, judgment and foresight are more relevant today than they were in their times.

Tyrant Trudeau shows his true colors.  Like most liberal poster boys, Justin Trudeau's claim to fame wasn't based on his record or his talents.  It was instead based on a famous father, virtue-signaling, and being a subscriber to groupthink.  From climate change conferences to marches for abortion, LGBT, and even BLM, Trudeau was always an eager participant, playing the part of a "nice guy" before slobbering media personnel and cameras.  But real nice guys don't feel any need to make a spectacle of their niceties.  For them, the act of kindness itself is the reward.  When an individual such as Trudeau dedicates most of his energy to the act, it is because he wants to conceal his hollowness.  Like most method actors, Trudeau eventually became a caricature of himself.

The Decline of American Medicine.  The COVID pandemic has highlighted concerning trends in the way medicine is practiced in the United States.  These trends have been present for long time, predating the appearance of COVID, but their pernicious nature has become more apparent under the stresses and anxieties associated with the virus.  The fundamental and most deleterious trend is the decline of the physician/patient relationship.  There are many causes for this — some economic, some cultural, some ideological — but the cumulative effect is corrosive. [...] One set of challenges arises from the inescapable fact that medicine and health care are a business.  Over the past decades, the physician-patient relationship has been gradually replaced by the "service line" or "supply chain" model of health care delivery, in which the physician is a fungible part, and the physician-patient relationship an optional accessory.

If We Had a Real President, Here's How He (or She) Would React to Trudeau's War on Canadians' Freedom.  [Scroll down]  This fictional president would remind Trudeau that the entire Anglo-American political tradition going back to the Magna Carta in 1215 has been a trajectory of the recognition of the rights of the individual, as well as limitations on the powers of government as a guard against tyrannical rulers making questionable use of vaguely worded laws in order to crush their opponents and preserve themselves in power.  He would scold the Canadian for trampling upon that tradition, and quote some ringing words from Ronald Reagan or Alexander Solzhenitsyn about how tyranny crushes the human spirit and must be resisted.  Then the real president would get down to business.  He would issue a warning:  if Trudeau seizes the truckers' bank accounts, Canadian assets in the United States will likewise be frozen until the Canadian government returns the funds to the truckers.

Well, now we've done it — we've angered the CIA.  The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence."  Well, now we've done it — we've angered the CIA, and for what?  For publishing views that challenge the conventional narrative, such as disputing that an invasion of Ukraine is actually "imminent" as the US State Department and its mainstream media conduits repeat day after day, or that the Covid virus was actually created in a Chinese lab, a view which has gained substantial prominence in recent months after it emerged that none other than the UK's Jeremy Farrar (also known as the UK's Doctor Fauci) played a pivotal role in stifling suggestions that this new virus might have come from a laboratory rather than emerged through natural zoonotic transmission from animals.  Of course, there is no actual accusation that Zero Hedge works directly with anyone tied to Russia or its intelligence apparatus — as the AP admits [...]

Yesterday I Was Levi's Brand President.  I Quit So I Could Be Free.  [Scroll down]  In the summer of 2020, I finally got the call.  "You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company," our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down.  I responded:  "My title is not in my Twitter bio.  I'm speaking as a public school mom of four kids."  But the calls kept coming.  From legal.  From HR.  From a board member.  And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company.  I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning.  While they didn't try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to "think about what I was saying."  Meantime, colleagues posted nonstop about the need to oust Trump in the November election.

Woke Hiring, Reduced American Competitiveness?  When Bill Clinton supported the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was eventually enacted in 1994, third party presidential candidate Ross Perot at the time stated that it would be like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking American manufacturing jobs into Mexico, and to a lesser extent into Canada. [...] Again, this was started under the Clinton administration, but continued under George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  How serious this has become was dramatically demonstrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic.  Vital pharmaceuticals, like antibiotics and steroids are no longer manufactured in this country.  The same for surgical face masks, gowns and gloves, among many other items.  We had to depend on China, the source of the pandemic, and an obvious potential adversary, to supply our needs.  This is obviously an unacceptable situation, but it is only the tip of a very large problem lurking below the surface.  Because of the policies of a series of administrations from both major political parties, we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on offshore sources for vital materials, the lack of which threaten our very survival as a nation.  We have allowed, no, virtually requested, that potential adversaries place their boot on the throat of our country.

Free Crack Pipes, y'all.  We are watching a movie and we have a front row seat.  We are not only witnessing the collapse of a political party, but the destruction of the global elites.  Everyday, more and more truths are being revealed Everyday, more and more people are awakening.  I encourage you to hold on — the best is yet to come.

Oligarchy's Response to the Freedom Convoy Bodes Ill for Them.  As I write, Canadian police, many dressed in military garb and supported by armored vehicles and snipers(!), are moving in to enforce several court orders and demands of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and others that the "Freedom Convoy" of Canadian truckers stop blocking the Ambassador Bridge, the major artery between the United States and Canada, and disperse.  Some of the protestors are leaving while many others are standing their ground.  Will the heavy hand of the state succeed in crushing the protest?  In the short term, perhaps. [...] But impotence comes in long-term and short-term varieties.  Long-term, I think [Tucker] Carlson is right.  Officialdom's response to the Freedom Convey is a desperate effort to put the genie of liberty back in the bottle.  Ultimately, it will not work.  But on the way to that failure there will be plenty of opportunities for the coercive power of the state to manifest itself.

One Way to Fix the Gerrymander Problem.  Without an amendment, a 1911 statute fixed the number of Representatives at 435. With the US population then at 92 million, that meant that each Representative had about 211,000 constituents.  If Congress were to expand to keep that degree of representation, then we would have 1,594 Congress-Critters. [...] We don't trust the government.  It has gotten too far away from the people, and we want some real say in what's happening.  Gerrymandering is just one illustration of how politicians protect themselves at our expense.  Multiplying the number of seats in the House would be one way of diluting that power and restoring the House's representative role.

Truck Trudeau.  In the dead of winter, thousands of Canadians have been streaming into Ottawa, led by a massive convoy of truckers protesting draconian Covid mandates that have harmed their ability to earn a living.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to meet with the protesters and slammed the freedom convoy as "an insult to memory and truth."  Fils Justin thus invites memories of himself and Trudeau père.  As Edward Gibbon noted, hereditary rule is always the most risible, and apart from the connection with his father, Canadians would be hard pressed to find any merit in Justin Trudeau his own self.  He has no scholarly achievement, no record of publication, and no experience running business. [...] When embattled Canadians take to the streets in a peaceful protest, Justin Trudeau smears them with lies.  Ottawa police are now threatening to arrest those bringing fuel and other supplies to the protesting truckers, which is not a crime.  This is what happens when Pierre Trudeau's son becomes prime minister of Canada.

Biden Facing Likelihood of Impeachment if GOP Wins Back House.  It's becoming increasingly likely that Joe Biden will be impeached if Republicans win back control of the House in November's midterm elections.  While speaking with Just the News founder John Solomon, Texas GOP Rep. Lance Gooden, whose district has been overrun by the surge of illegal aliens, argued that Biden's failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border has increased the likelihood that Republicans may push to impeach Biden if the GOP regains control of Congress.  "I really believe that impeachment could be on the table.  And I would support that, certainly," Gooden said, drawing a contrast with the two-time Democrat-engineered impeachment of Trump.

The Editor says...
There are about ten Republicans in the two houses of Congress who have the backbone to impeach Joe Biden.  What are the charges?  Opening the border and importing as many aliens as possible?  Making gas prices "necessarily skyrocket?"  Giving away the nation of Afghanistan, along with enough hardware to start an army, and bringing in terrorists while abandoning thousands of American citizens?  Hunter's deals with China and Ukraine?  Working only four days a week, and six hours a day?  Republicans don't care enough about any of that to follow through with an impeachment, especially knowing who's next in line after Biden.

Organized civil disobedience is the correct next response.  ... to the prolonged, indefinite and deliberate abuse of exotic emergency powers inconsistent with being a free people in our own country.  I don't want to go there, but it is time.  We are going to have to get CCP influence out of our country.  We are going to have to get Fauci and Daszak to explain what we were doing in Wuhan.  We are going to have to drive Pfizer out of news sponsorship.  We are going to have to extend freedom of speech to digital speech.  We are going to need algorithmic transparency from Twitter through regulation.  We are going to need to rein in the Feds ability to print its way into crushing the working class through seignorage and blowing out income inequality for holders of risk assets.  We are going to need to scale back our military obligations so we can actually be counted upon by our partners.

All Republican Candidates Must Learn a Lesson From Arizona Gubernatorial Hopeful Kari Lake.  Kari Lake is a former news anchor running for governor of Arizona as a Republican.  She made national news last year when she resigned from her position at Fox 10 News in Phoenix after 22 years.  In a two-and-a-half-minute video, Lake articulated her frustration with the journalism profession.  She noted the lack of viewpoint diversity and talked about getting handed content that she viewed as slanted or incomplete.  Her comments on the industry should have been a warning to her former colleagues.  Lake knows how the sausage is made and will not get tripped up easily.

The CNN Sex Party Comes To An End.  [Scroll down]  An all-staff meeting the day after Uncle Fester's ouster left everyone in shock, or so they've said.  It's unclear you an "open secret" that has been happening for years snuck up on anyone.  There aren't many companies in the country, especially left-wing companies, that allow someone in power to date subordinates, let alone have affairs with them.  So what were the CNN teleprompter readers upset about?  New leadership.  Under Jeff Zucker, it was pretty clear the fraternization rules were viewed more as suggestions. [...] The end of the orgy isn't what upset CNN staff, it was something even worse... for people with no scruples or talent — they are terrified that their next boss might want some accountability.

Our Elite is No Elite At All.  Our current idea of ostensible elites could be defined by noting their money and influence.  But money alone — even in the huge sums now found on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley — is not the only elite criterion.  Donald Trump is a billionaire with much influence and lives accordingly.  Yet few of our "elite" would consider him a kindred soul.  Ditto Elon Musk.  He is the richest man in the world.  But the elite mostly despise and ostracize him.  Birth itself has given way somewhat to insider influence and professional parentage.  You may be a fifth-generation scion with a name such as Mellon, Vanderbilt, or Rockefeller, but if your dad was not an ambassador, your mom not a VP at CBS, your sibling not a Harvard professor or Google executive, you have fallen out of the elite.

Covid has been used as an excuse for all kinds of things, none of them good.
COVID is the perfect excuse to finally axe the State of the Union.  According to news reports, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives plans to sharply cap attendance at the State of Union address.  The speech has already been postponed to March 1, its latest date in history.  Now President Biden will appear before an underpopulated, socially distanced chamber for the second year in a row.  Continuing health restrictions and delays raise the question of whether the ritual should continue at all.  Although it's become a fixture of the political calendar, giving a major public address is not among the president's formal responsibilities.  Instead, the Constitution requires only that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."  From Thomas Jefferson's administration until 1913, presidents discharged this duty in the form of a written annual message.

Democrats Are Tanking.  How Has Chuck Schumer Escaped Blame?  As the Democrats' political fortunes worsen, recriminations abound.  White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain seems to be the latest target, while centrist Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue to come under relentless attack.  President Biden takes a daily pounding, and news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will run for another term has produced headlines like this one in Axios:  "Pelosi is the GOP's 2022 Bogeywoman."  It seems strange, then, that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose fingers are all over the mess the party is in, isn't taking more heat.  Last week Politico Playbook reported that Schumer has created tension among his colleagues that has largely remained inside the tent and that no senator has articulated publicly.

It's Time for America to Leave NATO and for Europe to Resolve Their Internal Disputes.  The United States should have begun the process of severing military commitments with Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  After all, protecting Europe and thus the United States against Soviet aggression was the primary purpose of NATO.  But an irrational fear of a non-existent nation and its former satellites still persists and has been conferred on its much smaller and less formidable successor, Russia.  Together with the compulsive need to defend a prosperous continent these two pillars still form the basis of American military planning and international policy.  The divorce process should have been accelerated in 1993 when the anti-democratic European Union comprising 27 European countries and unified economic, social and security policies came into being.  The combined population of these nations is 33% larger and their overall annual Gross National Product is second only to the United States.  Since 1993 Europe has been more than capable of defending itself.

Texas Remains in Peril.  It has been one year since the devastating blackouts in Texas, so it's time to examine whether Texas is in danger of repeating the disaster.  Winterization was one of the issues raised as a cause of the blackouts.  The adequacy of winterization plans for natural gas power plants won't be known until after September 2022, when a statewide mapping of the electric supply chain is completed.  It's also unclear whether natural gas pipeline pumping stations have been added to the critical infrastructure list.  Not being on that list resulted in electricity being cut to pumping stations last year, which cut the supply of natural gas to power plants.

Tucker Carlson has some very unexpected people watching his show.  Monday through Friday, Tucker Carlson is my daily indulgence.  I like that he tackles issues other major media types, even the conservatives, shy away from. [...] Whether or not you agree with Tucker, you're going to learn something watching him.  Even Democrats must realize there's nothing to be had from the networks that cried "Russia, Russia, Russia" for so many years.  Additionally, Biden's failures as president are so abysmal and obvious that people are going to go looking for someone who explains the implosion of their world.  Whether they liked Trump or not, they must realize that, during the first three years of his administration, life was great and getting greater.  After only one year of Biden, life is bad and getting worse.  Rachel Maddow won't tell them the truth; Tucker will.

Protests From Out of Nowhere.  After months of uninterrupted growth in state power, what we are now witnessing in the disputes rocking the Australian Open, Spotify, Marvel and the trucking world are spontaneous meeting engagements in the culture wars.  It's like a chain reaction of angry people setting off other angry people.  The singular thing about this development is that it would have been impossible six months ago.  A psychological barrier has been breached and a taboo has fallen.  The potential of this to create a cascade is considerable.

Six Takeaways From The Ongoing Ukraine Crisis.  The left's storyline on Trump and Russia never held water, which is why so many of us were frustrated by the whole affair.  From the beginning, there was zero evidence to support the Russia Hoax, despite claims by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the hopes and wishes of the mainstream media.  President Trump applied far more pressure on Putin and Russia via various sanctions than the Obama Administration, and now we have the Biden Administration practically inviting Putin to launch a "minor incursion" into their neighbor's sovereign land.  The left told us that Trump was a "Russian cat's paw," and once in office Trump was going to allow Putin to do whatever he wanted.  But that never happened because it was never true.  Vladimir Putin had four years with Trump in office to try and pull the type of stunt he's currently pulling in Ukraine, but he didn't.  Putin was, in fact, relatively well-behaved during Trump's presidency.  But with Biden in office, Putin started to amass troops along the border less than three months after the inauguration.  Putin correctly recognized that there's a new sheriff in town, and there's no reason for him to fear that sheriff.

The world's elite:  Tone-deaf, willfully ignorant, or malicious?  [Scroll down]  As an easy example, take Mark Zuckerberg buying up property on Kauai by badgering and suing his way to forcing Hawaiian residents to give up land that's been in their families for over a century.  He's created a veritable fortress of separateness, in the middle of paradise, just so his family can occasionally vacation there.  The man bought 1,400 acres, beachfront, ranch land, etc.  Of course, the family has bestowed some of their largesse on the natives to placate them.  In fact, they donated $900,000 to the effort to get everyone vaccinated.  Talk about doubling down!  The problem with these rich, elite, and not-of-our world people is that they are prideful and bullheaded.  If they see something a certain way, it must be so.  If they view the world myopically — and their equally rich, equally out of touch amigos see it that same way — they can't understand what our little problem might be with their view.

The Most Dangerous Time.  [Scroll down]  The illegal government, empowered by a stolen election, which tipped the Senate from Republican + 2 to even up, allowing Kamala Harris to be the tie-breaker on all of these spending bills that already have and will continue to drive inflation to Venezuelan heights also allows for someone like Hillary Clinton to be named to the Supreme Court.  This is why voting is still important and voting in 2022, if that happens, is more important than ever.  Getting people out of the senate is more important than getting them into the senate, but backing someone who understands that the strength of the Republican Party in 2022 is due solely to a strong nationalist sentiment is vital.  Those who just want to be establishment senators are as much the enemy of the people as communists.  All of it didn't start with the pandemic that allowed for easily forged mail-in ballots, it started way before the stolen election.  It started when we let communists on local school boards and election offices and it will have to get fixed there, if it is to be fixed at all.

The Most Impressive Communist-Crusher You've Never Heard Of.  I first saw Olavo de Carvalho years ago on a program called Update Brazil, which covered the global fight against communism.  The video is gone now, the whole channel purged by YouTube.  The host was Allan dos Santos, an excellent anti-communist journalist who is now being persecuted and blacklisted by Brazil's far-left Supreme Court.  Also on the show were the brilliant American analysts, Jeff Nyquist and Diana West.  The fourth person was the only one I didn't recognize.  An old and playful Brazilian man.  He seemed quirky.  Maybe a blogger and friend of Allan's.  It was actually Olavo de Carvalho, who was something of a national hero and incredibly accomplished.  I just couldn't tell it from his polite and humble demeanor. [...] Since then, I have studied Olavo's work, getting it translated into English, and learned something of his career.  In my opinion, he was maybe the most brilliant and interesting thinker we had in the world.

Why a War Over Ukraine is Unlikely.  The whole world is waiting nervously for developments in Ukraine.  Masses of Russian soldiers are engaged in "military exercises" near the Ukrainian border.  "Siberian regiments" are being redeployed from the Far Eastern districts, just as they were sent to defend Moscow in 1941.  Russian propaganda stirs up the local population with a patriotic fervor, blaming Ukraine and the collective West for the heat of the international situation.  The Ukrainian army, one of the strongest in Europe, is preparing to fight back, and the United States is planning to send eighty-five hundred soldiers to help the NATO countries in Europe.

Virginia Republican Goes Off On Democrats In EPIC Rant: 'Enough!'  Republican State Rep. Nick Freitas of Virginia has had enough of Democrats accusing anyone who opposes them of racism and sexism.  During a floor speech this week, he went after Democrats for this and his speech was so amazing that it got applause afterwards.  Other Republicans should study this speech.

Wrong War, Wrong Enemy.  In the aftermath of the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, America faces the looming possibility of fighting two major wars at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent simultaneously:  one against Russia over Ukraine and another against China over Taiwan.  Given our current disarray, the United States is in no position to fight a two-front war.  Accordingly, it is our best policy to avoid conflict in both regions.  The United States has no vital interests to defend In Ukraine.  Should the Russians seize it, they will merely occupy a region that has been Russian since the days of Catherine the Great.

I Hope Neil Young Will Remember, Spotify Don't Need Him Around Anyhow.  On Tuesday, Neil Young gave streaming service Spotify an ultimatum.  "I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform," he told them.  "They can have Rogan or Young.  Not both."  Well, Spotify chose Joe Rogan.  According to a report from Wall Street Journal, the streaming giant is "in the process of removing Neil Young's music" from the platform.

Spotify sides with Joe Rogan, will remove Neil Young's music after ultimatum.  The predictable conclusion to yesterday's standoff.  Rogan's the most influential podcaster in America, Young's a legend who hasn't been musically relevant for decades.  Oh, and Spotify paid $100 million for the rights to stream one of them.  Guess which one they were less inclined to alienate.  An ultimatum from Taylor Swift or Beyonce to Spotify to yank Rogan's anti-vax episodes from the platform would have been an interesting conundrum for the company.  An ultimatum from Neil Young was a curiosity.

The Editor says...
Neil Young was moderately entertaining in 1972.  Many things have changed since then.  Joe Rogan outperforms nearly all other TV programs, except perhaps the NFL.  Make no attempt to displace Joe Rogan.  It just won't happen.  Neil Young has now shot himself in the foot.

Biden's Ukraine Scramble.  It is not surprising or even discreditable that the Russian leadership does not consider the sudden secession of all of the Soviet republics except Russia to be the last word on the subject.  Ukraine itself is naturally in the midst of a crisis of national identity.  Approximately 17 percent of its population of about 40 million is Russian and speaks Russian and is largely concentrated near Ukraine's border with Russia.  Since it has been an independent country, insofar as the Ukrainian elections may be judged to be fair, they have tended to oscillate between those seeking absolute independence of Russia and those seeking intimate association with Russia.  It is not unreasonable for Russia to have reservations about the complete sovereign independence of Ukraine; nor is it unreasonable for the West to consider Russian pretensions to having a right of veto over which countries may join NATO to be intolerable.

Donald Trump For Speaker Of The House.  In 1994, after Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years, there was no question as to who would be elected Speaker — Newt Gingrich.  Since his petty ouster over the 1998 mid-terms, Republicans have been saddled with one disastrous Speaker after another.  Bob Livingston was next but never got the gavel because of an affair he'd had.  Dennis Hastert was next, worthless as Speaker and an embarrassment after.  John Boehner cried his way into the gavel, and didn't do much beyond smoking and drinking his way through his tenure.  Then it was Paul Ryan, who looked at taking the job as a "favor" for the party. [...] It's unclear as to whether or not Trump wants to be president again, but what is clear is he wants to be a player.  Speaker of the House would make him the ultimate player.  The Republican legislative agenda would move because of him.

It's Still Timely And Necessary To Get The 2020 Election Right.  The election can be overturned.  Not that I imagine there's sufficient internal fortitude among Republicans to do so but, ideally, they should make the attempt.  But how?  The Constitution doesn't address anything remotely close to reversing a fraudulently achieved election.  That's true, but then it also says nothing about the right to abortion, the government providing welfare payments to citizens (or non-citizens), government control of healthcare, the imposition of CAFE standards, or collective bargaining rules.  Indeed, there is much that goes on in government that is not in the Constitution.  In 1803, Thomas Jefferson worried that the Constitution did not give him the power to make the Louisiana Purchase, but today all or part of 15 states exist because of it.  Like John Marshall's judicial review doctrine, which you won't find anywhere in the Constitution, things don't exist until they do.  In this case, in states where fraud is proven or where voting laws were enacted unconstitutionally, the legislatures should withdraw their Electoral College votes and recast them based on accurate and lawful counting of the votes.  It's true there's no existing Constitutional mechanism to facilitate that remedy, and the likelihood of a Democrat-controlled Congress doing anything to further it is less likely than a healthy college student dying of COVID, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Remember when the Great Reset was a conspiracy theory?  Yes, like many conspiracy theories of the past two years, this one is slowly being rolled out by our global leaders as just simple reality.  No longer a conspiracy theory.  Just real.  And they're not being shy about it.  They like the idea of refurbishing the global economy to be more "fair," as they like to say.  Yet still, the big fact checkers continue to use their favorite term for conservatives who oppose the Great Reset:  they call us "conspiracy theorists."  How can they still get away with using this term when we all clearly see a rollout of the Great Reset happening right in front of our eyes?

'Red-Handed' Contains 1,093 Endnotes, No Unnamed Sources.  The soon-to-be-released bombshell book Red-Handed:  How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by nonpartisan investigative bestselling author Peter Schweizer contains 1,093 endnotes totaling 81 pages of source material, Breitbart News has learned.  Furthermore, the highly anticipated book relies on zero unnamed sources, making its findings — which Sean Hannity said are "going to be massive" — easier for federal law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services to track down.  Indeed, Schweizer's bestselling book Clinton Cash sparked an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.  Schweizer, who is the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and a Breitbart News senior contributor, spent over a year conducting the research for Red-Handed with his team of forensic investigators, according to publishing giant HarperCollins.

Kyrsten Sinema's courage, Washington hypocrisy and the politics of rage.  In Shakespeare's "Othello," the character Iago famously declared that "men in rage strike those that wish them best."  It was a warning that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) now understands all too well.  Both Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have refused to be bullied into changing the filibuster rule — a rule that forces the parties into dialogue and compromise.  Sinema supports the voting rights legislation but sees this move as endangering any chance of national healing and resolution.  She stated on the Senate floor that "we have but one democracy.  We can only survive, we can only keep her, if we do so together."  That deeply felt speech was met with vile, threatening attacks.  It appears that, in a nation addicted to rage, even those seeking an intervention can become the casualties of our political distemper.

Must-see video:  In the Dutch Parliament, speaking truth to power.  As with other European Union countries, the Dutch government has been reveling in the power COVID bestowed on it.  In response, the Netherlands has seen huge and violent protests against those draconian strictures.  I'm betting that some of those protesters were among the people who voted for Gideon van Meijeren, a young man newly elected to the Dutch Parliament.  This young man, during his first appearance on the floor, managed in just two minutes to completely humiliate Prime Minister Mark Rutte.  [Video clip]  If we are to emerge from this attempt by the world's totalitarians (an amalgam of billionaires, millionaires, and leftists) to weaponize COVID and wokeness to end the democratic republics that have held sway for more than 200 years, and to reinstate the totalitarianism that has been the world's norm for most of humankind, the only way to do it is to push back:  Refuse to be silenced, ridicule these self-styled "elite," speak the truth whenever and wherever you can, and just say "no," as Martin Luther King and Gandhi both did (and that's true regardless of how one feels about their politics).

Watch for war.  What do tyrants do when their ship is sinking or, more accurately, when they realize that their house of cards will not hold up?  They divert their populace by starting a war — or at least allowing one to happen.  War isn't simply a way of diverting attention, either.  The very fact of a war emergency makes it far easier to erode or negate whatever civil liberties still exist.  Think:  Patriot Act.  Currently, war beckons in two places: the Russian-European border and the South China Sea and Taiwan.  I'm not saying that either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping is an aggrieved party.  Both could conceivably become the Hitlers of the 21st century.  But ask yourself if the floundering, self-immolating Biden-Harris administration might not rejoice at the gargantuan pass it would get if Americans — including especially conservative Americans — must focus on a foreign enemy.  Gone would be the rightful concerns about vaccine madness, dementia, runaway inflation, Big Tech/Mass Media fascism, corrupt education unions, failing Democrat cities, ginned up racial hatred, attacks on the Second Amendment, the federalization of elections, a corrupt FBI and DOJ, election fraud, the Russia Hoax, parental rights and school boards, an open southern border, and on and on.  Biden (and Harris, if there's room) will wrap themselves snugly in the flag and all will be forgiven.  For a time.

Biden's Empty-Shelf America Is A Country Boris Yeltsin Wouldn't Recognize.  [Scroll down]  We admit:  The supply chain breakdown is global.  It can't be fully pinned on President Joe Biden and his party.  But poor public policies advanced (and protected, in the case of productivity-killing union work rules) by Democrats and private-sector policies driven by big-government pressure have left U.S. retailers looking like Moscow's GUM department store failing to serve its "grim customers" in the Soviet era.  Too many "incessant experiments" in the form of generous "rescue" spending that have stripped some of their incentive to work; lockdowns which bit big chunks out of the economy; and vaccine mandates and unrelenting pandemic fearmongering that have created labor shortages across multiple industries within the supply chain.  Biden declared "problem solved" three days before Christmas when he said "Packages are moving.  Gifts are being delivered.  Shelves are not empty."  Yet here we are well into 2022, and store shelves are looking worse than a Christmas stripped of its ornaments and tossed on the curb in the middle of January.

Have Americans become a people who no longer deserve their Constitution?  "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people."  Only moral and religious people?  Who said that about the Constitution?  Someone who would know:  John Adams, America's first vice president and second president, who served on the First Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence.  Adams went on to say immediately thereafter, "It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  In other words, it's "wholly inadequate to the government of" an immoral and godless people.  Sadly, in 2022 there's no shortage of those in America.

Temporary Empty Shelves Are Not a Supply Chain Crisis, It Is Important to Understand the Difference.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of wrong information being discussed and shared.  Even reputable regional media are giving inaccurate information, making wrong interpretations, and generally getting the explanations wrong. [...] All of these #BidensEmptyShelves assumptions, which are being heightened by increased attention and social media, are leading to confusion.  An empty retail shelf or case for a 24, 36 to 48-hour period is not, I repeat, NOT, part of a systemic supply chain disruption.  Those are mostly location and regional specific out of stock situations caused by localized events, weather and employee shortages.

What Issue Was Really at the Heart of the Civil War, and is it Relevant Today?  Most Americans today have a romanticized (and extraordinarily narrow) historical understanding of the conflict that we call the Civil War.  In their imaginations, it goes something like this:  With passions inflamed by a moral renaissance in the North regarding the institution of slavery in the South, the two sides decided to go to war over the issue.  In the end, the evil South was righteously razed by the armies of the North, and thus, slavery was ended, and the former slaves made American citizens, as Abraham Lincoln intended.  If you think this an unfair caricature of the extent of the average American's knowledge on the subject, I'd wager you haven't spoken to many people under 50 about the subject.

Outstanding Summary of the Dangers We Face.  Excellent summary of the State of the State by Mark Levin in two parts.  [Video clips]

Savage Dad Berates 'Beta' School Board With Perfect Comedic Timing.  This might be the best school board video you've seen yet.  There's no information on where this took place but it really doesn't matter.  It could be Anytown USA, with the growing frustration parents feel with school boards locking them out of meetings or having them arrested falsely or claiming that parents are "terrorists" who need FBI investigations.  This man has had enough and his speech is so good, I'll even transcribe it for those of you who can't listen. [...] The whole audience is responding to this like a stand-up act and they're not laughing at the dad, they're laughing at the board.  It's a riot.  It's also worth noting that ridicule is a potent weapon against these boards that are puffed up with their own importance.

The Four Horsemen of the Left's Artificial Apocalypse.  These last twenty-five years of technological development have made it possible for humans to trade goods and services, knowledge, security, spiritual connection, and entertainment without consulting politicians, bureaucrats, pop stars, or corporate boards of directors.  When you see this reality for what it truly is — nothing short of a technologically enabled revolution for human freedom and independence — it becomes obvious why those with power today have embraced authoritarianism and totalitarianism wherever we look.  They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from our rising liberation.  Their tyranny is their only salvation.  In other words, the powers that be are all deeply afraid.

Ted Cruz May Have Just Destroyed His Entire Political Career With One Bonehead Move.  Ted Cruz, who ingratiated himself back into the MAGA movement, after behaving like the sorest loser in town, has just found himself on the outs again after he made a big bonehead move.  While speaking about January 6th, Ted Cruz adopted the same exact tone and narrative the left has been pushing, complete with calling the folks who were at the Capitol "terrorists."  What on earth was Ted thinking?  Nobody at the Capitol was charged with terrorism.

Report: Fentanyl is Leading Cause of Death in Americans Ages 18-45.  The leading cause of death amongst Americans ages 18-45 is the deadly drug fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Because of the Biden administration's backwards priorities, a large percentage of Americans have never even heard of the drug.  "We are in the worst overdose crisis we've ever been in in the United States," said Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver.  "In a magical world there would be no drugs, but we live here."

The Editor says...
Two hundred years ago, nearly everyone lived in a world without drugs, and it wasn't good.  There were no vitamins, no household pain killers (with the possible exception of opium), and nothing that would reduce a fever.  Drugs aren't the problem.  The absence of self-control is the problem, along with secular humanism, social media, inadequate education, and Hollywood.

The Flow of Money Creates a Path to One World Government.  [Scroll down]  America does not need to surrender her wealth, her potential wealth, our Constitutional system, or our nation-state.  We are not Europe.  We do not want to dispose of the foundations of our moral roots and end up as soulless atheists imprisoned in nihilism and drowning in dependence.  George Washington warned us about this; so did Dwight Eisenhower and many others.  We the People urgently need to demand a comprehensive plan from our public servants to re-establish the prosperity of our nation, stabilize and reduce our national debt, and establish a strong enough military defense to buy us time to get our national financial house in order.  One important component of this defense is rebuilding and strengthening a strong moral core in the American people and encouraging authentic education in history, civics, philosophy, and economics.

The Truth You Never Learned about Watergate.  A review of The Nixon Conspiracy:  Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, by Geoff Shepard. [...] When you read this book, you don't have to be reminded that Watergate looks like dress rehearsal or an opening act for the events of 2015 to 2021.

Linguistic Weaponry and the Rhetorical Mechanics of "Let's Go Brandon!"  For those who are unfamiliar with the phrase, "Let's Go, Brandon!" has become a rallying cry for those opposed to Biden and his agenda.  Only a few months after the inauguration, as the nation sat in stunned awe of the new administration's remarkable ineptitude, crowds across the nation began impromptu chants of "[...] Joe Biden" at public events.  Personally, I use very little profanity and I still hold to the old idea that even if you can't respect a particular President, some respect is owed to the office.  But over the course of decades, the left has worked aggressively to normalize the practice of telling the President to [get lost] (when he isn't a Democrat).  Their victory was consolidated when Trump's ascendancy brought with it a 4-year tsunami of vulgarity from leftists of all stripes, bravely "speaking truth to power" by inexplicably telling others to do to Trump what Stormy Daniels did.  But only months after Trump's exit, leftists lamented the new norm they created:  they were aghast at Americans' lack of decorum in speaking of the President.  Wherever calls of "[...] Joe Biden" arose, there were efforts undertaken to distract from them, avoid broadcasting them, or otherwise silence them.  Then, in the aftermath of an October auto race, as the victor Brandon Brown was interviewed on a television broadcast, the crowd began the familiar chorus of "[...] Joe Biden."  In a predictable effort to redirect attention from Biden's failure to the matter at hand, the interviewer said "And you can hear the chants from the crowd: 'Let's Go, Brandon!"  In that moment, a meme was born.

Don't reinstate the ban on US crude oil exports.  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently put an end to speculation about whether an oil export ban could succeed.  She clearly stated at a meeting with the National Petroleum Council, "We are not considering reinstating the ban on exports.  I've heard you loud and clear, and so has the White House."  This is welcome news for the U.S. energy industry, but the secretary also urged producers to get their "rig counts up" and "take advantage of the leases that you have," sending mixed signals from the administration to industry.

Just What is Education For?  [Scroll down]  Senator, I have a question.  Just why are we sending all our children to labor in government child-custodial facilities — er, schools — throughout their childhood?  Just why is it that we have banned children from working for money and anathematized it as "child labor?"  Just what is it that is so vitally important that kids can only get it from school?  Apart from getting the noble and progressive regime narrative?  Back in the day, in 1913, in "Why Children Work" schools inspector Helen Todd found that working children preferred to work rather than go to school.  See, the kids reported that their employers treated them much better than the teachers at school.  That hasn't changed.

Just What is Education For?  [Scroll down]  Senator, I have a question.  Just why are we sending all our children to labor in government child-custodial facilities — er, schools — throughout their childhood?  Just why is it that we have banned children from working for money and anathematized it as "child labor?"  Just what is it that is so vitally important that kids can only get it from school?  Apart from getting the noble and progressive regime narrative?  Back in the day, in 1913, in "Why Children Work" schools inspector Helen Todd found that working children preferred to work rather than go to school.  See, the kids reported that their employers treated them much better than the teachers at school.  That hasn't changed.

Will Biden's Christmas Present To America Be World War III?  Putin, Russia's "president," has had Ukraine on his brain for some time.  The West, with good reason, fears he will invade the former Soviet satellite, which wants to be a part of the NATO defense alliance rather than lose its independence to Moscow.  A source we trust says it could happen during the holidays, or soon thereafter, while our attention is on other matters.  Should Putin storm into Ukraine, we asked, what then will Chinese President Xi Jinping do — invade Taiwan, the island nation of the Republic of China where nationalists fleeing Mao's communist sword established the new capital in 1949?  We didn't like the answer, yet we knew it was coming.  Xi will take advantage of the distraction and make an assault on Taiwan.  We didn't ask what could happen next, because we didn't want to hear the answer.  But we can't hide from the fact:  The Middle East just might blow up, with Arab nations attacking Israel, at one time America's only ally in the region and always a reliable supporter at the United Nations and in international diplomacy.  Then, World War III.

Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.  Last year, our nation experienced the largest increase in murder in American history and the largest number of drug overdose deaths ever recorded.  This carnage continues today and is not distributed equally.  Instead, it is concentrated in cities and localities where radical, left-wing, George Soros progressives have captured state and district attorney offices.  These legal arsonists condemn our rule of law as "systemically racist" and have not simply abused prosecutorial discretion, they have embraced prosecutorial nullification.  As a result, a contagion of crime has infected virtually every neighborhood under their charge.  Soros prosecutors refuse to enforce laws against shoplifting, drug trafficking, and entire categories of felonies and misdemeanors.  In Chicago, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx allows theft under $1,000 to go unpunished.  In Manhattan, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. refuses to enforce laws against prostitution.  In Baltimore, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby has unilaterally declared the war on drugs "over" and is refusing to criminally charge drug dealers in the middle of the worst drug crisis in American history.  For a time, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon even stopped enforcing laws against disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and making criminal threats.

Archbishop Vigano's startling warning to the American people.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is a noteworthy maverick within the Catholic Church hierarchy.  He retired as Papal Nuncio to the United States in 2016 and has exposed what he sees as great scandals within his Church.  This lengthy Wikipedia entry provides background.  The Archbishop has issued a Christmas letter to the United States that is unusually blunt about what he sees as a conspiracy underlying the handling of COVID.  The letter was originally published in Gateway Pundit, but is presented here for readers' convenience.

The Hole in the Heart of RFK Jr.'s Extraordinary Book.  Before getting to the "hole" in RFK Jr.'s new book, I would like to say that his brutal smackdown of the Dr. Anthony Fauci - Bill Gates vaccine oligarchy, The Real Anthony Fauci, is arguably the century's most important book, and a page-turner on top of that.  Buy it.  Read it.  If you choose not to, avoid holiday arguments with anyone who has.  You will lose.  The book has real heart.

The Fed has just two jobs, and climate policy isn't one of them.  The Federal Reserve Bank, the central bank of the United States, is supposedly guided in all of its actions by what is known as its "dual mandate."  By law, it is charged with maintaining price stability throughout the economy and with maximizing employment.  Sometimes, these two goals are difficult to reconcile with one another.  In recent years, there has been some talk in Congress of changing this and giving the Fed only the single mandate of price stability.  Whatever the merits of that proposal, though, it is a far cry from what the central bank now finds itself doing, angling to issue dubious guidance for the financial system about climate change and its potential effects.

MAGAnomics vs JoeBamanomics, a Simple to Understand Graphic.  When wages (blue line) are above inflation (red line) our income is growing, life is good and the working class has more disposable income to enjoy life.  However, when wages (blue line) are lower than inflation (red line) our income is shrinking, life is a struggle and the working class has less disposable income to enjoy life.
  •   Point One:  Nothing happens accidentally.  The road to a "service-driven economy" is paved with a great disparity between financial classes.  The wealth gap is directly related to the inability of the middle class to thrive.
  •   Point Two:  There is nothing of value behind the obtuse term "service-driven economy."  The multinationals are paying for this administration, just like they paid the Obama administration; paying for economic policy that advances their interests.  Congress goes along with the K-Street demands, because Wall Street is now the primary benefactor of legislative intent.  Nothing about their effort is done with American interests in mind.

'When science mixes with politics, all we get is politics'.  I just finished reading an article on the Big Think website titled, "When science mixes with politics, all we get is politics," by Professor Marcelo Gleiser, theoretical physicst, Dartmouth College.  I mistakenly thought that the commentary would decry the misuse of science by politicians, but no.  Instead, it decries the mistrust that we, the unwashed masses, have developed for the science establishment in recent years.  Unwittingly, the eminent professor gives us yet more reasons to regard science insiders with skepticism.  He does what so many of his colleagues do, which is to equate science itself, with the institutions that purport to advance science.  To question politicized scientists, then, is supposedly unscientific.

More Woke Companies to Avoid:  List #3.  Companies across the country, and indeed from around the world, aggressively work against conservative ideals and openly display their disdain for our values.  They often do so while simultaneously taking our money as we willingly play along.  It's time we stopped.  We find these companies in virtually every industry, and in all sizes, shapes, and colors.  In a great and free country like these United States, these companies enjoy our freedom of speech, and they have every right to say and act how they see fit; within reason.  Similarly, we also have the freedom to choose with whom we spend our money, and it's time we avoided spending it with these in-your-face wokesters.

Wag the dog:
We now confront the classic circumstances that pose a serious risk of war, and no one is paying attention.  The President and his party, in deep trouble as an electoral year looms, need to goose their support with something.  There's no possibility of that using any domestic issue so they turn to old reliable:  A fake foreign enemy, Russia, that needs little demonization because the US military, intelligence agencies and corrupt media never gave up their outdated, long baseless view of the war target as an enemy.  Plus, that faux enemy is hated by the Western woke left for its stubborn refusal to embrace the West's program of idiotic ideas and civilizational suicide.  Hence, America's gullible and inattentive public still sees it as the modern iteration of Stalin and Hitler.  In sum, a sweet little war with needlessly hated Russia is just the ticket for the Bidencrats.

Escape:  How to Evade Trackers and Tracking Dogs.  I wanted to share with you a few tips on evasion and how to avoid enemy capture when you are being searched for by canines and professional trackers.  As a kid, I used to track deer through the swamp.  Little did I know that what I was doing was preparing myself to be a human tracker as an adult. [...] A dog can be a great friend but it can also be used against you.  Dogs can be trained to track you for lengthy distances.  This is why evasion tactics are covered in the SERE training.  In the field application, tracker dogs are used while the trainees employ the survival skills of navigation, and how to get water, food, and warmth as they track their way through the wilderness.  Proper timing is also a key factor since it's not just about survival but also about evasion.  Beating dogs in their tracking is not an easy task unlike what you might have seen in Hollywood films.  The dogs don't bark; they only run as they sniff and the only time the canines bark is when you are on sight.  At this point, evading is quite tricky since your hideout is already revealed.

The Fed Doesn't Cause Inflation.  Though the Federal Reserve, having added an unprecedented $8 trillion to bank reserves the last 15 years, certainly abetted borrowers by greatly depressing interest rates, it is not the culprit in actually spending or circulating the reserves or money created.  The Fed clearly has manipulated bank reserves, distorting financial markets and calculations and depriving savers of just returns.  Yet, the decision to lend remains with the banker and the decision to borrow remains with the individual, firm, and government.

Sensing Biden Inflation Weakness China Hits U.S. Supply Lines With Shipping Cargo Quarantine.  When you are at war, you target the enemy supply lines.  A cunning move by the smart Panda targets Joe Biden's domestic inflation vulnerability.  Beijing can see Joe Biden under internal political attack caused by massive domestic inflation.  China also knows Biden is weak strategically, handcuffed by the leftist demand for climate change / energy policy, and Beijing can see the administration trying to deflect from the consequences of their economic and energy policy.  After the U.S-China summit, used by cunning panda to size up the potential for backlash, anything China can do to further gain dominant position is now just a matter of easy chess moves on the board of dependency.

American government poised to unleash "Angel of Death" smallpox bioweapon to create perpetual crisis.  Billionaire eugenicist Bill Gates is already signaling the arrival of his next plandemic, which appears to involve the intentional release of a smallpox bioweapon.  The mainstream media has been littered as of late with stories about mysterious smallpox "vials" and other things related to smallpox.  We also reported about eight years ago that the federal government was stockpiling smallpox "vaccines" for some reason.  Just the other day, a worker at a laboratory outside of Philadelphia supposedly stumbled upon about 15 vials of smallpox ... something inside of a refrigerator.  The FBI and other federal agencies reportedly intervened and are conducting an "investigation."  Then, the Daily Mail (U.K.) reported on a warning from Gates, who claims that "terrorists" are planning to unleash a smallpox bioweapon.  This, according to Gates, requires that governments spend billions of dollars to "prevent future pandemics."

The Fight for Civic Nationalism.  In the fullness of time, the past year may be looked upon as the year the future of America was decided in courtrooms.  The Rittenhouse trial is the latest big court case to expose the massive cultural rift in the country.  The Derek Chauvin trial in the summer was another example.  There is the ongoing civil suit over the Charlottesville protests three years ago and the current Ahmaud Arbery murder trial.  What all of these cases and some others have in common is they are tests of the civic nationalist theory of politics.  Civic nationalism is the argument that a country can be organized around a set of ideas, rather than people and land.  The citizens, rather than connected by blood and history, are connected by ideas.  In the case of America, the organizing ideas are in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Civic nationalism, to a great degree, is a reaction to the internationalism of Western ruling elites who are post-national.  The post-nationalists want to eliminate borders and the national sovereignty.  In their place will be international organizations, corporate agreements, and the administrative state.  Civic nationalism is an effort to confront this old enemy of civilization with a nationalism free of past baggage.

Power Shortages and Russia.  Currently, there are concerns about power shortages in China, Europe and the U.S.  The Chinese economy is being held back by power shortages.  People in the UK are worried about increased power bills and a possible food shortage this winter.  In Germany, their power plants are short of natural gas and coal and they are hoping for a mild winter.  All this reminds one of the various arguments in the U.S. about Russia trying to influence our elections.  These concerns remind U.S. that Russia benefits from power shortages and shortages of oil and natural gas.  Vladimir Putin is a smart man.  Putin puts himself and Russia first and everything he does is to promote himself and Russia.  Putin, as a former head of the KGB, is an expert at misinformation and manipulating public opinion, usually without leaving tracks.  The largest and most important sector of the Russian economy is the production and export of oil and natural gas.  Putin is always looking for ways to improve Russia's leverage in economics and geopolitics that comes from being one of the leading providers of fossil fuels.  One of the biggest threats to his position was/is a growing, thriving U.S. fossil fuel industry.  Whenever the U.S. moves from being a net importer of fossil fuels to being a net exporter of fossil fuels that is bad for the Russian economy.  Putin knows this.

With All Eyes on Hillary in Russian Collusion Hoax, What About Obama?  During the Senate Watergate hearings that eventually brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon, Republican Sen. Howard Baker (Tenn.) asked a question that would live in infamy:  "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"  Now, nearly 50 years later, the question again begs to be asked.  This time, about a different president:  What did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it?  As RedState reported late last week, Special Counsel for the Justice Department John Durham's indictment of Igor Danchenko, the principal source for the bogus Steele dossier used by the FBI as a basis for the Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation, further illustrates that Durham has his sights set on the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.  Hardly a shock, although the irony is beautiful:  In an attempt to frame Donald Trump for colluding with Russia, Hillary, in effect, colluded with Russia.  But what about Obama?

De Blasio's insane ban on propane heaters will crush NYC's dining scene.  The cranks suing the city to end outdoor street dining over issues like noise and garbage can save their dough on legal fees, because City Hall is about to do the job for them.  Last month, the FDNY, backed by Mayor de Blasio, irrationally banned the use of propane heaters at outdoor restaurants.  (Are any of the actions by the worst mayor in Big Apple history not irrational?)  The ban will likely spell the end for thousands of places that relied on extra money from outdoor seating to help make up for last year's catastrophic losses caused by the pandemic.  Never mind that propane tanks used by thousands of Big Apple eateries caused exactly zero accidents last winter.  Never mind that they're legal in most other large US cities.  Never mind that they're allowed on our food trucks and food carts — including several on Park Place just outside City Hall, within blast range of the mayor's office.  Despite all that, New York's Bravest proclaim that propane heaters "pose a high risk of death and injury."  Their concern for public safety is rich when several thousand firefighters continue to refuse the COVID vaccine, thus endangering everyone they meet and forcing the shutdowns of some firehouses.

Military's Misplaced Focus:  COVID and Climate Change Could Cost Us the Next War.  As China tests new military technologies and brazenly encroaches on Taiwanese airspace, the United States employs its fighting forces to battle COVID and take on climate change.  In his testimony before the Armed Services Committee in March, Navy Admiral Philip Davidson noted that "The Indo-Pacific accounts for 60 percent of the world's current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and contributes more than two-thirds to the present global economic growth," further citing the trade and investment in the region as "vital" to U.S. security and prosperity.  Admiral Philips described the threat posed by China's growing regional influence and briefed leaders on the measures needed to project a "combat credible deterrence."  The Department of Defense should look to support the development of needed technologies and weapons as well as measures to improve combat readiness.  Instead, it remains unnecessarily focused on climate change as a grand part of national strategy.

The End of Science.  Rebecca West writes, in The New Meaning of Treason, that a lot of our scientists during World War 2 were communists.  There are several reasons this is important, but the first is that they immediately leaked our research on atomic bombs to Stalin.  They honestly believed in a "global scientific community" — that science knows no political boundaries, and that the world would be better if scientists shared all their information with each other.  Somehow this would usher in an age of peace and plenty, and scientific know-how would mean food for the poor and an end to oppression.  So they gave the bomb to the Soviets.  To the people who used technology to keep millions in chains and torture them and starve them to death.  These days, American scientists are doing the same thing, helping abusive husbands track their wives in Saudi Arabia and helping the Chinese develop social surveillance systems and biological weapons.  The scientists tell you how to do something and fail to understand or care why we shouldn't do it.  Or maybe it's the money.

The extraordinary power of 'Let's Go Brandon'.  The great thing about it is that it's not "in your face."  Despite the Washington Post trying to argue that the phrase, with its allusion to "Eff Joe Biden," is as offensive as the years of obscenities and death wishes that leftists hurled at Bush and Trump, the fact remains that, outside of political junky circles, most Democrats haven't yet grokked to the meaning behind "Let's Go Brandon."  It's the conservative secret handshake.

Absurdity of the Day:  The Worst Use of the "It's COVID" Excuse Keeps JFK Assassination Documents From Public View.  Nominal president Joe Biden on Friday [10/22/2021] resorted to the worst use yet of the "it's because of COVID" canard that now runs rampant across our society as the go-to excuse for every form of failure to perform.  58 years after the event took place at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Biden signed an order delaying yet again the release of more than 440,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the flimsy excuse that several federal agencies involved have been unable to perform appropriate reviews due to the negative impacts of the COVID pandemic.  Now, let's review the timeline [...]:  John F. Kennedy was killed as the results of multiple shots fired at him from multiple directions in a crossfire in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.  Again, that's 58 long years ago.  COVID, meanwhile, has impacted our society for about a year and a half at this point.  Thus, every one of the agencies in question — including the CIA, FBI and other federal intelligence agencies — had well over 56 years to conduct appropriate reviews of the records in question before anyone even knew what COVID means.  What have they been doing all of that time, other than executing the longest coverup of a crime in American history?

Liberal Repellant:  How to Keep Your Red State Red.  I was talking to my sister from Greenville, South Carolina the other day and she was telling me, once again, about how all the Liberals (read Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Woke Libtards, or just Democrats in general) are moving to Greenville from up north and bringing their values (or lack thereof) with them.  She was decrying their habit of driving around with one hand on the horn, ready to blow it at you or anyone else who even slightly gets in their way or simply draws their attention.  And noting how as soon as they move into your neighborhood they get on the NextDoor app and start complaining about anything and everything they don't like about living in the South, never stopping once to think about the fact that if they dislike it so much, they could move back to where they came from.

A separation, if we can keep it.  [Scroll down]  The Constitution also separates the three branches of government, with each having unique powers specifically defined in the Constitution.  For most of our history, the separate branches used aggressive self-protection to maintain and enforce their powers.  The Executive and Judicial branches could not legislate.  Congress was not a court.  The president was the Commander and Chief but only Congress could declare war.  Defined separations were the order of the day.  There were many more.  The Founders further secured these separations with the different ways our leaders were elected.  The President would be selected by a system in which electors representing each state would have a proportional vote.  The House of Representatives would be the house of the people and elected by them directly from defined geographical districts.  The Senate was a body selected by the state legislatures.  The election process was to be defined by state legislatures and only state legislatures, another defined separation.  If we had maintained this designed separation, we would not be on the precipice of secession or civil war.

California ports, key to [the] U.S. supply chain, [are] among [the] world's least efficient.  Southern California's Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle the most ocean cargo of any ports in the United States, but are some of the least efficient in the world, according to a ranking by the World Bank and IHS Markit.  In a review of 351 container ports around the globe, Los Angeles was ranked 328, behind Tanzania's Dar es Salaam and Alaska's Dutch Harbor.  The adjacent port of Long Beach came in even lower, at 333, behind Turkey's Nemrut Bay and Kenya's Mombasa, the groups said in their inaugural Container Port Performance Index published in May.  The total number of ships waiting to unload outside the two adjacent ports hit a new all-time record of 100 on Monday.  Americans' purchases of imported goods have jumped to levels the U.S. supply chain infrastructure can't handle, causing delivery delays and snarls.

Hilarity Abounds:  New National Parks Woke 'Equity Language Guide'.  If the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) has its way, America's national parks will soon abound with "wokeness."  America's leading parks nonprofit has released a guide on how to speak in woke terms — a veritable "Wokeness for Dummies" — including tips like no longer using the term "Americans" to describe Americans and making sure the term "white" is lowercase while "Black" is capitalized. [...] According to the guide, it can be "an important factor to someone's identity and culture" and encourages parks professionals to "recognize religious and cultural traditions other than those that typically dominate the U.S. media landscape (usually Christian holidays)."  Why I'm shocked.  It's okay to recognize religious and cultural traditions (you know, like Christmas and Easter and stuff).  Oh — wait — other than Christian religious and cultural traditions.

Living In A Potemkin World.  I never thought I would experience the dystopian "fictional" nightmare Orwell laid out in his 1949 novel.  Seventy-two years later and his warning about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, repressive measures against dissenters, mind control through government indoctrination and propaganda designed to convince the masses lies are truth, fake is real and the narrative can be manipulated to achieve the desired outcome of those in power, have come to fruition.  Everything is fake.  I don't believe anything I'm told by the government, the media, medical "experts", politicians, military leadership, bankers, corporate executives, religious leaders, financial professionals, and anyone selling themselves as an authority on any subject matter.  We are truly living in times of mass deception, mass delusion, and mass willful ignorance.

Texas Governor Candidate Don Huffines Pledges to Arrest Federal Agents Persecuting Parents in Justice Department CRT Probe.  Texas Governor candidate Don Huffines is pledging to arrest federal agents that usurp the rights of parents who oppose the instruction of anti-white critical race theory in public schools, responding to an announcement on the part of Biden's Justice Department that it had begun a federal probe into opposition to CRT in schools.  Huffines made the pledge in a statement Wednesday [10/13/2021]. [...] Huffines is challenging incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has courted dissatisfaction among Texas conservatives for lockdown orders and falsely smearing free speech social media network Gab as "anti-semitic" at the direction of the Anti-Defamation League, a left-wing extremist group.

The Editor says...
The next Texas Governor is either going to be Allen West or Don Huffines.  Greg Abbott is on the way out, because he was waaay too slow to fight the Covid lockdown-mask-vaccine nonsense, and is still too lethargic about it today.  Texas is full of Uniparty RINOs, and needs a solid counterweight on the right.  Mr. Abbott is more interested in running for U.S. President, I think.

Dems own Biden failures:  They'll run but they can't hide from policy fiascos.  As the natural consequences of bad public policy continue their inevitable assault on the American economy, Democrats with national ambitions are going to be increasingly reluctant to let voters pin Joe Biden's tail on their donkey.  This may help explain why the president is not getting a lot of help, even from his own inner circle.  We aren't getting the plans we were promised.  Instead, we're getting thin smoke and faded mirrors that aren't fooling anyone.  Joe Biden may be aging and confused, but what's the excuse for Vice President Harris' failure to address the border crisis, Secretary Buttigieg's failure to contain the shipping crisis, or Secretary Blinken's failure to bring Americans home from a war zone?

Worldwide survey has politicians as least-trusted profession.  The world appears to agree on one thing.  Politicians are the least trusted profession on the planet, according to a massive Ipsos "Global Trustworthiness Index" poll of 19,570 adults conducted in 28 countries.  On average, only 10% of the respondents felt that politicians were "trustworthy."  That negative finding ranged from a low of 3% in Argentina to a high of 19% in Malaysia.  The U.S. was just about in the middle with 9% of respondents saying they trusted politicians — a finding shared with respondents in Poland, Italy, South Korea and Mexico.  Politicians had some company at the rock bottom of the poll, which has been conducted since 2018.  "Government ministers" are trusted by 14%, advertising executives by 15%, and journalists by 23%.

Why Shortages Are Permanent:  Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense.  Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience — they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity.  Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition.  Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits.  Wide open competition and structural abundance are the least conducive setting for generating reliably ample profits, while quasi-monopolies and cartels that control scarce supplies are the ideal profit-generating machines.  The incentives to expand the number of suppliers, i.e. increase competition, are effectively zero.  America's corporations spent $11 trillion buying back their own stocks over the past decade; that's equal to the combined GDP of Japan, Germany and Italy.  If adding new suppliers to the global supply chain were profitable, some of that $11 trillion would have exploited those vast profits.

Pie in the sky:
A Mechanism to Restore Liberty and Prosperity.  The Anti-federalists, including George Mason and Patrick Henry, were correct in their concern about government growing ever bigger and less concerned about individual rights and free enterprise.  Today, progressive fascists control both houses of Congress and the White House, and their authoritarianism is becoming ubiquitous.  To rectify this situation and to return to much smaller government respectful of individual rights and free enterprise, the following Constitutional amendments are proposed. [...]

The Editor says...
Let me assure you that the Constitution will NEVER be amended to make any Congressman's career shorter, more difficult, or less lucrative.  Propose all the amendments you like, but none of them will ever be ratified.

Politics in the Case of Col. Scheller.  We all witnessed the events beginning with the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban followed by the chaotic noncombatant evacuation operation from Kabul's airport.  It was a sad commentary on President Joe Biden's judgment because had he accepted the advice of his military chain of command (keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to stiffen the backbone of that government and security forces) this fiasco would not have happened.  However, because Biden was evidently in a hurry to exit the Central Asian country (likely for crass political reasons), he rushed the exit process and a catastrophic situation emerged:  the Taliban, our enemy of two decades, took over the country, now it will host a new wave of terrorism for years to come and the U.S. left Afghanistan with its tail tucked and lost international credibility.  Just as that embarrassing situation emerged a Marine lieutenant colonel, Stuart Scheller Jr., at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina posted a public video on a social media website expressing criticism of senior military officials for their handling of the withdrawal and demanding they be held accountable.  His superior officers immediately relieved him of command and then incarcerated and placed him in pretrial confinement.

Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Is The Billy Mitchell Of The 21st Century.  [Scroll down]  Mitchell's undoing came in September 1925 when a Navy dirigible, the USS Shenandoah, crashed during a severe thunderstorm killing 14 men.  The airship had been ordered aloft as a public relations gesture during a period of severe weather over the protestations of its own Captain.  Mitchell offered his opinion on this and other incidents that had previously occurred:  "These terrible accidents are the direct results of incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the National Defense by the War and Navy Departments."  This was the last straw for the army.  He was charged with insubordination, court-martialed, convicted, and suspended from duty for five years without pay.

The Wrong Man Is In The Brig — Put Biden On Trial.  U.S. Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Scheller is in the brig — a military jail at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  More specifically, Scheller is in pre-trial confinement.  That means he is being held behind bars pending a military court-martial.  Scheller was up until recently a Marine battalion commander.  He was relieved of his command following a series of public statements he made chastising military leadership for the manifest incompetence shown during the Afghan withdrawal that led directly to the deaths of 13 Marines.  After his relief Scheller announced he would resign from the service and continued to speak out — in apparent violation of direct orders to stop discussing his concerns publicly.  In one video, posted on September 16th, Scheller stated his intention to charge Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., head of U.S. Central Command, with dereliction of duty.

The Most Dangerous Man In America.  Four-star General Mark A. Milley, 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces, is a walking answer to the unasked question, "What if Jim Mattis were fat and dumb?"  With his fellow four-star and President Trump's first secretary of defense, Milley shares a powerful but muted arrogance, a strong but less than rabid hawkishness, a clear political ambition that nonetheless defies immediate identification, and the obvious desire to be seen as a 21st-century warrior-scholar.  He does not share with Mattis the requisite intelligence to uphold these delusions of soldier-sagehood, nor the basic capacities required to competently lead men and fight wars.

McAuliffe and Democrats try to ignore their past election trutherism.  Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe faces a tougher-than-expected race for his old job against GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin.  So, he has resorted to a tactic Democrats love to lean on now:  painting their opponents as election deniers.  But McAuliffe, like many in the Democratic Party, can't erase his own track record as an election truther.  McAuliffe has tried to tie Youngkin to former President Donald Trump's denial of the results of the 2020 presidential election.  But McAuliffe has spent nearly two decades claiming the 2000 presidential election was stolen from Democrat Al Gore, arguing the Supreme Court tampered with the results.  At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, McAuliffe delivered a quote indistinguishable from Trump:  "We actually won the last presidential election, folks, they stole the last presidential election."

Afghanistan: What Comes of Limited War.  The recent disaster in Afghanistan, however spectacular, was part of a pattern, the pattern of failed American interventions since the Second World War.  Previous misadventures might not have entailed needless bungling of the kind just displayed over a few days to an astonished world.  No one expected the withdrawal of military forces before civilians, in such hasty neglect that vast quantities of armaments were abandoned to the enemy and American and allied Afghan civilians left to their fate. [...] And yet this failed mission is really the last element of a series.  Since the 1950s, America has intervened in defense of other nations under attack (South Korea and South Vietnam), or to liberate a nation recently conquered or seized by coup (Kuwait, Grenada), or to change or provide relief from an existing regime (Iraq, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Libya).

Have You Noticed Modern Presidential Assassins Have One Thing in Common?  Have you noticed only beauty queens and criminals seem to have middle names?  Sara Jane, as we called her in the months ahead, was a West Virginia native who gave up her nursing studies and, over the years, five husbands.  Turns out, she was also a leftie.  You may have noticed California has a surfeit of them, still.  Like many folks who get in big trouble, they're typically already on authorities' radar. [...] Later, Moore expressed regret.  She got life anyway which, as you may have noticed in modern America, doesn't really mean life.  It means about 30 years.  On Dec. 31, 2007, at age 77, Federal Inmate No. 04851-180 was released.  In 2019, she was jailed for six months for failing to inform her parole officer of a foreign trip.  She was the first prominent would-be presidential assassin totally released.  It seems like Americans, or at least some of their appointed officials and boards, are in a forgiving mood.  If events proceed as expected, three more will soon have their liberties restored — Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sirhan Sirhan, and John Hinckley.

Repeal the 17th Amendment.  [Scroll down]  But the more fundamental point is that repeal of the 17th Amendment would return us to the structure of federalism devised by the Founders to limit federal power and preserve our liberty.  The current U.S. Senate elected pursuant to the 17th Amendment has 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats and 2 independents who vote with the Democrats.  The Vice-President is a Democrat who can vote to break a tie.  According to Americans for Tax Reform, Republicans control 30 state legislatures in states with a combined population of 185,164,412, while Democrats control 18 state legislatures in states with a combined population of 133,888,565. Under the system originally devised by the Founders, the U.S. Senate would be overwhelmingly Republican — with at least 60 GOP senators.  The Founders made the amendment process difficult, and rightly so.  Should the Republicans takeover the House and Senate in 2022, repealing the 17th Amendment should but probably won't be a priority.

Politics and the Politicization of the US Military.  Americans traditionally have been wary of a large permanent military establishment, believing it to be a threat to democratic institutions.  This attitude goes all the way back to the Founding Fathers who deliberately kept the army small, preferring to rely on local militia in case of an emergency.  This was done to prevent the army from being used to repress the rights of any individual state during the long and ongoing battle over the issue of states' rights; the echoes of which still reverberate to this very day.  The past nine months' events show how wise this attitude was.

The Deep Optimism Manifesto.  The world is far better off than most people think.  By moving a billion people from poverty to the middle class, we have automatically moved more subsistence farmers into homes with electricity, gas stoves, and mobile phones.  By focusing on long-run economic growth, we automatically solve our environmental problems.  We will end this century with many fewer poor people than we started.

Bush and Milley Have Chosen Obama's False History of America.  It has been the project of the political left for quite some time to convince Americans that there is nothing exceptional about their country.  To "fundamentally transform" a culture, you must first poison the roots of what has already been growing.  So for a century, Marxists have disparaged American history as steeped in genocide, imperialism, and avarice.  They have exploited the imagery of virtue and vice to convince moral people that their nation rose from immorality.  This has reached its logical apex with the historically illiterate 1619 Project, supported by elite news publications and academic institutions, reimagining America's birth as bathed not in liberty, but rather enslavement.  Killing American history is not just a matter of destroying our collective identity as Americans, but also the vehicle for undermining notions of personal freedom.

We Need to Talk about Pakistan.  An examination of the history of Pakistan reveals several disturbing consistencies.  In Pakistan, few 'elected leaders' ever complete their tenure in office.  These 'leaders' are either executed or jailed after Pakistan's deep state stages a coup.  The more fortunate manage to bribe their way out in exchange for being 'exiled' to a foreign country, where they live in great luxury.  Occasionally, army generals from the deep state who led coups to become leaders themselves become victims of a coup led by other factions.  If the deep state does not eliminate them, the Islamists supported by factions in the deep state conduct an assassination.  The Pakistani deep state consists of the armed forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the judiciary.  The deep state in Pakistan has ruthlessly used iron-fist tactics at regular intervals, to serve as severe warnings to 'elected' leaders who presume that their elected office gives them a license to develop a mind of their own.  The knowledge that they can be summarily dethroned or even eliminated perennially looms over every elected leader in Pakistan.  Hence, they operate with the utmost caution, never daring to disturb 'equilibrium' as determined by the deep state.

Why I don't have faith in John Durham.  [Scroll down]  In the waning days of the second Bush presidency, the attorney general assigned Durham to investigate the destruction of tapes of interrogations at Gitmo.  No charges were filed.  The final report remains sealed.  Eric Holder assigned him to look at the actual interrogations.  Same result.  No charges.  After a couple of years looking into the use of the FBI to spy on Donald Trump and the Russiagate hoax, he got a minor conviction of one lawyer and has now indicted Michael Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie who has since left the firm.  Compare and contrast that to the speed with which the FBI set-up and forced General Flynn to cop a plea.  Sussmann is a safe catch.  He is big enough to close the case.  He will keep his trap shut.  We joke about Arkancide but it is real and Sussmann ain't stupid.  Neither is John Durham.

'Nothing Can Stop What is Coming.' What If Nothing is Coming?  [Scroll down]  Arizona's election audit is dragging on, and "any day now" sufficient evidence of fraud will supposedly be released to overturn that state's election results, triggering similar results in other states.  Yet after ten months there is no end in sight, just pleas to be patient and wait.  And what if evidence of fraud or outside interference is produced?  Then what?  The media will ignore it and anyone who dares to discuss it will be labeled a QAnon domestic terrorist and attacked with the ferocity of someone recommending ivermectin for COVID.  Will state legislatures decertify their electoral college votes?  Will Congress decertify the presidential election?  Will the Supreme Court get involved?  No, no and no, based on common sense and their past performance.

If Junior Officers Had Botched Afghanistan, They'd All Be Fired Right Now.  [Scroll down]  Who planned the Afghanistan withdrawal?  Where within the civilian-military leadership does the buck really stop?  Were planners and ground commanders constrained by unreasonable political considerations that increased the risk?  If so, did our military leaders inform their civilian superiors of that increased risk?  Someone decided to withdraw U.S. military forces before we successfully evacuated American citizens and our Afghan partners.  Someone decided the "retrograde operation" should be conducted during the summer "fighting season" in Afghanistan while the Taliban was expanding their control across the country.  Someone decided relying on the Taliban for security around the airport was a good idea.  Someone believed the Afghan army could stand up to the Taliban after U.S. air support and U.S. operational intelligence networks were withdrawn.  Someone thought the will of the Afghan government was sufficient even when told otherwise by the Afghan president.

The Democrats Hypocrisy Caught On A Cell Phone Video Before The MSM Camera Crew Went On Air During The 9/11 Ceremony.  Joe and Jill Biden first visited Ground Zero in Manhattan, where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood before the attack.  Biden was also joined by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at Ground Zero.  It was really strange that only the Democrat Presidents were at Ground Zero yesterday, and Bush, who was actually the president when 9/11 happened, appears to have been shunned, and put out in a field in PA to give a speech that no one even saw, instead of at Ground Zero in Manhattan, while Clinton who had nothing to do with 9/11 was at the WTC, and Obama.  Not to mention, Trump was not at the service either.

Keeping the National Flag at Half-Mast Indefinitely a Crass Political Move.  Elections will always bring about new and unexpected wedge issues during the campaign.  I don't think anybody could have predicted that the status of the Canadian flag on federal buildings would come into play though.  The decision to fly a national flag at half-mast is not one to be taken lightly.  It is an expression of collective sorrow on the part of a nation.  There are well-established federal protocols for when the national flag is to be lowered and for how long.  The flag is lowered upon the deaths of senior members of the British royal family, former prime ministers, governor generals, and other people whose passing is considered to be of national significance.  The prime minister has the discretionary ability to have the flag lowered for unique tragedies as well.  Few Canadians felt that it was inappropriate to lower the national flag in response to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves deemed to belong to children at the sites of former residential schools.  When the flags came down on May 30, however, nobody realized that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had bizarrely ordered the lowering to last for an indefinite period.  As we approach the four-month mark with our national flags at half-mast, Canadians are beginning to ask when the flags will be going back up.

The Editor says...
The same condition exists in the U.S.  The giant flags at the car dealerships along the Dallas freeways are at half-mast more often than not, and for no apparent reason.  Evidently every little bit of bad news is treated as a disaster now.

9/11 memorials are a reminder of how far the country has fallen.  On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Saturday night, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, his NYPD commissioner of the day, Bernie Kerik, members of SEAL Team Six that killed Osama bin Laden, and other veterans of the war on terror gathered at Cipriani Wall Street for a night of bittersweet memories. [...] Nasty trolls on Twitter who were not at Cipriani described the speech as a drunken rant.  They couldn't have been more wrong, but it shows the depths to which haters will stoop to besmirch what was a beautiful night for the heroes of 9/11 just blocks from "the first battleground in the last 20-year war on terror," as [Bernie] Kerik put it.  Feelings were raw just two weeks after President Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  The city that said it would never forget its 9/11 heroes had spent 18 months demonizing the NYPD.  And Nancy Pelosi had taken Giuliani's usual spot in the front row at the Ground Zero memorial Saturday morning, a sign of the disrespect now heaped on the former mayor.  What was the divisive House speaker from San Francisco doing on hallowed ground, anyway?

China is in deep trouble and bound to get worse.  Is China the next superpower?  Is the media's depiction of the country as a ten-foot giant really accurate?  That's dubious.  For all its bluster on the global stage, China is a giant in trouble.  Here are some of the reasons we know:  Perhaps the biggest problem in China is its erstwhile "one child" policy, which created many single, self-absorbed adults with poor social skills and an entitlement mindset that included no great desire to marry young and bear the financial burden of offspring.  China switched to a two-child policy and recently revised it to allow three children per family.  But it's too little, too late.  The best result is that in about 20 years, the Chinese population will probably be more than halved anyway, instead of something worse, and the elderly will be a great burden on their single offspring and the economy.

The curious case of the missing resignations.  One of the strangest things about the Afghanistan debacle is that in spite of extraordinarily harsh criticism worldwide, nobody has resigned, and nobody has been fired.  Many assume that this is so because the failure is President Biden's, but in thinking this, they are simply wrong.  Consciousness of failure is only one of many reasons for resignations from high government positions.

Do Your Duty as an American and Do Not Comply.  We live in a time where politicians seem to believe that they are the ultimate authority in the United States and that with a wave of their hand and a scratch of their pen, they can enact unassailable dictates that you have to follow.  This is so far from the truth that you could fit a solar system between them.  There are many laws in the land, with different states containing different laws to follow.  But, the supreme laws are the ones enshrined in the Constitution.  If any laws are issued that conflict with this supreme law of the land, then those laws are invalid and do not have to be followed.  This isn't just the opinion of a freedom-loving American with a penchant for bucking authority, it's also the opinion of the Supreme Court.

20 Years after 9/11 — Are We Better Off?  When the hijacked planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that first 9/11, the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary for al-Qaida.  Today, the Taliban are in control of Afghanistan and providing sanctuary to al-Qaida.  What then did our longest war accomplish?  The Afghan army and government we stood up and sustained for decades has collapsed.  The U.S. military has withdrawn.  U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghans who fought alongside us have been left behind.

Biden's shameful Afghanistan disaster has made America look weak, spineless, cowardly, and disloyal.  This Saturday is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, one of the darkest days in American history.  To mark the occasion, President Biden will travel to Ground Zero in New York where the Twin Towers were destroyed, to Virginia where a plane was flown into the Pentagon, and to a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight United 93 also crashed after an on-air battle between terrorists and hero passengers.  This would be a sombre enough experience for any American President given that nearly 3,000 people were killed on that infamous day back in 2001 which represented a terrible failure of US intelligence.

Mediocrity Reigns.  [Scroll down]  Another mediocrity involved in the Afghan debacle is General Milley.  He is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  People may remember him from his appearance in front of Congress earlier in the summer.  He was kitted out like a third-world dictator with a chestful of ribbons and medals.  The general spent his time fighting back tears as he told the congressional committee of his struggle with white rage.  Milley, another product of New England, is a Princeton man, where he graduated with a degree in politics.  Then it was a master's in international relations from Columbia and then another master's from the Naval War College.  His military career has mostly been about avoiding any real danger and making sure the people above him are happy with his personal service.

National Review and Other NeverTrump Mags Sold Out for Google Cash.  Most Americans who identify as conservative share a slate of views:  They want a secure border and a massive reduction of immigration, an end to foreign wars, and the halt of critical race theory and LGBT indoctrination in schools.  Such Americans believe there is sufficient evidence to prove the 2020 election was stolen; they feel the mainstream media exaggerates the threat of COVID-19 (which they hold to have been released by China) in order to justify vaccine mandates and other freedom-restricting policies.  They are tired of the "racism," "hate speech," and "bigotry" being slung to attack anyone holding views once considered the norm in this country, and, as a result, are sick of political correctness.

Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom Urgently Need The Politics of COVID as a Tool For Distraction.  Biden's inflation is crushing the middle-class.  Gas prices are intentionally skyrocketing.  Obama Term-3 policies are destroying jobs and the working class.  The southern border is in crisis; widespread illegal immigration is alarming.  Biden's Afghanistan strategy was/is [very bad] (by design).  Thirteen U.S. service members were killed by JoeBama policy.  Leftist promoted wokeism as a social engineering tool is running amok.  Schools are a battleground between parents and Obama's union orcs.  Joe Biden himself is a hot mess of incompetence and dementia on a scale they can no longer keep hidden.  And the poll numbers for Biden overall are showing it.  The JoeBama crew must bury all of it by weaponizing the use of COVID-19 fear.  There is no other issue large enough to protect the JoeBama agenda without using COVID.  COVID-19 is the only political tool with the outcome to keep all other purposeful crises under control.  That urgent narrative is what's behind this little soundbite segment from the professional media proletariat.  [Video clip]

Joe Biden and the Consequences of Lost Global Trust.  All societies are based on trust.  It doesn't matter how the society is organized.  It could be a democracy, king and country, or even a totalitarian dictatorship.  What matters is that the people of that society have trust in their system and in their leadership.  Without that trust there is chaos.  The imbecilic way we withdrew from Afghanistan has created a monumental crisis, not just domestically, but for the entire world.  Everywhere now, within and without, trust in United States has been irretrievably lost.  We are now at a pivot in time around which all of history is in rotation.  As a result of the stupendous incompetence of the Biden administration the world will never be the same.

What makes the world go around?  [Thread reader]  While the media keeps you fixated on J6, Covid, and how it's always Trump's fault, you might want to ask about these things.  The Biden admin is run by all the same people as the Obama admin. [...] In order to understand what happened in the span of 1 week, when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan & Pelosi rammed through the $3.5 [trillion] budget which is the Green New Deal, you have to look back in time.  Remember the GND, forces the US on EV's which run on lithium batteries.  In 2011, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, worked on the Silk Road Initiative.  It connects China to many countries & helps them become #1 super power through trade.  It also grows the economies of Afghanistan, Pakistan & more enemies to the US. [...] While the US military was involved in conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, our gov (US taxpayers) also paid for the geological surveys of in Afghanistan and found over $1 [trillion] in rare earth minerals, including lithium, which is needed to make batteries that are needed for EV's.

Something Is Wrong with America's Top Commanders.  Recently the Office of Naval Intelligence, in reaction to the Kabul news, warned all its active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize their Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden.  The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.  That is true.  And indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps just relieved from active duty a lieutenant colonel who posted a video accurately blaming the military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.  But until January 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander-in-chief with impunity.  Recently retired General Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific slur that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan where they presumably would be left to die.  Hayden earlier had compared Trump's border facilities to the German death camps.  Other generals and admirals in 2020 variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving to be removed from office sooner than later.  None of these retired politicized four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

Afghanistan fiasco may have been the result of blackmail.  Why would our military commanders willingly give up Bagram, a strategic airport built by the Russians, and why would they willingly leave $85 billion in military hardware behind?  Why would they leave thousands of Americans stranded behind enemy lines while providing the Taliban a "kill list" of those Americans left behind?  Unlike previous withdrawals, where it is customary upon withdrawal to first evacuate our citizens, and then destroy the equipment and blow up the bases, we did the opposite.  We did not evacuate our citizens.  We did not destroy the equipment.  And we did not blow up the bases.  We have learned that the Biden administration cut off all communication with the anti-Taliban resistance group, the National Front.  Although Ali Nazar, head of foreign relations for the group, has said he "tried to reach out," there has been no response from the Biden administration.  Glenn Beck recently reported that his mission to rescue Afghan Christians has been blocked by our State Department and the White House, and he fears that they may be burned alive or crucified by the Taliban.  Are we to believe that our military leadership, led by four-star generals, is so naïve and incompetent?  Highly unlikely!

The Afghan War Isn't Over Until We Rescue All Those Left Behind.  In what can only be called a shocking lack of self-awareness, President Joe Biden this week bragged about his "extraordinary success" in Afghanistan.  Now his handlers and the Democratic Party are urging Americans and, of course, the media to "move on." But there is no moving on from his botched departure from Kabul, whose ill effects will be felt by Americans for decades.  Far from a success, the "evacuation" was in fact an ill-planned, incompetently executed, chaotic dash to cram as many human beings as possible onto planes and transport them away from Kabul.  The new talking point is that "only" 100 or so Americans may have been left behind, despite Biden's explicit promise that none would be.  The media, which for several days seemed actually to be doing their job, are now falling in line with the new White House-Democratic Party spin.  Afghanistan is now a yesterday story.

In Afghanistan, we've opened the gates of hell.  The Afghanistan fiasco is the worst strategic blunder since 1938: the year that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved around a copy of the Munich Agreement and proclaimed "peace in our time."  Chamberlain's failure to understand the enemy gave Germany the space it needed to invade Poland — the event that marked the start of World War II.  Chamberlain resigned in 1940 when his political support evaporated.  Winston Churchill assumed power, ultimately snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  President Joe Biden's debacle will have no such savior; the Islamic jihad isn't that kind of war.  Instead of getting us out of Afghanistan, and bringing peace in our time, he's opened the gates of hell.  In one disastrous and grossly ill-conceived strategic move, Biden has armed and empowered the Taliban and elated every Muslim fanatic from Morocco to Mindanao.

Is Our Military Woke, Broke or Both?  The fall of Kabul is not the end, as Joe Biden seems to think, of the Afghanistan nightmare.  It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream.  Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.  In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 servicemen, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise.  We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul.  We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival.  Such statements are either untrue or absurd. [...] The Pentagon needs to stop virtue signaling about diversity days, culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees, and rooting out supposed white conspiracists.  Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram Air Base was abandoned by night?  Why suddenly are the terrorist Taliban our supposed "partners" in organizing our surrender and escape?

[The] U.S. [is] In More Trouble Than At Any Time In Its History.  Candidate Joe Biden said last October that we were nearing the "most important election of our lifetime."  He was right.  What made it so crucial was keeping him out of the White House.  President Joe Biden is visibly exhausted.  His mental decline that began long before the 2020 election appears to have now gone straight over a cliff.  The first seven months of his term have depleted him so thoroughly that the toll taken by eight years of the modern presidency look mild in comparison.  His errors and poor judgment continue and compound.  Never in possession of an abundance of sound thinking, he's been drained of what little wisdom he ever had.  And he's only going to get worse.  Biden's record of failure is well-documented.  He's been a train wreck in progress for decades.  Just added to his resume of misery is the ongoing catastrophe in Afghanistan where Americans have been murdered and abandoned; historic inflation that threatens economic growth; a workforce that feels work is optional; dire conditions in which businesses can't find enough workers; an open wound on our southern border; and a greenlighting of terrorism both in the U.S. and abroad.

Cui Bono?  Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal?  If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.  If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.  I'd be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan — conservative or liberal — would give to the question, "Cui bono?"  I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.  "Twenty years is too long," or its variant, "we have to end these endless wars," the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.  It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.  The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members' lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

Good Leadership Leads by Example, Not by Coercion.  It is not a good indicator when troops must be reminded that they are not allowed to speak critically about the military's civilian leadership.  It is not a good sign when a USMC Lieutenant Colonel feels compelled by the horrible events in Afghanistan to speak out publicly and risk ending what has otherwise been a successful career of faithful, war-time military service. [...] Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier, USAF, and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, USMC, can now be listed among those patriots who have pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" to the American citizenry and those core values that have defined their military service.  Why has speaking the truth, and doing so with the service branch's best long-term interest in mind, become a career-ending decision?  It is curious, isn't it?  None of these "reminders" were issued while President Trump held office.  Then, there were no prohibitions against an active-duty military member's "disrespect" to "government officials."  No, those people (for example, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman) were "whistleblowers" with only the highest conceivable, most earnest, and most honorable of intentions to save the Republic from the bad orange man.

General HR McMaster Reveals Deep State's "Coded Language" While Responding to Afghanistan Terror Attack.  There is only one fitting response to last week's heart-wrenching suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul:  America must get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, and stay out, for good.  Nothing good has come of America's involvement in Afghanistan, and nothing more will come out of it, except more flag-draped coffins.  Sickeningly, the US security state responded to last Thursday's attack with a borderline glee.  Sadly, ISIS-Khorasan's (ISIS-K) gruesome attack served the forever-war lobby perfectly, as it used the tragedy to launch a final Hail Mary bid to prolong America's interminable, objective-free crusade in Southwest Asia.  In the process, the globalist war lobby revealed one of the most cynical, sinister components of a playbook it has run for two decades — a playbook that capitalizes on public ignorance to conflate wildly different groups and oversell totally unproven claims in the service of perpetuating endless warfare.

These reports out of Kabul are too awful to believe.  American troops are due to leave Afghanistan on Tuesday, even though uncounted Americans are stuck in the country.  And by stuck, it appears that our American government is deliberately denying them access to Kabul airport.  This isn't a wild rumor.  Instead, it comes from two eminently reliable reporters (Lara Logan and Emily Miller) and from Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL. [...] At this point, there are only two conclusions that can be drawn from what's happening in Afghanistan, beginning with Biden's decision to jettison Trump's careful plan and continuing through to the present day:  (1) Everyone in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon is so incompetent that a roomful of drunk kindergarteners could have handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan better than they have, or (2) What we're witnessing is deliberate.  I can believe that of Biden, who is a Chinese puppet.  That the Pentagon brass would engage in this conduct means that they too are on the Chinese payroll which is a very distressing thought.  Alternatively, it's deliberate because these people have been so steeped in America-hatred that they are willingly sabotaging America to destroy it.  They are the contents of the Trojan Horse.

Is Afghanistan the Next Killing Field?  America's abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan portends a humanitarian disaster of unknown proportions. [...] The term "killing fields" refers to the disastrous power vacuum created in Cambodia in the 1970s.  That vacuum was filled by Pol Pot, communist leader of the Khmer Rouge regime.  He rapidly put in a plan that included the arrest and butchering of those he suspected of connections hostile to his regime.  A quarter of the Cambodian people — more than a million — died, either by execution or lack of medical care and food.  A similar power vacuum has been created by the Biden administration's deliberate policy of abandoning Americans left behind in Afghanistan.  Those who have assisted America in any way are also without recourse.  Further, a vast supply of military equipment is being left behind, armaments that will assuredly be used by the Taliban and their allies against Americans and their sympathizers.

The fatal failure of Gen. Mark A. Milley over closing Bagram Air Base.  Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, must go.  President Biden claims that the military advised him to close Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and instead use Kabul's airport to evacuate Americans.  They were the ones who said the Afghan army would hold, that the pullout would go smoothly.  If Biden is telling the truth, this disaster is on Milley's watch.  Or Biden is lying (the more likely scenario, based on what sources inside the administration are saying) and Milley failed to do his duty and push back against a commander-in-chief who is making deadly decisions.  Either way, he is derelict in his duty — and must either take responsibility for what went wrong or tell Americans the truth about their president.

The military brass may regret firing Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.  Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller was fired for speaking the truth about the fact that the top brass in the Pentagon never pay for their bad decisions, even as the ordinary men and women get no quarter for their errors.  As soon as he's free, Scheller intends to change that two-tiered system.  In fact, we've been watching unfold for some time in America a two-tiered justice system.  In the civilian world, one tier, the higher one, is for leftists and the other, the lower one, is for conservatives.  It started in politics.  We've all noticed that Republicans who err got fired.  Meanwhile, leftists who violated the law (e.g., Hillary) never got fired.  The only exception was the #MeToo movement, which was obviously targeted at Trump but instead did nothing more than destroy a handful of prominent, but sleazy, leftists.  Biden, despite a credible sexual assault charge and a compulsive need to paw and sniff little girls, was untouched.

The Declaration 2.0 (Revised).  [Scroll down]  The history of the present POTUS is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.  He has usurped the nation's highest office, and because of his mental unfitness for that office, is the puppet of an illegitimate and hidden Cabal that has destroyed the bonds of trust most wholesome and necessary for the public good.  He has forbidden our Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them, and hath meanwhile ignored restraints issued by coequal branches of government not under his direct political control.  He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.  He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

To survive, we must fire them all.  The last Democrat president to surrender like this was Jefferson Davis.  The survival of America depends on firing them all.  The good, the bad, and the indifferent must all go because we must send a clear signal to the mediocrities running the military and the Department of State.  The message must be failure gets you canned.  We failed 20 years ago to do so, and it cost us dearly.  9/11 resulted in no firings.  Instead of dismissing the people in charge of an intelligence community that failed the nation, Bush 43 appointed a 9/11 commission, which included many of the people responsible for the 9/11 whiff.  The commission was a bipartisan [sham] and coverup.  After months of interviews, it concluded that the FBI and CIA had "not well served" Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Disney's Shame.  We have come a long way from Walt Disney, in the wrong direction.  The phenomenon of woke capitalism is hard to understand, but it seems clear that companies will not stop promoting leftism until they feel pain at the bottom line.  I encourage you to contact the companies involved here, express your disgust, and where appropriate, take your business elsewhere.

The Biden Administration Should Just Knock Off the Press Briefings Until They Get the Story Straight.  If the last week is an example of the adults being in charge, we should all pine for the guy who fired off mean tweets and sent the Ayatollah's favorite terrorist home in a tiny box.  The Biden administration press briefings from the Pentagon and White House today upended any messages CENTCOM or President Biden conveyed yesterday.  Perhaps we are witnessing peak incompetence.  Or maybe lying all the time is getting confusing.  This morning Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby had a bizarre exchange with Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.  Griffin asked Kirby how the administration was confident the Taliban had no role in the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport.  She inquired if General Kenneth McKenzie ruled out this possibility because the U.S. is dependent on them for security at the facility.

Twenty-five minutes to infamy.  On what was arguably the worst day of Joe Biden's presidency, he was scheduled to address America and the world at 5 P.M. on August 26, 2021.  We'd been told earlier that day that the president and commander-in-chief was going to address the bomb that killed Marines and a Navy corpsman in Kabul.  Biden was 25 minutes late.  That delay is not trivial.  It has direct consequences on an ever-present 24/7 strategic threat that Russia, China, and North Korea pose to America.  All three have "ready now" ICBMs with multiple warheads aimed at targets in the continental United States.  I know this because I was President Reagan's principal director of mobilization planning and requirements in the Pentagon at the height of the Cold War. [...] It may appear to be just a typical Biden trivial time-delay moment.  However, the entire American strategic deterrence posture, especially during the Cold War, was measured in thirty minutes.  That was the time of flight for incoming missiles to destroy us.  Today, I suspect the time is even shorter.  Regardless, the fundamental building block to make sure we would never be attacked was competent, determined presidential leadership with the "football" launch codes to unleash hell on our enemies.  If anything leads Russia, China, or North Korea to believe strongly that President Biden is not mentally together — and his 25-minute delay may have proven that — America is in even greater danger than we thought.

Trump: Biden Handling of Afghanistan : 'Dumbest Move' Ever Made Perhaps in the History of Our Country.  As the U.S. casualty count is trending in the wrong direction in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden is taking heat from all sides for the handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Central Asian nation.  During an appearance on FNC's "Hannity" on Thursday, former President Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor, called the move by the Biden administration to withdraw military forces before evacuating non-military personnel the "dumbest move" in perhaps the history of the country.

Biden Turns Afghanistan Into A Slaughterhouse, Taliban Into A Military Superpower.  A day after at least 13 U.S. soldiers were killed at the Kabul airport, it's still unclear how many Americans will be abandoned in Afghanistan by the Biden administration.  What we do know, though, is that most of the U.S. weaponry in the country will not be recovered.  It's as if Joe Biden himself was the military procurement chief for the Taliban.  Until Thursday [8/26/2021], there had been no U.S. combat casualties in Afghanistan since February of last year.  But a bloodbath that the entire world outside of the White House saw coming arrived, and it became the deadliest day in the country for American troops since 2011, when — yes, that's right — Biden was vice president.  Homicide bombers and gunmen, reportedly from that brood of terrorist vipers called the Islamic State, killed at least 60 Afghans in addition to the American servicemen, and wounded more than 140. These horrific deaths and dismemberments are squarely on Biden, who rejected military leaders' advice, has resorted to blaming the victims, and once again demonstrated that he has miserable, if not depraved, foreign-policy instincts.

If You Think Afghanistan Is a Disaster You're Missing the Big Picture.  Get Ready to Be Told It Is the New Berlin Airlift.  While most of the world looks on in horror at the epic incompetence of Joe Biden and his sycophants in creating and carrying out a once-in-a-generation tragedy in Kabul, the foundation is being laid to convert this goat-rope into a major Biden political success.  The first hint that that came to my attention was from Politico's Alex Thompson.  He observes that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a comment from a Twitter user with 257 followers.

Sometimes there really is a conspiracy to theorize about.  It has been claimed that the phrase "conspiracy theory" was invented by the government to discourage the questioning of official explanations for important events, especially the JFK assassination.  Whether that was the real origin of the phrase or not, it is clear that the charge is plainly being used for that purpose: to dissuade any alternatives to the party narrative for major occurrences such as election fraud and the origin of the Wuhan virus.  The more we find out about the most significant events of today, especially the virus, the more we see a gigantic, long-term, sophisticated, and extremely disciplined coordination.  With newly released emails, knowing the real authors and background of major studies, previous strategy papers, and videos outside the mainstream until now, the wargaming of pandemics, the financial support of agencies, laboratories and studies, and the timeline of the vaccines and related patents, the enormous COVID conspiracy is coming into view.  There is so much organized intrigue now; how could anyone believe there aren't any conspiracies?

Hey Dems:  What Price Your Deep State Pals Now?  The U.S. has 17 — seventeen — intelligence agencies.  Do you think that helped or hindered in the runup to the Afghanistan debacle?

The Deep State and Afghanistan.  What if some people who pull strings were so angry about our Afghan exit that they said, "Okay, you want a withdrawal?  We'll give you a withdrawal you'll never forget." [...] [Lara] Logan's claim is that the U.S., insofar as worldly entities go, is practically omniscient and omnipotent.  Our National Security Agency (NSA) watches continuously like an all-seeing eye and "is known as the crown jewel of intelligence collection in the world," as Logan puts it.  "There isn't a digital signature in existence that they don't collect and store and analyze and have algorithms and everything else to sort through," she continued, expressing that there's no way the intel agencies "missed this" (what would transpire).  Logan also "posited that the NGIA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], which controls government satellites and other resources, has been watching the Taliban taking control of abandoned U.S. military equipment; bringing it back east into Pakistan," writes Fox News.

Chaos on the Ground, Collapse at the Top.  The failure of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, though great, is of comparatively minor importance when compared to the manifest collapse of the Washington intelligence, diplomatic, and military institutions on which national and Western security depend.  This transformed what was potentially a local debacle into a strategic crisis of the first order.  The fact that no senior official was fired and the administration insists on characterizing obvious ineptitude as resolute excellence underlines, rather than belies, their delusional character.  But it fools no one except a dwindling number of media hacks.  We see you Joe — and so do the Taliban, the NATO allies, and, worst of all, America's most dangerous foes.  Thus self-blindfolded, Biden's Washington stumbles toward three crises: the August 31 troop evacuation deadline set by the Taliban; the forthcoming meeting demanded by major allies; and the inevitable challenge from China.

In Afghanistan, the fix is in.  Americans are trapped in Afghanistan with diminishing chances of escape, our military is essentially trapped at Kabul airport, tens of thousands of Afghan citizens have been getting on flights that will see them end up in America, sharia and all, and the Taliban is on its usual murderous rampage.  The worst thing of all, according to Lara Logan, is that we're being told there's nothing to be done... and that's a lie.  [Tweet]  The question, of course, is why we're being fed this lie saying that Afghanistan must collapse and America must take in tens of thousands of people who completely believe in sharia law.

Chaos and Confusion in Kabul.  Either Joe Biden, his advisors, and our military are woefully ill-informed, or they are purposefully lying to the public about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.  Either way, Americans of all political views should be aghast.  First, the fact that the administration has told U.S. citizens to leave the Kabul airport and "shelter in place" — effectively, "go somewhere else" — or move to neighboring provinces or other locations without safe escort is simply inexcusable.  I am among the scores of private citizens and ad-hoc organizations trying to help rescue our colleagues in Afghanistan.  We have known for days not only that rapidly deteriorating security has been a continuous problem outside the airport but also that the Taliban has been targeting people who are waiting outside with beatings and burning of documents.  They are also conducting door-to-door searches in neighborhoods looking for American supporters and perceived opponents.

Dead Superpower Walking.  The War on Terror began with men plunging to their deaths from the highest floors of skyscrapers hit by airplanes; it ended with men plunging to their deaths from the undercarriage of a US airplane taking off from what's left of "Hamid Karzai International Airport" (the signs will be coming down even as you read this). [...] The United States is dead as a global power because of this kind of indestructible stupidity. [...] Meanwhile, back at the palace in Kabul, the Taliban commander giving a victory speech is Gholam Ruhani, released from Gitmo (under Bush) because he said his "only wish" was to return to Afghanistan to (per the Department of Defense documents published, natch, in a London newspaper) "assist his father, who is sick, in operating the family appliance store in Kabul".  I don't know what appliances they sell at Ruhani & Son over at 237b Sword of the Infidel Slayer Street, but evidently they're enough to take out the global superpower.  On social media, the wags are having great sport with Joe Biden's recent taunt that no American needs an AR-15, because, if you want to defeat the mighty US government, you're gonna need fighter jets and nukes.

Who Exactly is Being Evacuated from Afghanistan?  The US military is certainly evacuating "people" but why are only 15 percent of evacuees Americans?  Who are the other 85 percent?  Obviously not Americans.  The Daily Mail is more specific, "Hero airmen reveal they flew 823 Afghans out of Kabul including 183 kids after scrapping red tape to cram record number of people on C-17 jet."  Any Americans or just Afghans?  They went on, "The US has removed 9,000 people since Sunday but only around 1,000 of those are US citizens."  It seems Americans are not high on Biden's evacuation priority list.

The Drossy Touch of Joe Biden.  Almost everything Joe Biden has touched since entering office has turned to dross.  None of his blame-gaming, none of his distortions, none of his fantasies and unreality can mask that truth.  Seven months ago, Afghanistan was relatively quiet — with about 10,000 vestigial NATO troops, including 2,500 Americans, anchored by the Bagram Airfield.  They were able to provide air superiority for the coalition and Afghan national army.  With air power, NATO forces, if and when they so wished, could have very slowly and gradually withdrawn all its remnant troops — but only after a prior departure of all American and European civilians, coalition contractors, and allied Afghans.  The transient calm abruptly imploded as soon as Joe Biden recklessly yanked all U.S. troops out in a matter of days.  Many left in the dead of night, leaving no one to protect contractors, dependents, diplomats, and Afghan allies.  In Biden's world, civilians protect the last Western enclave while soldiers flee.

The Editor says...
What a coincidence!  Guess who else has the Reverse Midas Touch.

Back to the Past for America's Freight?  In a typical year, freight trains in the United States move about 1.7 billion tons on over 140,000 miles of track.  The massive tonnage hauled by freight rail every year means that most American consumers own goods transported on freight trains.  Yet, despite the importance of freight rail to American consumers and the broader economy, the Biden administration has proposed several potential changes that could undermine the profitability of freight rail companies and enhance government control of the industry.  Given the importance of freight rail, any government intervention could have catastrophic effects for consumers.  Policymakers only need to look at the history of freight rail in the United States to understand why increasing government control of freight rail could be profoundly damaging.

This should have been done a week ago:
Biden Admin Considers Strikes To Destroy U.S. Military Equipment In Afghanistan After Taliban Takeover:  Report.  The Biden administration is reportedly considering launching strikes against some of the larger pieces of U.S. Military equipment that were abandoned in Afghanistan, and have been subsequently seized by extremists, after Democrat President Joe Biden decided to pull out from the nation.  "The Biden administration is considering launching airstrikes against the larger equipment," Axios reported.  "They also fear that such a move could provoke the Taliban at a time where the U.S. is focusing on evacuating people from Afghanistan."

The Editor says...
Fear of provoking the Taliban or offending the Muslims has been a false concern for decades.  Of course they'll be provoked if they're carpet-bombed.  Most of them will die, too.  But whether they are provoked or not, the Muslims are bent on world domination through force and violence.  We can let them take over, or we can resist, but there is no way to just ignore them and hope we can all get along with each other.  The Chinese would probably like to take over the world, too, and already the Chinese have shown that they have no use for the Muslims.

The Drooling Class.  In one fell swoop, the administration left billions of dollars of military equipment in the hands of the barbarous anti-American Taliban; broke the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance by bugging out without warning to its members who were in Afghanistan in support of our mission there; left as many as 50,000 Americans and tens of thousands more of our Afghan allies to the not so tender mercies of the enemy; and on Friday Biden lied about it all.  It's not that most of us wanted this Afghan Mission Impossible to continue forever.  It's just that there's a right way to do it.  President Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a well-conceived plan.  It included preconditions on the Taliban and the removal of all U.S. military equipment and civilians before any group withdrawal.

Dear President Biden,.  I wouldn't normally write.  Watching your policy agenda fail is something I enjoy, but this isn't policy, this is lives. [...] First, you are Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces of this country, and this country has the strongest military in the history of the planet.  There is literally no reason to cower in fear of a band of luddite zealots.  You shouldn't have pulled out our troops before bringing out our civilians and Afghan allies, nor should you have closed Bagram Air Base, but you have to know that by now.  If you don't, you should resign immediately as you are beyond incompetent and an active danger to the people of this country.  Since Hamid Karzai Airport is so small compared to Bagram, our ability to get people out is severely limited.  Send troops to retake Bagram.  This will speed up the process and make supplying people on the ground easier.  I know there is risk in retaking anything, we could upset the Taliban.  But here's how you do it.  You tell them we are doing it, that we're going back to Bagram, and if any of their fighters so much as jaywalk in front of our personnel going there, every single one of them our troops come across will be killed and we will bomb the absolute hell out of every single place they are from the air, particularly their leadership.

Aftermath of an Afghanistan Debacle.  In Afghanistan, the mission failure appears complete.  The trillion-dollar project to plant Western democracy in a Muslim nation historically fabled for driving out imperial intruders has crashed and burned after 20 years, and the Taliban are suddenly back in power.  After investing scores of billions in training and arming a force of 350,000 Afghani troops, the U.S. could not stand up an army and a government that could survive our departure.  And the final U.S. departure from Hamid Karzai International Airport may become, like JFK's Bay of Pigs, a synonym for American debacle.  Nor is the failure ours alone.  Many of our principal allies were heavily invested.  The British are now attempting to bring their people out of Kabul under the same conditions as ours.

Three and a Half more Years of Biden-Harris.  The takeaways from Afghanistan, which were the takeaways from Vietnam, are 1) We can't fight other people's wars for them; 2) we can't social-engineer backward countries into being card-carrying members of the "community of civilized nations" (a dwindling club as-is); and 3) we must rediscover this truth:  A country exists to safeguard and promote its national interests.  A nation isn't a philanthropy, a police force, or both.  America doesn't exist to police and/or "transform" the world.

Note:  All the opinion articles posted even earlier than these are now located here.